Playing through games that were so clearly inspired by Left 4 Dead just recently really put me in the mood to revisit Valve's zombie-blasting classic. It was one of my favorite games back in the Pentium 4 days, but I hadn't touched it in literal years now. While it just about lived up to my nostalgic memories of it, there are caveats that sour the game today.
Left 4 Dead is a gory first-person shooter about surviving the zombie apocalypse. A band of 4 ordinary people are caught in the ruins of a city, whose population is now 99.99% raving undead. Throughout 6 campaigns with several missions each, you must lead your group towards rumored evacuation points.
You can play the game with up to 3 other people or substitute them with bots. Each of these characters goes equipped with a weapon of choice and a side-arm. They also have room to carry a medkit, a grenade-type weapon, and pills which restore health temporarily. In each level you need to use these resources to reach the next saferoom, with occasional ammo caches and bonus items being hidden around the level. Once you get every surviving team member in the room and shut the door, that's a victory.
Between you and those saferooms you'll find several thousands of zombies. The hordes in Left 4 Dead are dense and very aggressive. They will rush in the moment they spot you and relentlessly pummel away at your health. It's genuinely overwhelming when you get rushed from all sides, desperately trying to create some space so you can take your shots. Or hoping that a team member will help you without putting a bunch of bullets in your own back as well.
Then there are crescendo events. Moments where a loud noise is created that draws an entire army of undead straight to your location. Like having to activate a noisy elevator or going through a metal detector. There are even smaller, optional ones like car alarms that can be triggered if you're careless. These can be very tough, but frequently let you prepare by spreading gas canisters around. Or they might even have a turret. Each campaign also concludes with a lengthy finale event, which acts kinda like one of these crescendos. Survivors must hold out for a set amount of time as waves of undead attempt to exhaust and overwhelm them.
Adding some variety to the hordes, Left 4 Dead also has its iconic special infected. These are zombies with unique powers, which get mixed in with the regular undead goobers. The Hunter can leap great distances and will pin survivors to the ground if they land on them. The Smoker has a long tongue with which it pulls victims away from their team. And Boomers, as in real-life, are overweight bastards that explode at the slightest agitation. Their guts and bile will then also lure in another horde, as well as temporarily blinding anyone covered by it.
More rare are the Tanks and Witches. Tanks are hulking powerhouses that can throw entire cars around and take a lot of damage before they go down. Witches, meanwhile, are stationary menaces. They will only attack if survivors annoy her by causing damage, staying near her, or shining a flashlight her way. She can deal enough damage to down any survivor instantly and is fast to boot, so the challenge is to either sneak past her or deal enough damage to down her quickly.
These special infected do shine the most in multiplayer, however. There is a lot of potential in their movesets that the AI simply doesn't utilize much. For example, Smokers can waste a lot of time by dragging survivors to earlier parts of the level. Like if they need to climb some scaffolding, only for someone to get pulled back to ground level. AI Smokers are usually content with just pulling survivors down a hallway where they can be easily shot. This and other special infected usually end up feeling like little more than speedbumps as you carve a path through the infected.
It is still possible to get those exciting moments where the zombies really get the drop on you. This usually feels like rolling the fabled Nat 20 in a tabletop RPG. Not rare enough to be regarded as an impossibility, yet nowhere near as common as anyone would like.
On a more moment-to-moment basis, Left 4 Dead is a very satisfying game to play. It was crafted on the back of previous Valve shooters, after all. The weapons have a great kick to them and it feels wonderful to unload them on an approaching horde. Limbs and blood go all over the place and bodies pile up; it's a real spectacle. Throw in a few molotovs or a pipe bomb for good measure too.
Even so, there is no denying that the game is light on content. Those 6 campaign will last you an evening at most and have limited replay value. Little details get randomized somewhat, like where pills or a bonus weapon might spawn. Everything else is static, including the critical path. For organized teams familiar with the layout, it's trivial to rush through. The weapons also lack variety. There's a shotgun, an automatic rifle, and upgraded versions of those two. Sometimes a sniper rifle too, if you're lucky. None of the weapons have an alt-fire mode either.
There is also not much of a story. Rather than traditional cutscenes, Valve opted to combine a dynamic dialogue system with environmental storytelling. Characters are supposed to start up conversations based on various triggers. In my experience, this simply doesn't happen much. Most dialogue is purely reactive or informative. Call-outs for different zombies or requests for help, or lines like "Let's get to the hospital!"
Dialogues that convey more personality are possible, but rarely seem to initiate. Or if they do, it's hard to even notice between everything else that's happening. I replayed every campaign twice for this review and had a whole 3 conversations that stood out to me. Even then, the personalities of the cast members aren't exactly riveting.
I do like all the little stories that Valve tucked away as literal graffiti on the walls. Checkpoints are clad in messages from unseen people. They argue over where to go or what the current situation is like, leave messages to loved ones, or provide tips to each other. I like how almost every attempt by someone to point out an evac zone is followed by other messages claiming it's impossible, evac zone is overrun, everyone is dead. Like are they genuinely trying to warn people away from a potential death trap or are these just doomposts by miserable people trying to drag others down with them.
Sadly, these messages are all static. You probably play through the game once and give them a read, then never pay attention to it again.
Overall, Left 4 Dead is a pretty good game. The AI can be silly and the story isn't all there, but its core gameplay is super enjoyable. Just a shame that there's no reason to actually play it. As good as Left 4 Dead was, it has been redundant for years now. Left 4 Dead 2 is everything the first game was, but with improved gameplay, more weapons & equipment, and more special infected. You don't even have to stick with the original for its levels, because all its campaigns were ported to Left 4 Dead 2 and upgraded.
This was a huge controversy at the time. Left 4 Dead had only been out for a year when its sequel eclipsed it. Many people who had been playing it since launch hadn't even completed the "kill x zombies" achievement yet. Valve attempted to smooth things over by promising to keep the original updated, but this was largely meaningless. So yeah... I can certainly recommend playing Left 4 Dead. So long as you play it inside of Left 4 Dead 2.
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