Zombie Nation.

Zombie Nation.

Anything can be made entertaining by adding a zombie holocaust. Charlie Brooker’s recent Big Brother parody Dead Set showed us that.  Likewise, a game’s fun factor doubles with the inclusion of a cooperative mode. So any game including cooperative brain-munching fun should be a success from the get go.

Indeed, Left 4 Dead could have been a zombie-themed chat room and it still would have been fun. Try to type anything in game, however, and you’ll discover the reason for the game’s title: it is a terrifying, exhilarating, utterly bonkers chunk of multiplayer mayhem.

The premise is simple: survive. With sparsely scattered safe rooms the only place to hide, everywhere else is infested with the speedy, hive-minded ‘Infected’. Your objective is to get from one safe room to the next without being chewed on or mashed into a small red puddle.

Left 4 Dead’s presentation is immediately striking. The Infected are fantastically realised, shambling about and fighting one another until they become alerted to your presence and they sprint head-on at you, arms flailing and teeth bared. Ambient music alters depending on the dangers ahead: aside from adding to the tension, it’s particularly helpful when a large horde of Infected is approaching as it gives a fleeting moment for players to form a defence before they are overrun and slaughtered.

Dynamic sound is part of a larger mechanic assessing the progress of the players, constantly throwing up new obstacles in an attempt to catch them off-guard like a sudden rush of zombies or unleashing one of the Special Infected. These are five boss-like zombies; Hunters leap about like a cat with its arse on fire, while the lumbering bag of sinew that is the Tank will drain your health bar faster than a bank’s share price if you get too close.

Everything in Left 4 Dead is geared towards teamwork. When a player runs out of health they are incapacitated, and must be helped to their feet by a teammate before they bleed to death. Certain situations require organisation in order to succeed, particularly the final battles. One scenario saw my team awaiting rescue at a riverside cabin, when an enormous horde swarmed in from all directions. Hastily, we retreated to the top floor. This funnelled the Infected through a narrow stairwell into which we threw pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. This strategy worked well until a Tank smashed through a window and swiftly redecorated the cabin with our various body parts.

Working together with three close friends is when Left 4 Dead is at its best.  In contrast the solo experience, while perfectly playable, just isn’t as much fun. This is in part because the computer-controlled Survivors are even more brain-dead than the zombies, often lagging behind and getting stuck in the scenery. They are decent enough shots, but the experience just isn’t the same without three friends by your side swearing hysterically. A special mention should be given to the insane ‘Versus’ mode, pitching the four Survivors against four players controlling the Special Infected. The result is a mad dash to each safe room as the Survivors try to avoid the carefully planned ambushes of the Infected. This extra mode adds significantly to the lifespan of the game, though bizarrely only two of the game’s five campaigns can be played in Versus mode.

Left 4 Dead makes you feel like part of a world gone horribly wrong. This idea is epitomised in the graffiti of other survivors scribbled inside the safe rooms. One amusing scrawl stated ‘we are the real monsters,’ beneath which was inscribed ‘you are a real moron.’ At its putrid heart, Left 4 Dead is simple, messy fun. Rife with comical moments whether intentional or player-created, often while knee-deep in the dead, Left 4 Dead is the twisted paragon of cooperative gaming.

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