Left4Dead Hands-on Preview

Left and Dying

It’s been three pages and I’ve already shared three rather in-depth stories about Left4Dead and there’s a good reason for that – it’s simply that letting players create unique stories is something that Left4Dead excels at.

Granted, you’re never going to be able to turn to your friends and tell them long stories about character motivations and how you outwitted the bad-guys without firing a single shot – this isn’t Deus Ex after all.

What you will get though is a clear capacity to tell exciting stories about how to charge through crowds of undead and shouldered and shot gunned your way to victory until someone stupid hit you with a Molotov cocktail by accident.

There’s a whole lot more depth to Left4Dead than we’ve let on yet though, like the fact that characters will automatically shout things at each other if the AI director deems that players need to communicate but can’t – it’s very handy to have the guy covering you automatically yell that he’s out of ammo when the two of you are trying your best to hold a front line.


Then there are the zombies themselves – there are a number of different types of zombies and it isn’t just limited to grunts and Boomers. Better yet, all but one type of zombie are playable for players – if you do end up taking a team mates Molotov to the cranium then you respawn as a zombie and try to get your revenge, though we didn’t have a chance to try this ourselves.

One of the most interesting things we found though was the body awareness that characters have. Left4Dead isn’t set in the same mould as Half-Life 2 and players are always both vocal and visible – when you look down you can expect to see your shoes beneath you.

This awareness also comes in to help the gameplay at various points and there are some stunningly effective moves that occasionally come into play. When we mentioned that a player had been pinned down by a zombie before, that wasn’t just a figure of speech – zombies will occasionally knock you down and claw at you viciously. It’s up to you pull out a pistol and try and get some help.

The realism and awareness steps further into the gameplay when it comes to the matter of healing. There’s no HEV suit to administer neuro-anti-venoms and morphine, so you’ll have to bring bandages with you and stop to apply them if you start running low on health. It’s just one of the many touches which bring a wonderful sense of cinematic realism to the game and help make it truly exciting.

First Impressions

Left4Dead was always going to be great, that much we knew. It was coming from Valve and it was about zombies, so even before it was unveiled as a four player co-op we all knew we were going to be in for a good time.


Yet still, Left4Dead managed to surprise us in a number of ways, for reasons both good and bad. On the one hand we were utterly shocked to see how effective the AI director is at making the game unique and constantly replayable. On the other hand though, we have to admit that the levels we played through did seem a bit on the small side and it’s getting to that point where the Source engine might be starting to show its age. The thing is four years old by now and though continued development and expansion has helped, the cause is starting to flag a little.

Not that that matters hugely when you get right down to it – as far as Left4Dead goes gameplay is God and the multiplayer backbone of Steam means that the game will run smoothly from the off.

As I mentioned to Chet when I interviewed him, Valve has a reputation among games developers for testing games absolutely to death. What for many designers would be a case a few weeks at the hands of some tired half-asleep geeks is an on-going process of refinement for Valve and it’s something that really shows in Left4Dead.

The game is immediately playable and easy to pick up, but underneath the hood are some incredibly complex and effective tools to make the experience unpredictable and constantly replayable. This is Left4Dead’s key strength and it makes the game easily one of our most awaited games of this year.

Left4Dead is planned for the PC and Xbox 360 and should be launching later this year.