Well, it's been a long time since I wrote a review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.67184#593996] for the escapist, and again I'm reviewing a Valve produced online-multiplayer FPS.
I hope I don't get typecast...
Anyway, lets get slightly on topic for the moment, and talk zombies. Zombies (or at least zombie-like creatures) are probably the most common enemies I can think of games. Just a glance at the current PC game charts reveals the prevalence of every bodies favorite rotting punching-bags; we have undead peasants in WoW and Warhammer Online, head-crab victims in Half-life, ghouls in Fallout 3, Husks from Mass Effect, Necromorphs from Dead Space, and I'll eat any part of my clothing you wish to name if not one of the infinite Sims 2 expansions has the options for shambling corpses lurking within.
My point?
None of these games are 'zombie' games, but the culture of (and I shan't think to much about this word...) zombiephillia is so strong that they are always included, and, obviously, form the basis of many games. The biggest of these currently lurching over the horizon is Left 4 Dead, produced by the highly acclaimed Valve corporation. It isn't out until November 21st, but those of us fanboyish/optimistic enough to pre-order were given an early taste of the demo.
For rotting, diseased human flesh, it tastes pretty goddamn good.
To put the premise simply, you play co-op (apparently human vs zombie multiplayer will be available on release) as a team of 4 humans trying to progress from A to B without dieing. Unfortunately, there are obstacles (or, I suppose, it'd be a pretty awful game...) to your progress, mostly consisting of hordes of crazed zombies, occasionally interspersed with one or two extremely powerful crazed zombies.
And that's about it for the entire game.
And it's all it needs.
It's an extremely simple concept, but one that works and has been sculpted and crafted to the point of beauty. The zombies themselves are amazing pieces of programming. The chills rise as soon as you enter a darkened room and see a swaying silhouette in your torch-light, hear the muffled breathing of a zombie, and wonder if there are many more in there. Most of time they just stand there and ignore you, staring at the wall, or right though you, even as you gun them down. Entire rooms can be cleared without any reaction.
It seems, as you start your first game, that Left 4 Dead is going to be disappointingly easy, and a bit shitty. I thought this. Please, for the love of God, persevere.
Once you're feeling confident and calm, somewhere in the darkness one will snarl, tense and sprint at you. Panicked, you'll spray him with more bullets than he could possibly take, and then, instantly, there are fifty of them in there with you, all screaming and sprinting. All in all they act much more like the 'infected' of 28 Days Later (Best zombie film in existence. Seriously. Watch the best introduction [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgfG3SNwK6s] to any zombie film ever, sorry it's in German), than traditional zombies, and kill you in the same manner. Rather than bite or claw, they simply batter away, screaming and shaking with primordial rage. Once these relatively weak attacks floor you they pounce as a mob, stamping and kicking and gouging until you're nothing but a red smear on the concrete.
Thank god you have teammates to save you, huh?
Teamwork is essential in this game. Put simply, you will die really, really quickly without a good team, or at least a team that is trying to be good. Even if you are the best player in world, the moment a Hunter or Smoker touches you, you are dead without the help of your teammates. It will be interesting to see how Valve deals with griefers, as this is truly the most grief-prone game I have yet played. Even amongst those willing to pre-order, there are people willing to TK and wildly cheat, a figure that will doubtlessly get worse once the full game is released.
Still, for the most part people seem to be getting into the spirit of things, and once you find good people, the teamwork aspects are amazingly natural. You find yourself unconsciously working together, watching each others backs and forming plans. The final part of the demo requires you to hold out in a small room whilst an electric gate sloooooowwwllllyyyy opens, and thankfully the first time I reached this point I was on a good server. A few hastily typed messages later, our team had a plan. One would man an extremely handy mounted MG, one watch a back entrance , shotgun and Molotov in hand, and another would provide covering fire for me, the hapless fool that had volunteered to start the door opening before sprinting back into cover, zombie horde on his heels.
The successful culmination of that plan ranks as one of my 'best game moments ever'. Seriously, I was grinning like a stoned Cheshire Cat.
Anyway, to wrap this review up I feel like I must point out the flaws (and there are some), and I shall, but there are so many positives that I have left out that I feel I must add them too.
So, in brief; the positives;
The AI director truly is as good as Valve claims it is. Every single playthrough has been radically different, and has been incredibly atmospheric. You will never fully learn the levels, and something will always surprise you.
The boss zombies are all well-designed and well-balanced (except for the Tank, which I hate), and add atmosphere and diversity to what could have been a spam-fest. It is an amazing experience when you first hear the plaintive sobbing of a With (and the creepy music that plays around one...), and everyone yells at you to 'turn out the goddam flashlight!' as you creep past the hunched figure. Until someone carelessly disturbs it, at which point it screams and dismembers you. Good times.
The general art direction and atmosphere is to an impeccable standard. Valve games usually are, but here they outdo themselves. Everything seems carefully considered and well-placed. From the twitching zombies to the ruined scenery to the subtle characterization carried out by player phrases, it's all solid gold.
And the negatives;
The continued fun of the levels is a question. So far they've been fresh and new each time, but will that be true 6 months from now? Knowing Valve, they'll introduce more levels as time goes on, but will they be enough?
Seriously, griefers could ruin this game. Unlike most, they wouldn't have to actively do things badly, but could simply be selectively incompetent and still get you all killed. How will they deal with this without banning hundreds of genuinely incompetent newbies?
You aren't given a chance to pick your server, instead you are randomly selected one and plonked into it's lobby. Occasionally, as someone who doesn't live in America, this has resulted in truly game-breaking lag.
The difficulty seems a bit schizophrenic. Occasionally Advanced will be a cakewalk, occasionally it'll be a rape-fest, even on single-player where I can't blame cack-handed allies. You can change the difficulty mid-level (by a vote), so you can scale it if you wish, but that feels like cheating...
The 'Tank' boss zombie is so much harder than all the others, it feels like a cheap shot when one spawns. Games feeling unfair is never good.
So, in conclusion, I'm amazed I was able to write this much on a demo, but it really is that exciting. Play it for yourself when the demo is available to everyone if you want to confirm it, but for the moment just bask in happy anticipation with me.
Thank you,
_Serendipity_
I hope I don't get typecast...
Anyway, lets get slightly on topic for the moment, and talk zombies. Zombies (or at least zombie-like creatures) are probably the most common enemies I can think of games. Just a glance at the current PC game charts reveals the prevalence of every bodies favorite rotting punching-bags; we have undead peasants in WoW and Warhammer Online, head-crab victims in Half-life, ghouls in Fallout 3, Husks from Mass Effect, Necromorphs from Dead Space, and I'll eat any part of my clothing you wish to name if not one of the infinite Sims 2 expansions has the options for shambling corpses lurking within.
My point?
None of these games are 'zombie' games, but the culture of (and I shan't think to much about this word...) zombiephillia is so strong that they are always included, and, obviously, form the basis of many games. The biggest of these currently lurching over the horizon is Left 4 Dead, produced by the highly acclaimed Valve corporation. It isn't out until November 21st, but those of us fanboyish/optimistic enough to pre-order were given an early taste of the demo.
For rotting, diseased human flesh, it tastes pretty goddamn good.
To put the premise simply, you play co-op (apparently human vs zombie multiplayer will be available on release) as a team of 4 humans trying to progress from A to B without dieing. Unfortunately, there are obstacles (or, I suppose, it'd be a pretty awful game...) to your progress, mostly consisting of hordes of crazed zombies, occasionally interspersed with one or two extremely powerful crazed zombies.
And that's about it for the entire game.
And it's all it needs.
It's an extremely simple concept, but one that works and has been sculpted and crafted to the point of beauty. The zombies themselves are amazing pieces of programming. The chills rise as soon as you enter a darkened room and see a swaying silhouette in your torch-light, hear the muffled breathing of a zombie, and wonder if there are many more in there. Most of time they just stand there and ignore you, staring at the wall, or right though you, even as you gun them down. Entire rooms can be cleared without any reaction.
It seems, as you start your first game, that Left 4 Dead is going to be disappointingly easy, and a bit shitty. I thought this. Please, for the love of God, persevere.
Once you're feeling confident and calm, somewhere in the darkness one will snarl, tense and sprint at you. Panicked, you'll spray him with more bullets than he could possibly take, and then, instantly, there are fifty of them in there with you, all screaming and sprinting. All in all they act much more like the 'infected' of 28 Days Later (Best zombie film in existence. Seriously. Watch the best introduction [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgfG3SNwK6s] to any zombie film ever, sorry it's in German), than traditional zombies, and kill you in the same manner. Rather than bite or claw, they simply batter away, screaming and shaking with primordial rage. Once these relatively weak attacks floor you they pounce as a mob, stamping and kicking and gouging until you're nothing but a red smear on the concrete.
Thank god you have teammates to save you, huh?
Teamwork is essential in this game. Put simply, you will die really, really quickly without a good team, or at least a team that is trying to be good. Even if you are the best player in world, the moment a Hunter or Smoker touches you, you are dead without the help of your teammates. It will be interesting to see how Valve deals with griefers, as this is truly the most grief-prone game I have yet played. Even amongst those willing to pre-order, there are people willing to TK and wildly cheat, a figure that will doubtlessly get worse once the full game is released.
Still, for the most part people seem to be getting into the spirit of things, and once you find good people, the teamwork aspects are amazingly natural. You find yourself unconsciously working together, watching each others backs and forming plans. The final part of the demo requires you to hold out in a small room whilst an electric gate sloooooowwwllllyyyy opens, and thankfully the first time I reached this point I was on a good server. A few hastily typed messages later, our team had a plan. One would man an extremely handy mounted MG, one watch a back entrance , shotgun and Molotov in hand, and another would provide covering fire for me, the hapless fool that had volunteered to start the door opening before sprinting back into cover, zombie horde on his heels.
The successful culmination of that plan ranks as one of my 'best game moments ever'. Seriously, I was grinning like a stoned Cheshire Cat.
Anyway, to wrap this review up I feel like I must point out the flaws (and there are some), and I shall, but there are so many positives that I have left out that I feel I must add them too.
So, in brief; the positives;
The AI director truly is as good as Valve claims it is. Every single playthrough has been radically different, and has been incredibly atmospheric. You will never fully learn the levels, and something will always surprise you.
The boss zombies are all well-designed and well-balanced (except for the Tank, which I hate), and add atmosphere and diversity to what could have been a spam-fest. It is an amazing experience when you first hear the plaintive sobbing of a With (and the creepy music that plays around one...), and everyone yells at you to 'turn out the goddam flashlight!' as you creep past the hunched figure. Until someone carelessly disturbs it, at which point it screams and dismembers you. Good times.
The general art direction and atmosphere is to an impeccable standard. Valve games usually are, but here they outdo themselves. Everything seems carefully considered and well-placed. From the twitching zombies to the ruined scenery to the subtle characterization carried out by player phrases, it's all solid gold.
And the negatives;
The continued fun of the levels is a question. So far they've been fresh and new each time, but will that be true 6 months from now? Knowing Valve, they'll introduce more levels as time goes on, but will they be enough?
Seriously, griefers could ruin this game. Unlike most, they wouldn't have to actively do things badly, but could simply be selectively incompetent and still get you all killed. How will they deal with this without banning hundreds of genuinely incompetent newbies?
You aren't given a chance to pick your server, instead you are randomly selected one and plonked into it's lobby. Occasionally, as someone who doesn't live in America, this has resulted in truly game-breaking lag.
The difficulty seems a bit schizophrenic. Occasionally Advanced will be a cakewalk, occasionally it'll be a rape-fest, even on single-player where I can't blame cack-handed allies. You can change the difficulty mid-level (by a vote), so you can scale it if you wish, but that feels like cheating...
The 'Tank' boss zombie is so much harder than all the others, it feels like a cheap shot when one spawns. Games feeling unfair is never good.
So, in conclusion, I'm amazed I was able to write this much on a demo, but it really is that exciting. Play it for yourself when the demo is available to everyone if you want to confirm it, but for the moment just bask in happy anticipation with me.
Thank you,
_Serendipity_
