Left 4 Dead: First Impressions
A gripe about Gamefly. Even though I have three other games ahead of it on my Game Q, Left 4 Dead arrived today, a full week after I returned Mass Effect. Actually, that is two gripes. The first being the low availability of popular games, and the second being the rather lengthy turn-around time for this game rental service.
But I remember the early days of Netflix, and in 2004, the turnaround was not nearly as quick as it is now that everyone and their brother’s ex-girlfriend subscribe to Netflix. So maybe if Gamefly can grow a bit more, the games at the top of my Q will be sent out from a more local distribution center rather than Pittsburgh (I’m in Oregon).
Anyway, that is not the point of today’s post. You really should let me know when I start to stray from my missions, much like I wish Left 4 Dead would…oh, wait, there is really no way you can not figure out where to go in this game, a First Person Shooter in a 4 man (well, there is one chick, Zoey) team that must make their way out of a zombie apocalypse. Sure, there may be a lot of utility closets with nothing in them, but you won’t lose your way. And that’s good, because Left 4 Dead leaves you without a map.
What I like…killing zombies and lots of them. There are several kinds of zombies, from the relatively benign regular zombie to the Tank zombie, that will seriously mess you up if you let it get close to you.
There is a cinematic in the beginning that kind of explains what happened and why you are where you are, facing a city full of the crazed to catatonic. I didn’t really watch it through from the beginning as I didn’t have the television switched over to the ol’ Xbox 360, but when I did make the switch over, there were a lot of explosions. I like explosions.
I didn’t read anything about the game before playing it, in terms of game controls and such. And it was really easy to figure things out. The controls are pretty intuitive, although I must admit it did take me a sec to figure out how to take advantage of my health pack. You have to “arm” the health pack and then pull the trigger. Sorry, I guess I’m used to hitting an X or a Y, not pulling a trigger for the entire time it takes to recharge your health.
The game plays as a co-op A-Team of sorts. There’s the big biker dude, appropriately named Francis. There’s the white collar black guy, Louis. There’s the token chick that is a zombie movie fan coincidentally enough, Zoey. And of course, there is the crusty old vet named Bill.
The set-up is mission-based rather than following an single plotline, or so it seems. I sat down for two hours and played through the first mission, which is broken down into 5 segments or chapters. This first mission entailed making our way through the city, the sewers, and up to the roof of the local hospital in order to jump aboard a rescue chopper.
My only complaint so far is that when playing the game with only AI team mates is that my character (I played Zoey, duh, I’m a girl that wants to play girl characters — are you listening video game developers?) has to do all the work. The AI guys are total wusses. I gotta run in the room, I gotta kill the horde, I gotta take all the damage and thus all the pain pills. But then that damn Francis keeps snaking the pain pills before I can restock.
I’m going to try and talk my boyfriend into playing co-op mode with me later on, to see how the game plays with another human involved. Otherwise, I will get down to business checking out the other play modes, including playing the game as one of the infected zombies.
Neat.
Left 4 Dead, Gamefly, zombie, video game, review
May 11th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
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