This is the Zombie Apocalypse indeed
That pretty much sums it all up. Left 4 Dead is an amazing game, every part from it's design it's just amazing! Be it single player, co-op or versus mode, this game will keep you busy for a very long time. This game has got all what a good FPS should have: cool guns, good AI and good Graphics. So, imagine this: start with a shotty or an Uzi and blast the hell out of every zombie in your way, and believe me, that is truly gratifying. The single player game lets you play with other three CPU players that help you go through the levels, nevertheless, when you set the game on expert they are pretty much useless. You always start on safe rooms that will stock you with ammo, give you the chance to change weapons and a health pack. Once you get out, the action really begins, and they really captured: if you have watched 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later and liked it, you will love this game. Zombies ARE NOT mindless stupid slow things, but hungry beasts that run right at you at full speed. This game is just mesmerizing from this perspective: the first time you hear the tune announcing that zombies are coming at you you will surely start to crap your pants, as you hear their voices and all of a sudden like 30 zombies coming from the same direction. That is freaking cool! And that is not all. Very frequently you will encounter the Boss Zombies: the Boomer, that pukes at you attracting an enormous pack of zombies to kill you, the Hunter, a zombie that pounces at you from great distances, the Smoker, an infected that has a very large tongue that drags you from great distances, the Tank, an infected that will take all of your ammo to take down as you escape his powerful hits, and the Witch, which if you startle will chase you and kill you in a matter of seconds. There are four campaigns in which you start in a safe room and you must blast your way all through the level to get to the other safe room, but the fun is that the levels change all the time, sometimes infected might fill the room, other not, sometimes infected will appear out of nowhere, sometimes you will have to fight a tank or more or non, and it is extremely fun to do over and over again. The difficulty is truly curved. Easy and Normal will teach you to play the game, and it is really easy to go by without many problems, advanced will add a lot more, but the expert level is literally the level for the hardcore: zombies are every coming at you from every direction, they deal a lot more damage and special infected are a lot more frequent, including the unstoppable tank. You cannot Rambo the game on this level, you have ti stick to your friends or you will literally turn into a bloody pulp in no time.
Nevertheless, the true essence of this game is to play it with other 3 people online, or with three friends, and it can be heavily noticed on this game that it was designed for this sole purpose: you cannot beat it without the help of your teammates. For example, to shove off a Hunter you need a teammate to do it for you, or if a Smoker gets you before you can kill him, you also need help from a teammate. The tank is what really stands out: all must join their effort to take down the tank. the characters deteriorate from getting damage, that means that they start walking slower from injuries, which also adds a lot to the game, for an instance, you cannot escape the Tank if you run slower than him. You can heal your teammates if they are out of health packs or give them pain pills, which raise their health temporarily and decreases over time. A character can be incapacitated, and he can still shoot from the ground while he waits for a teammate to get him up, as another health bar decreases. You fail the episode if all the survivors are incapacitated or killed. Nevertheless, there are about 4 spawn points in case an incapacitated dies. This is truly a survivor game. You have to all this while waves an waves of zombies come at you. The finales are especially difficult. Zombies never stop coming until rescue comes and you run to it an board it while zombies chase you. This game is very exciting. You can upgrade to 4 better weapons: dual pistols (you always have a pistol with infinite ammo), and a Assault Rifle, a Sniper and an autoShotty. All of them are powerful and good for all occasions. You can also get pipe bombs, which make all of the horde to run towards it distracting their attention fro you for a moment, and Molotov cocktails, which cremate them to oblivion. Cooperating with your friends as zombies come at you form everywhere is highly entertaining, especially on those critical moments when you are foots away from a safe room and a tank if chasing all of you and you have low health, so you can barely run, or when you barricade all of yourselves inside a room as you watch zombies destroy the door (but you can also shoot through holes, which is really cool). There are endless possibilities, and a game will never be identical to another one.
Versus modes pits 8 players, four survivors and 4 special infected, through the campaign levels, while all the other normal infected attack them too. As you might have guessed, infected must kill or prevent all of the survivors from escaping. It is really hard if you play against good infected players, as they will attract hordes toward the survivors or incapacitate lonesome players, or even divide the, to kill the more easily. The same can be said of a well coordinated survivor team. Once a survivor team is killed, or if they clear the level, they will be awarded with points for their performance, and now is the turn of the ones who were infected to clear that level with the survivors, and the ones who cleared the level or got killed to play as the infected. Once a campaign is completed, 5 levels, all the points are summed up and the winner team is decided. This mode is highly entertaining to rest a little bit of the survivors and actually go an kill them.
The controls are pretty well tuned, both as survivors and infected. As a survivor you can also melee attack infected to push them back, adding strategy when surrounded by large numbers, as you prevent damage when they attack you. If you are incapacitated, zombies will not wait, they will hit you while you are in the ground. This game has really to be experienced to know what I'm talking about. I think everyone should give it a chance, I;m sure they will be surprised with what Left 4 Dead has to offer. As a bonus, there are achievements to unlock for the real hardcore, since some of them are really hard to achieve: beating all 3 campaigns on expert, killing all 4 survivors as a tank are just some of the examples, with a total of 59 achievements, that add a lot more to the longevity of the game. If you are going to play online, and you must if you buy this game, you should get a headset or at least a mic, since the talking makes the game a lot more immersive as you scream for help from your teammates. Also, its importance to notice that the sound effects and characters are likable, be it Bill, Zoey, Louis or Francis, and the source engine does a great Job: visuals are impressive and physics really good, it also has motion blur for eye candy. Voice acting and animation are quite impressive too. Depending on where you shoot them the zombies will die or react in different ways, you can shoot their limbs off or make their head explode, which also is reminiscent to the zombie culture from movies, like the 28 series or George Romero's films, in which survivors also lock themselves in houses to defend themselves better form infected. All in al, I can only say one more thing of this game:
One of the best games of the Year!
GO VALVE!