Casual Fridays

Based on the demo, I just had to get this game. "Left 4 Dead" is a first-person shooter based on the Half-Life2 model. It is truly as fast-paced and adrenalin-pounding as the trailer demonstrates. You are one member of a four-person squad, armed with light weapons and pipebombs, facing the zombie apocalypse. You have to negotiate urban and outdoor terrain, getting from one safe room to the next to move forward. Weapons are pretty varied, unlimited pistol ammo and shotguns, assault rifles, and Uzis so far.

Most of the zombies are more George Romero than "28 days later" until you get them excited, and then they pour onto you. If you are wandering away from your group, it's very easy to die. If you get knocked down and incapacitated, a colleague can pull you up on your feet. A quick first-aid patch, and you're back in business. You just have to watch for the special zombies - hunters, smokers, blobs, and especially the tank and the witch. You can play the zombie team, but only on two of the four maps (haven't tried that yet).

I'm hoping that they're still going to tweak it some more - I don't think there's enough first aid kits around to keep the pace right, and the tank zombie seems way too overpowered. I guess that's the point of a "tank." Pretty amazing, though.

In related news, it's the tenth year anniversary this week for Half Life! Hard to believe that it was ten years ago, we were agog over the fantastic journeys of Gordon Freeman and his trusty powersuit. And what problem can't be solved with his crowbar?

Comments

[Kilo]

Seen the Insurgency mod ?
Doesn't look too bad. Haven't had the time to resinstall HL2 and get it myself.

[J.]

You know, I tried it, and while it has potential, I don't think I will be going back. It's more along the lines of Counterstrike, seems kind of raw still, not a large population of servers. I'm an impatient kinda guy - I don't like long waits when I get killed, just want to jump on and start shooting for a short period. I think TF2 and L4D will suit me just fine.

[Sam]

I'm the same way, when I sit down to have fun, it's usually only for an hour at a time, and I want to get to the fun stuff NOW.

COD4 was great for that. Relatively short wait between respawns, still pretty tactical. Bloc with a silenced SMG and a bundle of flashbangs was the best thing EVER, especially if you happened to be on with a bunch of people who thought the level was about sniping at one another from the buildings, not CQB. Halo 3, also pretty good. Counterstrike, meh. If fire is getting funneled through the door you're breaching, and you're the first one through, you can suddenly find yourself spending a lot of time watching other people have fun, which itself is not particularly fun.

[Andrew Wagner]

I personally did not like Insurgency all that much. COD4 on the other hand was amazing, although too many people played it on hardcore for my tastes. I miss the strafe fighting from the Battlefield 1942 days.

I purchased COD WaW and was very unimpressed. It felt like COD4 played much better. The best way to describe it is that the guns in COD4 felt like they had some "weight" to using them, whereas in COD WaW they feel kind of odd.