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Throughout the years of gory horror movies such as, “Dawn of the Dead“, “Night of the Living Dead“, and “28 Days Later“, just to name a few; we are very gracious for Left 4 Dead. No it isn’t a movie, its a video game.

Hopefully this game doesn’t turn into a movie like the Resident Evil Saga. Sometimes its best to just leave video games; video games. It’ll be less pissed fans that way.

Okay Left 4 Dead concept is not hard to understand. Its the basic shoot zombies, stay alive type thing. There are 4 survivors, Zoey, Billy Francis and Louis. Apparently they were left behind while the other survivors flee the city in helicopters or what have you. You have to fight your way through cities, farms, buildings etc. To survive you have to make it to the drop-off point to call for help. There are four campaigns, each of them have 5 chapters. Each chapter you have to get all 4 or at least 1, to a safe house to proceed to the next chapter. Based on what difficulty you have it set to, this may not be easy.

It starts of fairly simple, they’re mindless zombies; walking about until you just so happen to provoke them such as starting a car alarm or triggering a mechanism needed to move on in the game. Doing so will trigger a large amount of zombies to come charging towards you at once. Even calling for help triggers a large crowd of zombies. So there is really no getting around that. You don’t have to wait to wait til they get provoked, just aim and spray, aim…and spray.

The weapons of choice are, a Uzi SMG, which I for one believe that’s the most effective weapon in the game. It has great range and it shoots fast, which is good for the hordes and Tanks, the pistol which has unlimited ammo which can be doubled if you happen to find another one. Molotov cocktails, they are good but only temporarily, they’re not as effective as the pipe bombs. The pipe bombs which are also very effective; the zombies flock to the pipe bombs almost instantly. Those are good to use when your up against a horde.

There will be places in the game, in every chapter where you can re-stock up on ammo and pick another gun if need be. The Pump shot-gun, this gun is very effective, you can shoot 4-5 zombies at a time but don’t go crazy and think its a machine gun and that you can shoot freely for a certain amount of time. You’ll find yourself in a messed up situation if you do, its called a “pump” shot gun for a reason. The flaw with this gun is the range it can’t shoot as far as the Uzi SMG but it has a decent amount of range. M16 Assault Rifle, if you’ve played Counter-Strike you will see that the guns are fairly similar, it has great range and it is also good at getting rid of hordes pretty quickly. The Auto-shotgun which is very good at close range encounters; this gun saves you a lot of time when there are hordes on the horizon. It fires very effectively while on the move. We then have the Hunting Rifle, cannot forget about the Hunting Rifle. Even though the scope is good for accuracy its not really needed unless of course they don’t see it coming. It can also shoot through some walls, not all. Especially if you know there are effected behind it.

In every chapter there are going to be “special infected” zombies, that can be challenging at times to kill and more threatening. There are three you’ll be able to hear as you get closer to them which is, Smoker, Boomer, Tank and Hunter and of course the Witch.

The Witch though she’ll only attack you if you startle her such as a light, explosions, and gun shots. Don’t even get too close to her (sometimes you have no choice but to cause she’s right there being an emo all on your path). If you don’t bother her, she won’t bother you.

Boomer, he’ll vomit and if it gets on you it will start what is called a horde, the horde is of course a gang of zombies that come at you full force, clawing you to death. They will only come after those who have been vomited on so watch out for him. Also if you shoot him at close range and it gets on you that starts a horde also. Oh, almost forgot, you can’t see either once you been vomited/exploded on.

The Hunter, he pounces on his prey so its best to shoot him when you can before he gets too close. If he just so happens to get too close and he pounces you can punch him if you’re timing is right.

The Smoker, he has this long disgusting tongue that he uses to reel his prey in and basically strangle you to death or better yet while other zombies come and take pieces out of you. Once you kill him though he has this smoke that comes out of him (which is why he’s called the Smoker) and it can and will make you cough, if you’re close enough anyway.

Last but not least, the Tank. Its best you run, aim, and shoot when going for the kill. He’s aggressive and he’ll knock you to places you never knew were on the board if you get too close. It takes a lot of ammo to lay this sucka out, and I do mean a lot. So its best to aim tight and not freely.

The game-play, it consists of Co-op, Versus, Multi-player and Single Player play.

Single player play is basically you play through the game and you and the other three survivors (which are A.I.’s) play. The flaw about Single Player Play is that, the AI is incompetent at times, you have to pursue in order for them to, you have to shoot in order for them to shoot, things like that. So if you’re the scary type I advise you to play Online.

Co-op you can choose to play online with others or Play with a few of your friends. You don’t have to be online to Play Co-op.

Versus is fun, you have 8 players, some are AI’s, bots or other players and you are split up into teams, basically you have to get most of your team-mates to a safe-house. The more that make it the higher your score will be. It sounds easy, but its not.

Multi-player is again, an online option like Co-op and versus, you get to pick your character if its available, half of the time it is.

The game is very easy to play, the controls are easy and comfortable, there are options to change them to your preference of course. There isn’t no auto-aim thank God. There was a lot of people that were complaining about it being an auto-aim option on the game. Like seriously, would you want to auto aim at one zombie and get mauled by another? No? Thought so. The graphics are okay, they are manageable but the graphics vary from Graphic Cards to the type of tv you have and the component cords. The sound effects are great, just the right effects to add that feel to the game, even though the Witch crying and being an emo creeps me out, I wouldn’t want it no other way.

As far as playing the game goes; there are a few things that I find that is very helpful. The fact that you can walk through your other teammates, that helps if all of you are in one spot of a room and there are zombies heading your way and you want to maneuver around to get a clear shot. That helps a lot. The graphics are surprisingly good in this game, especially when you’re using the Hunting Rifle, they show the limbs getting blowing off in almost every detail. The obstacles and I guess the plot is good too in this game. It keeps you on your toes too, which is another thing about this game. It keeps you on your feet.

The things that I find rather weird is when there is a wall and you can see a Zombies head peer through it but you can’t shoot at it most of the time. Only if its a wall that you can shoot through. Other times you have to open the door and shoot him/them. The Witch, you can set a flame to her ass and she’ll still chase after you and lay that ass out no matter how many times you shoot, I guess that’s why you shouldn’t bother her huh? It seems though that you have to give her more lead than the tanks. The AI is a bit stupid but it varies from difficulty to difficulty so It really isn’t that bad but it could be better than it was. Again, the fact that the AI’s will sometimes let you get pwnd in most cases. They’ll flee the scene or just stand there in the next room or in the same room and watch you die.The gun selection needs some work too but it could be worse.

ESRB Rating: M for Blood and gore, violence and language

Developed By: Certain Affinity
Genre: First-person Shooting
Release Date: November 17, 2008
Online Play: 8/Versus – Co-op
Availability: Xbox 360, PC
Published By: Electronic Arts / Valve