Best co-op of all time. All hail the HL2 engine.
Valve's play-doh, the half life 2 engine, has once again stolen the scene for Left 4 Dead. Despite the engine's age, it still pumps out fine graphics and smooth play. That is one thing I appreciate about Valve's games. They look good, they run smooth, I don't crash to desktop, and they don't get overly complicated in terms of gameplay, they just make games that are just plain fun.
Left 4 Dead is no exception to the Valve legacy, I would not be exaggerating by titling the gameplay "finest co-op of all time" or even "2008: Game of the year" As you probably have already heard, it is a cooperative first person shooter based on… killing zombies. The object is to get through the level and find the safe room. Sometimes there may be a little confusion on where to go next, but for the most part the level design is phenomenal. The environments are just mind blowing; the developers really took their time to create some badass levels. But what really does this game justice is the gameplay, there is nothing like playing with a few other people, trying to kill zombies and save each other from death. Teamwork is necessary, not even John Rambo himself can make it through a level alone. (Chuck Norris on the other hand…) There are zombies such as a "smoker" that once they have attacked you, you will need a teammate to come save you or else you're dead.
As I mentioned before the game isn't extremely long or anything. Trying to beat all the campaigns on expert will take some time though, the outcome is rewarding. Some of the short comings of this game are lack of diversity of zombie types and weapon types. There's only about 10 different weapons and 6 types of zombies which generally repeat seeing them throughout the game. The gameplay makes up for these lacking areas but I would have wished to seen some more content in terms of weaponry and variety of enemy.
You might ask yourself initially, "Well, what difficulty should I play on," I'd say as long as you've had previous pc fps experience, stick with expert. The other difficulties are just for people that want to play through the game real quick. It might be difficult to beat some of the missions on expert though if you play single player. (When I say "difficult" I mean nearly impossible) The computer teammates generally have great aim, they will nearly never hit you with fire but sometimes they just don't make logical decisions that humans can make. When you're first starting out, they seem god like but 2 hours gameplay later, you'll begin to notice that humans can make decisions much better than computers. A very powerful zombie known as the "tank" will usually wipe out all your computer partners while if you fight him well, a human squad can take him out without any deaths.
Otherwise, if you are playing co op with three other humans, high five brother. I guarantee you're going to play this with your friends or just some random people for hours upon hours I mean it's just that good. You're going to come up with 100 different strategies to beat No Mercy campaign finale on expert till you realize its 5 am and you haven't gotten any sleep. You're going to unlock every achievement until you have a pad of paper with your own custom achievements. Actually I don't hope you do that, just try to get about 5 minutes of fresh air for every 8 hours, ok? Have fun.