Played a couple of matches of Left 4 Dead with some buddies last night. This game has been heavily hyped and everyone who plays it seems to love it.
For myself I give it a hearty meh! It is good to look at, heavy on the action, some cool features, but ultimately after playing through the demo level twice I found it very repetitive. I have not tried the 4 vs 4 co-op, which may make the game much more dynamic, but apparently you cannot play the whole game this way.
Some cool stuff I did see though:
-Teamwork is pretty cool, you need to help, revive, cover and stick together.
-Varied enemies, there are hunters, boomers, the witch and the regular horde zombies
-tense moments when many, many horde swarm your room
-coolness factor when fighting the elite infected.
Some stuff I didn’t like
-Zombies that run…sigh, Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) wrote an opinion piece on why zombies shouldn’t run…and I agree.
-Seemed the seem, but it isn’t, Left 4 Dead uses a Director system that dynamically spawns enemies and weapons, but it seemed mostly the same setup through multiple playthroughs
-Kind of bland.
All in all it is fun, not 60 dollars fun in this crowded marketplace, but worth a purchase in the future. If this was 30 dollar dlc for Half Life I would go for it, but as is I am not sold.
Serious/Gamer 