Crispy
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- Dec 19, 2004
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(I said in another thread I'd go into a bit more detail, so here's a bit of an account of what it's like to play. Anyone else who's played it feel free to share your experiences. I'm mainly compelled to write this because before I was extremely hesitant about buying this. Now there is really no doubt in my mind.)
So, I went to the London Games Expo last Wednesday, and tucked away in the middle of the floor, among a mass of Fallout 3 machines, a mysterious queue had formed. This queue was 30 minutes long and was of course for Left 4 Dead.
While we were queueing up, my 3 mates plus a random watched pretty much a whole 'movie' from start to finish. It seemed like about 4 or 5 levels ('chapters'?) and it took place mostly outdoors in the dark. We watched the two teams before us play the level we would end up playing because neither was able to complete it. In the second team, one of the guy's machines crashed right at the beginning, but he was seamlessly replaced with a more-or-less competant bot until his machine had dumped, and he was able to find the game and rejoin it mid-session.
We watched the two last men standing on the previous team make a valiant attempt to beat back the hordes, but in the end it was mostly futile, they were both dangerously low on health: one flailing arm and they would be down on the ground, soiling their undies. One of the most obvious reasons the teams before us were dying on the level was because they had nobody bringing up the rear, or if they did it was a straggler limping helplessly to catch up to his teammates, who usually got swarmed and forgotten about until it was too late. With the previous team down and out, I decided to cover our backs the whole way through. Kinda like TF2 spychecking as a Medic tied to a patient but MUCH more deadly, MUCH more shit-scary and MUCH more frantic.
---
The four of us apprehensively took our seats. We knew we had a sort of duty to the rest of the guys in the queue behind us to give them a good show and to finish the level so they didn't have to watch it for the fourth time in a row. We started off in a safehouse and tooled up on equipment. I went for the shotgun, because this to me is the first place a zombie game can fail miserably: if the shotgun doesn't feel like a boomstick, the whole experience goes to shit. Thankfully it did feel solid, reliable even, but in the next few moments I spent fiddling around with the controls settings menu I forgot to pick up one vital item, and it wasn't ammo for my boomstick.
I had checked out the controls and everything came surprisingly naturally. Y is switch weapons, X is action/pick up weapons, B is reload and A is jump. Melee attack is on the left trigger and shoot on the right, movement is on the left analog and aiming on the right. The niftiest control was the 'about face' button; RB lets you do a complete 180 effortlessly, and I used this extensively to check the rear while moving forward. Finally the D-pad swaps between your weapons and other items such as pills, medpacks and thrown explosives.
Then I jumped into the options menu - partly because I'd seen the guy who crashed do exactly this and I was naturally curious if this would reproduce it, partly because as a PC gamer I generally can't stand FPS games on console pads and I wanted to soften the blow by getting things set more or less to my taste. I left the vertical sensitivity as it was, this was already quite low and comfortable even if the slider was in the middle. The horizontal slider was in the middle, so I turned it down. I went back into the game, flicked the analog stick and veered wildly to the left. I turned it down again. No discernable difference. By this point my team had already left the building, so I followed swiftly behind them, without picking up that medpack...
---
The first scene wasn't anything special. The town looked quiet and dark from the second floor window. A few dark silhouettes dotted the streets, enjoying some flesh-feasting downtime. I got out my pistol and began 'sniping' at one of the dark figures (the pistol has unlimited ammo). The aiming reticle works much like the one in Counter-Strike, it opens up slightly the more you fire, but that's where the CS-with-zombies comparisons end. Other than the fall damage, the game is simply nothing like Counter-Strike. There's no punishing recoil, no headshot damage bonuses that I could discern and no flashbangs. With the exception of friendly fire and negligence, both being all too easy to stumble into, there's very little room for you to piss your teammates off. Everything gets so chaotic that any mistakes you make will no doubt be forgiven without question, because there's no room for arguments if you're going to survive this.
Anyway, the zombie eventually took a hit and began plodding forwards in my general direction. By this time everyone else was venturing onto the street so I decided to follow. I mentioned fall damage just now, it is brutal. My drop from the second floor balcony took me down to 30HP. The once empty and non-threatening street quickly turned into mayhem as zombies poured over walls and our team got scattered among them. I quickly brought up my shotgun and started to pick off the zombies clawing at a teammate's back while he dealt with the ones clawing at his face.
Suddenly I heard a scream from my friend next to me, synergistic with the cry of his in-game character. A message came up at the bottom of the screen to tell me he had been taken by a Smoker. As I turned round I saw him being dragged by the neck at terrifying speed towards an indescript figure. When he got close the zombie tore away at his face and upper torso with the frenzied motions of a wealth-consumed lunatic digging for gold with their hands. For a moment I was scared to shoot, he had my mate in that typical 'gun-to-the-head' hostage situation. The spread of my shotgun would surely do more damage than good, but this hesitation was only brief and I let rip into the both of them as the only real option available - my pistol was empty by this stage and accuracy was a luxury none of us could afford.
Unfortunately in helping him I had turned my back on the main horde, and as quickly as he was free I was set upon from behind, my 30HP not lasting more than a few hits before I was down on the ground, trees of zombies towering above me in all directions. I desperately emptied my shotgun into everything I could see and reloaded my pistols to finish the last off. Moments later I was pulled to my feet and I could just about hear one of the characters reassuring me as she did so. However there was a minor problem, my health was slowly draining -about 1 tick every couple of seconds-
---
The rest of the level was much the same. We learned very quickly to stick together and found the most effective strategy was to split into two teams: one to take the rear and one to take point. Other teams had left just one guy lagging behind, and I can't be sure of this but I got the strong impression that the designers have scripted some of the zombie bosses to wait for the last guy before attacking. With this front-and-back formation we always had one guy covering your back in case you were snatched, pounced upon or blinded.
Soon we reached the section the first group had been wiped out on and the second group had had all but one of their party knocked down. Entering onto a long street with a hill of rubble, the scene looked quiet. A minigun emplacement sat invitingly in the middle of the street. We were hesitant here. We had seen the first team take up the minigun and leave him covering from the rear. Of course this is a horrible trick on the parts of the designers, giving you the most powerful weapon and then curtly reminding you it can only fire in one direction once the rest of your team is too occupied to hear your desperate cries for help. The second group had ignored the minigun entirely based on this experience.
I asked my friend, Mike, if he wanted to give it a go. "You saw what happened to the last guy?", he warned. "Don't worry, Mike", I said mock-reassuringly, "Trust me". It's only now that I realised how damn corny that sounds and why Left 4 Dead really does deliver with the 'movie' experience. It doesn't matter how believable you think the characters are if you yourself are talking in clich?s that sound like they came straight out of a Romero or a Carpenter flick.
Predictably, the zombies swarmed from both front and back and it seemed like every time one of us was rescued by a teammate and they had to reload, it was time for us to cover their back. When you're in the thick of things you are always either firing or reloading, and if you're not doing one of those it's because you're either in need of revival or helping a teammate to their feet.
---
Anyway, we finished the level with only one man (actually it was the female character) down so I'll finish off by just pointing out some nice touched I saw:
- Flashlights: these work really well, both helping you see where your teammates are and in which direction they are frantically firing.
- Lighting: very, very good. Levels never feel too dark, but they still feel sombre enough to give you the right impression. The designers also use the 'moth' technique of placing bright lights where you need to go in the level, so you never get lost.
- Zombie animations: these are great, in fact I could have sworn I saw a fast zombie actually stumble at one point, as if they slipped on the wet ground
- Player animations: again, a highlight. The only weird one is when players are using the medpack they kinda do some odd voodoo summoning motions with their hands. My favourite animation is definitely when players are down on the floor with the pistol out and they lean on one arm while turning the pistol sideways, gangsta stylee!
- HUD: there are some really nice effects here, the boomer vomit and the smoker saliva being particularly impressive.
- Limping: more design than animation, but when you've been severely wounded you will start limping at a painfully slow pace, making it even more likely you'll be left behind by your teammates.
So, I went to the London Games Expo last Wednesday, and tucked away in the middle of the floor, among a mass of Fallout 3 machines, a mysterious queue had formed. This queue was 30 minutes long and was of course for Left 4 Dead.
While we were queueing up, my 3 mates plus a random watched pretty much a whole 'movie' from start to finish. It seemed like about 4 or 5 levels ('chapters'?) and it took place mostly outdoors in the dark. We watched the two teams before us play the level we would end up playing because neither was able to complete it. In the second team, one of the guy's machines crashed right at the beginning, but he was seamlessly replaced with a more-or-less competant bot until his machine had dumped, and he was able to find the game and rejoin it mid-session.
We watched the two last men standing on the previous team make a valiant attempt to beat back the hordes, but in the end it was mostly futile, they were both dangerously low on health: one flailing arm and they would be down on the ground, soiling their undies. One of the most obvious reasons the teams before us were dying on the level was because they had nobody bringing up the rear, or if they did it was a straggler limping helplessly to catch up to his teammates, who usually got swarmed and forgotten about until it was too late. With the previous team down and out, I decided to cover our backs the whole way through. Kinda like TF2 spychecking as a Medic tied to a patient but MUCH more deadly, MUCH more shit-scary and MUCH more frantic.
---
The four of us apprehensively took our seats. We knew we had a sort of duty to the rest of the guys in the queue behind us to give them a good show and to finish the level so they didn't have to watch it for the fourth time in a row. We started off in a safehouse and tooled up on equipment. I went for the shotgun, because this to me is the first place a zombie game can fail miserably: if the shotgun doesn't feel like a boomstick, the whole experience goes to shit. Thankfully it did feel solid, reliable even, but in the next few moments I spent fiddling around with the controls settings menu I forgot to pick up one vital item, and it wasn't ammo for my boomstick.
I had checked out the controls and everything came surprisingly naturally. Y is switch weapons, X is action/pick up weapons, B is reload and A is jump. Melee attack is on the left trigger and shoot on the right, movement is on the left analog and aiming on the right. The niftiest control was the 'about face' button; RB lets you do a complete 180 effortlessly, and I used this extensively to check the rear while moving forward. Finally the D-pad swaps between your weapons and other items such as pills, medpacks and thrown explosives.
Then I jumped into the options menu - partly because I'd seen the guy who crashed do exactly this and I was naturally curious if this would reproduce it, partly because as a PC gamer I generally can't stand FPS games on console pads and I wanted to soften the blow by getting things set more or less to my taste. I left the vertical sensitivity as it was, this was already quite low and comfortable even if the slider was in the middle. The horizontal slider was in the middle, so I turned it down. I went back into the game, flicked the analog stick and veered wildly to the left. I turned it down again. No discernable difference. By this point my team had already left the building, so I followed swiftly behind them, without picking up that medpack...
---
The first scene wasn't anything special. The town looked quiet and dark from the second floor window. A few dark silhouettes dotted the streets, enjoying some flesh-feasting downtime. I got out my pistol and began 'sniping' at one of the dark figures (the pistol has unlimited ammo). The aiming reticle works much like the one in Counter-Strike, it opens up slightly the more you fire, but that's where the CS-with-zombies comparisons end. Other than the fall damage, the game is simply nothing like Counter-Strike. There's no punishing recoil, no headshot damage bonuses that I could discern and no flashbangs. With the exception of friendly fire and negligence, both being all too easy to stumble into, there's very little room for you to piss your teammates off. Everything gets so chaotic that any mistakes you make will no doubt be forgiven without question, because there's no room for arguments if you're going to survive this.
Anyway, the zombie eventually took a hit and began plodding forwards in my general direction. By this time everyone else was venturing onto the street so I decided to follow. I mentioned fall damage just now, it is brutal. My drop from the second floor balcony took me down to 30HP. The once empty and non-threatening street quickly turned into mayhem as zombies poured over walls and our team got scattered among them. I quickly brought up my shotgun and started to pick off the zombies clawing at a teammate's back while he dealt with the ones clawing at his face.
Suddenly I heard a scream from my friend next to me, synergistic with the cry of his in-game character. A message came up at the bottom of the screen to tell me he had been taken by a Smoker. As I turned round I saw him being dragged by the neck at terrifying speed towards an indescript figure. When he got close the zombie tore away at his face and upper torso with the frenzied motions of a wealth-consumed lunatic digging for gold with their hands. For a moment I was scared to shoot, he had my mate in that typical 'gun-to-the-head' hostage situation. The spread of my shotgun would surely do more damage than good, but this hesitation was only brief and I let rip into the both of them as the only real option available - my pistol was empty by this stage and accuracy was a luxury none of us could afford.
Unfortunately in helping him I had turned my back on the main horde, and as quickly as he was free I was set upon from behind, my 30HP not lasting more than a few hits before I was down on the ground, trees of zombies towering above me in all directions. I desperately emptied my shotgun into everything I could see and reloaded my pistols to finish the last off. Moments later I was pulled to my feet and I could just about hear one of the characters reassuring me as she did so. However there was a minor problem, my health was slowly draining -about 1 tick every couple of seconds-
---
The rest of the level was much the same. We learned very quickly to stick together and found the most effective strategy was to split into two teams: one to take the rear and one to take point. Other teams had left just one guy lagging behind, and I can't be sure of this but I got the strong impression that the designers have scripted some of the zombie bosses to wait for the last guy before attacking. With this front-and-back formation we always had one guy covering your back in case you were snatched, pounced upon or blinded.
Soon we reached the section the first group had been wiped out on and the second group had had all but one of their party knocked down. Entering onto a long street with a hill of rubble, the scene looked quiet. A minigun emplacement sat invitingly in the middle of the street. We were hesitant here. We had seen the first team take up the minigun and leave him covering from the rear. Of course this is a horrible trick on the parts of the designers, giving you the most powerful weapon and then curtly reminding you it can only fire in one direction once the rest of your team is too occupied to hear your desperate cries for help. The second group had ignored the minigun entirely based on this experience.
I asked my friend, Mike, if he wanted to give it a go. "You saw what happened to the last guy?", he warned. "Don't worry, Mike", I said mock-reassuringly, "Trust me". It's only now that I realised how damn corny that sounds and why Left 4 Dead really does deliver with the 'movie' experience. It doesn't matter how believable you think the characters are if you yourself are talking in clich?s that sound like they came straight out of a Romero or a Carpenter flick.
Predictably, the zombies swarmed from both front and back and it seemed like every time one of us was rescued by a teammate and they had to reload, it was time for us to cover their back. When you're in the thick of things you are always either firing or reloading, and if you're not doing one of those it's because you're either in need of revival or helping a teammate to their feet.
---
Anyway, we finished the level with only one man (actually it was the female character) down so I'll finish off by just pointing out some nice touched I saw:
- Flashlights: these work really well, both helping you see where your teammates are and in which direction they are frantically firing.
- Lighting: very, very good. Levels never feel too dark, but they still feel sombre enough to give you the right impression. The designers also use the 'moth' technique of placing bright lights where you need to go in the level, so you never get lost.
- Zombie animations: these are great, in fact I could have sworn I saw a fast zombie actually stumble at one point, as if they slipped on the wet ground
- Player animations: again, a highlight. The only weird one is when players are using the medpack they kinda do some odd voodoo summoning motions with their hands. My favourite animation is definitely when players are down on the floor with the pistol out and they lean on one arm while turning the pistol sideways, gangsta stylee!
- HUD: there are some really nice effects here, the boomer vomit and the smoker saliva being particularly impressive.
- Limping: more design than animation, but when you've been severely wounded you will start limping at a painfully slow pace, making it even more likely you'll be left behind by your teammates.
