Left 4 Dead Preview
If you've been looking for a good, solid multiplayer game with zombies, you've probably been disappointed with what's been out there so far. Most horror games do have zombies, but few do it in some kind of online mode that's worth a damn. Sure, there was the rather disappointing Resident Evill: Outbreak that hit the PS2 several years back, and mods like Zombie Master for Half-Life 2 are slowly improving. But they're still not up to par with the quality of great zombie movies like 28 Days Later. At Quakecon 2007 I got the chance to play a bit of Left 4 Dead, the new teamplay-based, zombie-themed shooter from Valve Software and Turtle Rock Studios.
The Players
In Left 4 Dead, it's a four-on-four match where one side consists of the Survivors, humans trying to escape a classic zombie apocalypse and the opposition, collectively known as the Infected, not only directs hordes of stupid, AI-controlled zombies, but also gets to jump into the skins of some of the more evil, cunning, or downright brutish zombie bosses. The aim of the Survivors is simply to survive and escape, while the Infected are trying to wipe out the humans. And the fun is in the fight between powerful and tough humans with guns, and sneaky zombies who are ready to respawn after every death, lurking around just about every corner.
Since this demo had the Turtle Rock guys controlling the Infected and putting gamers and members of the press in the role of Infected, I'll focus specifically on the human side of things. You start off in a barricaded safe room with your buddies - the four stars are the young woman Zoey, the tough biker who is unfortunately named Francis, an African-American guy named Louis, and the grizzled older guy named Bill - and a small selection of weapons. You'll have a pistol and some Terminator-style pipebombs as backup weapons and then get to choose one (and only one!) primary gun. There's the submachine gun and a shotgun which are often available, and as you progress you'll also have access to a hunting rifle, automatic shotgun, or an assault rifle. If there's an extra pistol laying around, you can pick that up for some akimbo action for when you've got to pull the pistols out.
Living Ain't Easy
You're able to hold one first aid kit on your back and can stop to use it at anytime. You do literally have to stop, though, as it takes a few seconds in Left 4 Dead to apply a first aid kit and you've gotta stand still. If one of your buddies is getting really hurt, you can apply your kit to him instead, and there are other first aid kits and some pain pills (which give a small boost to health) around the levels as well. If you get hurt enough to go down, you're not quite out yet; while on the ground you are in a state of bleeding and someone needs to come to your rescue within about a minute or you'll really die. You'll have access to your pistols while on your back and can hold off light attacks until someone can come by and revive you, getting you back on your feet. But if this happens too many times without a first aid kit somewhere in there, then you'll start seeing a very grayish-colored vision and be warned that the next time you go down, you're going to be out for quite a while.
And that's exactly what happened to me. I often wound up getting mobbed by zombies while my buddies were trying to fend them off me, and every damn time it'd be me getting smashed in the face instead of one of my teammates. One nice feature is the ability to push what's in front of you with your weapon, and when you round that corner and see 15+ of the stupid variety of zombie just about on top of you, it's nice to have. You can create a domino effect with a push and send a bunch of them to the ground, although it also means risking taking a few hits to do it. Even when using the push I kept going down, though, and while my teammates were getting hurt just enough to make their first aid kit usages on themselves smart enough, I finally got the warning that the next time I get knocked out I'm going to just plain die. I still lasted another couple of minutes playing it carefully, but a Hunter zombie (more on that soon) finally snuck up on me and finished me off.
For about the next five minutes I was stuck in limbo and only able to observe my teammates with a chase camera. I was actually still able to help them by shouting out warnings of incoming zombie attacks, since I could see with a third-person view that you can't get when actually playing. It wasn't long before I got notice that I could be saved if my teammates were able to rescue me, and sure enough, they found my character locked in a closet. It's a little jarring for continuity's sake, as I did previously fall to the zombie hordes not ten minutes before, but it at least makes it a little more fun for those who get killed early or often.
The Gas Station
At one point about a third of the way through the demo we had our first death. We came in the back door of a gas station and were staring out of its front windows at a mess of Infected moving quickly into the parking lot, directly towards us. There were a couple of Hunters lurking in the back, too, slowly circling around to try and get behind us. The guy playing as Zoey said that if we wait to blow up the gas pumps - which were a somewhat safe 30 or so feet away - we could take out a ton of zombies at once. Unfortunately, Zoey crept a little too far out of the front door, towards the pumps, and a third Hunter leapt out. The guy controlling Zoey spun and fired - let's just say gas pumps exploded, Zoeys died, and there were many charred and crispy zombies that day. It was a while before we were able to rescue Zoey from a locked closet a few buildings away.
Bringing the Atmosphere
The graphics in Left 4 Dead definitely do resemble what we've seen in the scarier bits of Half-Life 2, but this does a better job of handling dark areas. And a lot of it really is in the dark, so you'll need to keep that flashlight button handy. It adds to a kind of tension that is just as powerful as in a single player horror-survival game, but here it's totally unique since you're forced to work together with other players. With tons of well-detailed zombies coming out at times, the game also looks good and the frame rate stayed pretty consistent when there were a dozen or more on-screen at once. Granted, the computers we played on were likely to be top-notch PCs, but I've got plenty of hope for older and slower computers when the Source engine is powering a game.
One of the more interesting aspects of Left 4 Dead is the way doors are handled. First off, you can close and lock doors behind you as you go. The developers seemed to include this to help make sure that the Survivors stay together, and it does help as the lowly, mindless Infected can't get through doors like this. Now, it turns out that the stronger ones most definitely can. But the fun part is that doors in this game are fully destructible. If you know there are a ton of zombies on the other side of a door you need to get through, you can grab a shotgun and just blow a hole right through it and then start firing into the horde while they still aren't able to get to you. Just be careful, as the stronger Infected can send a door flying right off its hinges.
What You're up Against
While I don't want to speak too much about the zombie side of playing Left 4 Dead (since I didn't get to actually play it), I learned quickly that there are a few types of zombies that they can control. First, there's an AI "Director" that will dynamically figure out the right spawn points for the Infected bosses and the best time to launch a ton of mindless zombies, and this AI feature does actually understand pacing. If you continually send dozens of zombies then it devolves into a game of undead Serious Sam, but the Director will cool off the action for a minute or so, then turn up the heat again once the players start to think the hard part is over. This makes the time spent surrounded by Infected even more exciting.
Then there are the unique, player-controlled zombies, otherwise known as the Infected, that really liven things up. There's the stealthy Hunter who can climb around, go invisible, and then tackle an unsuspecting player, beating him down. The only way to get the Hunter off is for another player to kill him. Then there's the Boomer, a big, fat, nasty thing that actually vomits blood (yes!) onto a player, causing their screen to be covered in the stuff and all nearby zombies will attack that person. The Smoker can use a long tongue to grab a straggler and pull him upwards or laterally away from the group, and will often require the help of other buddies to get the victim free. The Tank is usually seen in large outdoor spaces and is very powerful but slow, and unlike most of the rest of the Infected, takes quite a few shots before he goes down. The tough part is when he starts sending cars flying towards Survivors - fights with Tanks are intense and require everyone to keep their distance and focus fire. There's also the Witch, an extremely powerful enemy that we didn't see in this demo, but apparently she can be avoided if everyone gets quiet and turns off their flashlights.
If you're noticing a trend, it's that any encounter with a tougher Infected requires that people stay together and help each other. The game helps you do this by showing a glowing outline of your buddies, right through walls, when they're not in direct line-of-sight. While I'd have liked to see some kind of ability to share ammo with your friends, at the least you can find caches of ammo left next to the corpses of those who didn't quite make it to safety.
Merits and Demerits
As the Survivors go along, they rack up various badges for their performance. At the end of each map they get to see their badges. A few examples of these include "Reckless" for running into a buddy's line of fire, "Savior" for reviving someone, "Forgetful" for going down while you had a first aid kit on you, and quite a few more. The game doesn't track any kind of persistent stats yet and since the four Survivors all play exactly the same, this system helps players figure out what they did wrong in one match so they'll do better next time. Of course, there are about as many positive ones as there are negative ones, so you get that small reward for good teamwork as well.
Here's a Story, it has a Ladder...
Nearing the end of the game we played, we managed to lose a couple of people but brought them back to life, and got to the end of the half-hour long, five-map campaign where we scrambled to the roof of a hospital (which of course was teeming with Infected) to get out a radio message and wait for evacuation. We were all low on health with no first aid kits to spare, but the objective seemed simple enough: set up defenses with gasoline cans and Molotov cocktails, send out a message on the radio, and defend yourself until the helicopter shows up. I decided to get a clearer shot by climbing up a ladder, very close to my buddies, onto a section of the roof that was about six feet higher than the rest. When the zombies started pouring out of every doorway leading to the roof, we were all firing and yelling at once and having a great time. That's when disaster struck - a Hunter managed to climb up, outside of my view, knock me off the roof and when the guy to my left got up top to save me, the Hunter sent him flying off as well.
Then our third guy went down to the zombie hordes, and the fourth guy, bless his heart, couldn't get up the six-foot ladder to get to us. He was of course surrounded by zombies and panicking, which the Turtle Rock guys seemed to smugly enjoy (but of course it was all in fun), and then tried to hop onto a nearby air conditioner which resulted in failure, and then back to the ladder. The poor guy died trying to rescue us, and he never did succeed getting up that ladder. Game over. I did make a joke about the many historical calamities involving Valve Software games and their easy-to-fall-off ladders which brought a round of laughter.
The AI, and Bringing it Home
I'm not sure which of the enemies we confronted were actually played by Turtle Rock developers and which were AI controlled. The developers are working on an AI system that tries to make the two indistinguishable from each other - at least in the context of Left 4 Dead - and I have to say that they have done a great job so far. Apparently there is also AI control for the Survivors, allowing someone to do a single player game or jump into a one-on-one match and have a fun time. Throw in plenty of voice macros and hundreds of lines for each of the four Survivor characters, and it's almost to the point where voice chat is not needed. Almost.
Valve and Turtle Rock have just announced that Left 4 Dead is unfortunately getting delayed past 2007 and into early 2008, but I'm not too concerned about that. There are plenty of great games coming out on both PCs and consoles in the next five months to keep me happy, and in 2008 we'll get to see what is likely to be the first actually good online zombie game. If the developers can keep up the excellent pacing of action and great design seen in the Hospital campaign, then we'll have a unique and very fun game to look forward to. And for those whose PC isn't quite up to snuff, Turtle Rock has also announced an Xbox 360 version of the game (with no set release date yet).
