Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360) Review

The whole post-apocalyptic survival genre of movies and video games has always been one of my favorites, and when I found out that Valve was developing a survival horror first-person shooter involving a zombie apocalypse I just about passed out.

You don't really get a lot of backstory at the start of the game. All you need to know is there are three other survivors and yourself, and your whole goal is to survive the seemingly endless waves of zombies. Oh, and did I mention these aren't your normal zombies. Your standard zombies will start to run at you as soon as they are alerted to your presence. Then there are the special zombies. These guys have abilities like vomit that will attract huge waves of other zombies, or can pounce on you and tear you to shreds until one of the other survivors saves you.

One area where this game really excels is ambiance. A whole lot of the game is darkness, and all you have to see by is the light from your flashlight, and turning the corner in the dark and having your screen filled with the faces of zombies hungry for your brains can be very startling. Another thing that Valve has done to increase the suspense is auditory queues that you quickly learn to realize preceed the coming of the special zombies. Oh, and did I mention the witches? These are basically the most frightening of all the special zombies. You will be walking down a dark hallway and suddenly hear the sobs of a little girl. This is the witch. If you startle the witch with even the light from your flashlight it will probably mean the death of at least one person, which forces you to try and search for her in near complete darkness at times. The final addition by Valve to create wonderful suspense is the AI director. Instead of having set spawn locations the game makes decisions on where to spawn zombies based on a number of factors for each of the four survivors.

You can play through the story mode solo, but the best way to enjoy this game is co-op. There is nothing like fighting through the horde of zombies with three of your friends. The multiplayer versus mode is fantastic as well. In versus there are eight players on two teams, four survivors and four infected. The survivors are trying to achieve what they normally would on a level by making their way to the safe room at the end, but the infected players get to spawn as random special zombies and try to kill the survivors before they can reach the end of the level. For each level, each of the teams gets to play as survivors and infected before proceeding to the next level.

This game has received praise from every review I have seen and rightfully so. This is probably the best co-op game I have ever played. This game also has the best atmosphere of any game I have ever played. If you own an Xbox 360 then go out immediately and buy Left 4 Dead. If you don't own an Xbox 360 then go out immediately and buy an Xbox 360 and Left 4 Dead.