After last year's excellent Orange Box, Valve hopes to score another victory with the zombie blast-a-thon Left 4 Dead. The company just released a demo on Xbox Live, giving players the chance to kill zombies solo or co-operatively.
The demo starts with you and three other characters (either computer or player controlled) fighting a zombie outbreak. You begin in a small apartment building, then work your way to the street and into the subway, slaughtering hordes of zombies as you go. Some stand around, waiting to get shot. Others charge at you with great ferocity. Then there are the more complex monsters with special abilities. The Boomer, for instance, is a fat undead creature that vomits on you. This attracts waves of zombies that descend on you en masse. Other enemies include the Hunter, who pounces on your character if you get too close, and the Witch, a creature best left alone.
Weapon classes come in two tiers. The first is made up of a standard pistol, which has unlimited ammunition, an Uzi, hunting rifle and pump action shotgun. The next is comprised of a much more effective auto shotgun, what appears to be the same hunting rifle and the M16A3 assault rifle, which comes in handy for mowing down waves of incoming brain-suckers. You can also pick up health kits and explosives, such as the Molotov cocktail and the pipe bomb.
What's cool about Left 4 Dead is its emphasis on team play. You must work with your fellow zombie slayers if you want to survive. Numerous times throughout the game, a player will have to stop and heal or reload. During these precious few seconds, they're extremely vulnerable. It's up to you and the other players to keep zombies at bay long enough for them to return to battle. In addition, you can save incapacitated players by running up and killing the zombie.
Online, Left 4 Dead works beautifully. We spread out and covered certain points in the subway and warehouse, making sure that no zombies got the jump on us. When tons of them suddenly burst into the hallway, we wasted no time taking them down as a group. All of this occurred with very little lag, allowing us to rip through our foes without annoying technology hiccups.
Gameplay is fast and exciting. You'll have no problems aiming your weapon at the undead and sending them back to hell. Watching them splatter against the walls is unbelievably thrilling. There's also satisfaction in mowing down a group of them without getting bitten.
Although the presentation isn't as smooth as it is on the PC, it still looks great for an Xbox 360 game. Characters are nicely animated, especially the zombies. They move about with incredible speed and don't hold back on showing you their savage nature. The audio is equally high quality, with great voice work, chilling music and brutal sound effects. Just listening to the auto shotgun expel rounds while snarling monsters get torn to shreds fills us with demented glee.
Left 4 Dead's frantic gunplay and co-op mode make it one of the year's most exciting games and we cannot wait to play the full version. All those snarling zombies, post apocalyptic environments and cool weapons have us itching (no, we're not infected) to get back out there. Be sure to check out next week's review.
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