Left 4 Dead: Zombies Done Right
Left 4 Dead, given to us by the good folks at Valve, may be one of the truest zombie games to come out in some time. For those not in the know, Left 4 Dead is a four player co-op battle of four survivors (you and three other online players) vs. a horde of undead zombies. The game is broken up into a variety of campaign style segments that play out over the course of 5 areas per campaign. Released for both PC and 360, the game features the use of the Source engine and folks accustomed to the feel of TF2′s first person shooter gameplay will be right at home.
We’re big zombie fans here at Robot Panic, as if you didn’t already know this. So we take our zombie stuff pretty seriously. As such, we applauded a game like Dead Rising for it’s adherence to George Romero’s zombie rules and setting far more than it’s gameplay. While it got the “killing zombies in a mall” idea down, the save system did it’s best to pull you out of the game. Not to mention getting calls every couple of minutes and always in the middle of a swarm of zombies.
The latest zombie outing on the PSN, The Last Guy, also fell short for it’s enemy creatures barely qualifiying as zombies at all. While the gameplay provided some intense moments, when the “zombies” have multiple heads and tentacles we weren’t exactly pulled into the world. In order for a zombie game to really work, not only does the setting and character designs have to live up to the movies, but the gameplay must as well. And that’s a much more difficult thing to attain.
So what makes Left 4 Dead stand out as a Zombie game worthy of the name? Here are a few of the many reasons.
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