XBox 360 Rally

The first scenario of Left 4 Dead was fun, I am happy to report. Unfortunately, after playing through all four scenarioss, I was happy to be done with it.

The story is simple enough, and I covered it in my first impressions review. Four players (you can either have three friends play with you or you can let the AI be your friends) have to work together to get the hell out of Dodge and take out as many of the “infected” as they can. There are four scenarios through which to play: No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air and Blood Harvest. No Mercy culminates in a roof-top rescue from the local hospital. Death Toll has the “survivors” finding their way to a rescue boat. Dead Air has a rescue military cargo plane, and Blood Harvest involved a military rescue at a farmhouse.

Do you see what they all have in common? That’s right. Every scenario is the exact same…maybe different settings are involved, but by the time you are playing through whichever scenario you choose to play last, you really start wishing that there were a larger plot. Personally, I would have liked it better if either the rescue scenario were longer and more harrowing in terms of length and efforts, and if the rescues were somehow interconnected. For example, after being rescued from the hospital, the next scenario could be what happens next. Instead Left 4 Dead just gives you your stats.

What I liked was the intuitive game controls. There is no button-mashing in this game. It’s more point and shoot. Your left stick controls your movement, the right stick controls your “head” vis a vis the camera view. Right trigger shoots, left trigger shoves the zombies away so you can shoot them more easily. Even if you are not “all-thumbs”, this game is easy to play. Even my boyfriend, who sucks as First Person Shooter games got the hang of this game fairly quickly.

There is not a whole lot of running around looking for stuff in Left 4 Dead, which is nice, but also a little frustrating. I mean, there are all of these little rooms everywhere with nothing in them, so what’s the point of me spending my valuable time looking in them. The only stuff to pick up are ammo, med packs, pain pills, and weapons. Although I did figure out that you can pick up the random gasoline and propane tanks that are here and there. At first, I couldn’t figure out what to do with them, but if you have it in you hand, you can throw the tanks. Once on the ground, you can then shoot them to either explode or create a fire wall (which eventually burns out).

The game is generous to the casual gamer. The “easy” level is just that. Easy. The BF had to play on that level, but he never plays these games, as he is happy to keep playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour or Madden over and over. I played the other levels, to see if there were big differences. “Normal” is the next step up from easy, and it’s not much harder. However, on “normal” and above, you can shoot your teammates, whereas the easy level warns you about hurting your cohorts rather than making them suffer. Once you hit the Advanced and Expert levels, you really do need to know your shit in FPS games. I made it through on Advanced (major diff: the zombies take more bullets to kill), but got a little frustrated (and bored) on Expert. Expert may be totally do-able with live friends, as you can plan out your attacks better. When you play with the AI teammates, you cannot coordinate their movements, which means that you are always on point, taking the most damage and dying, and then having to start the chapter over, and over.

Which brings me to a gripe about the game. You have to play through the whole 5 chapter scenario or you start over. I couldn’t figure out how to save the game during a scenario, so if you don’t have at least an hour and half to sit down and play, then you may want to play something else.

Also, I noticed that my dismemberment skills gleaned from Dead Space came in handy in taking out the zombies. Shooting them in the legs was an easy way to hobble them. Or you could just shoot them in the head, which is very gratifying in the way the heads explode. “Head shots” are one of the statistics at the end of the chapters that are ranked and given, so it is nice to see how many head shots you can get.

I just wish that the game gave you “crotch shot” stats…I rock in that category.

All in all, Left 4 Dead is fun, frivolous, and fast. But it does get old after you play through two scenarios…because you know exactly what the next two scenarios are going to throw at you. That said, if you are into playing it on Xbox Live, Left 4 Dead would be a great game to have around when you have your friends over, either in person or virtually. The co-op action on this game makes a big difference. And if you play online, you can play as the “infected” against the “survivors.”

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