If you’ve ever watched a truly violent movie, or heard a really disgusting joke, you’re familiar with the sound. That “Aaaooouugh!” sound people make while recoiling away - simultaneously mortified and entertained. Quakecon patrons punctuated the end of every round with this exclamation; watching swarms of zombies overrun the players on the display monitors.
This isn't the camera angle for gameplay, in case you're wondering. See the below videos for the normal first-person perspective.
After an hour of shuffling forward little by little, I got my crack at the demo. The level began with me and three other players on the roof of an apartment complex. A table nearby held some ammunition and first aid kits. Nothing too exotic unfortunately – pistols, shotguns and submachine guns were the fare of the day. After loading up, our merry band set off to the evacuation point – a hospital across town.
We moved down floor by floor of the apartment complex. For the first few minutes action was relatively light – a zombie here, a zombie there. Normal zombies, or “Infected”, don’t take too much to drop, but the game had just started and we were anxious. As such we gave each zombie a healthy dose of gunfire. Even so, the slow going only served to build tension.
Suddenly a huge wave of zombies poured out from a hallway. I had the point position, so the angry and very hungry zombies quickly surrounded me. Of course at this point I did what any level headed gamer does – freak out and start blindly firing in every direction. My Napoleonic strategy almost worked until a strange explosion sent me to the ground – apparently one of the zombies had run in and blown itself up.
Now I was wounded and incapacitated (“incapped” for the elite). Some zombies still remained, and they were very keen on eating my now-immobile body. Not very sporting of them, wouldn’t you say? Unfortunately for them, players can still use pistols when downed, so thanks to some furious clicking I survived the wave. One of my teammates came over and helped me to my feet. After using a medpack to get back into tip-top shape, we were ready to push on.
Players are "incapped" after taking so much damage. Then a teammate must help wounded players to their feet.
Soon we hit the bottom floor and ran out into an alleyway. The change of scenery was nice, but we quickly realized that with even less light things were going to get tougher. Luckily the tide of zombies stemmed a bit until we made our way to a main street. A giant fence spanned one end of the street; zombies were clumsily trying to climb over it to get to the delicious humans.
Out of ammo for the sub-machine gun I started with (due in no part to my level-headed consumption of ammo I’m sure), I happily started blasting the zombies off of the opposite side of the fence with my pistol. This diversion was short lived though, as my screen washed over with some gooey red liquid. I couldn’t see anything, and my health started ticking down fast as zombies got to the business of clawing and eating.
Blindly firing in every direction wasn’t enough to save me this time, and I fell to the ground. Not above kicking a man when he’s down, the zombies continued their attack as I lay there. This time my poor pistol wasn’t enough to save the day, and my teammates were understandably preoccupied with saving their own bacon. Soon, I died for good, and the rest of my team fell shortly.
“The game is designed to take you out if you’re a lone guy,” Lead Level Designer Chris Ashton said in a short chat after the demo. He wasn’t kidding. Waiting in line to play, I had just about convinced myself that my years of FPS experience would carry me through. Team? Who needs a stinking team?! I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Left 4 Dead from Turtle Rock Studios is all about co-operative gameplay. They originally got the idea for the game when testing their previous game – Counter Strike: Condition Zero. The addition of bots to the game earned Turtle Rock their AI coding stripes, which are featured prominently in Left 4 Dead, but the game’s origins came from AI testing. To test the AI navigation scripts, Turtle Rock would spawn bots on a map equipped only with knives. Mowing down legions of poorly equipped bots was so fun they decided to make a game around it.
That’s not to say that killing waves of enemies is all Left 4 Dead offers – far from it, in fact. Unlike other first person shooters that merely try to shoehorn the co-op game type into an existing game, Left 4 Dead is built from the ground up to encourage and even require team play. There are eight slots in every game – four Survivors and four “boss” Infected (more on those guys later).
The two sides, Survivor and Infected, are designed to be “yin and yang,” according to Ashton. Playing as a Survivor will be slow, tense, and thrilling. Infected play will be in line with traditional shooters, with quick respawns and fast action.
The game will come with four campaigns of five maps each. Each campaign should take around 45 minutes for an experienced player to complete, but if my initial foray into zombie slaying is any indication, it will be much longer for newcomers. These campaigns span from the “28 Days Later” urban environments to the “Evil Dead” rural environments. Rural areas with wide open spaces and intermittent tree cover play “totally different” than the urban areas, according to Ashton.
“Big deal,” you say to your monitor between bites of your king-sized candy bar. “I’ve killed zombies before, I can do it again. I can beat Resident Evil in two hours without even being in the room.” That may be true, but all of your expertise relies on memorizing enemy placement and script triggers. Bad news, buddy… Left 4 Dead has absolutely no scripting.
The Infected are controlled by an in-game AI controller. By keeping track of rounds fired, damage taken, and other stats, the game measures the stress levels of the players. The AI controller uses this data to create peaks and valleys in the experience. Players will be swarmed by hoards of zombies and then the action will die down to allow them to recuperate. Once the players have had a chance to brush themselves off, tension starts to build again until the next zombie explosion.
This means that every map playthrough is a different experience. The player may know the map like the back of his hand, but simply knowing that there’s a staircase around this corner doesn’t tell you how many zombies may or may not be waiting your arrival with a grumbling stomach.
The randomized appearance of “boss” Infected mix things up even more. Humans can’t control the normal Infected (let’s face it, that’d be boring), but the boss Infected are playable. Infected play differs drastically from Survivor play. Infected can climb up drain pipes and ladders, giving them access to areas the Suvivors can’t reach. Infected also see the path of travel of the Survivors – giving them opportunities to set up ambushes.
Infected players can climb on rooftops and see the path of the Survivor's travel.
Different kinds of boss Infected have different skills, too. The Smoker does what one would expect from the name – expel smoke that obscures vision and causes nasty coughing fits. The Smoker also has a giant tongue that can be dangled from rooftops to strangle survivors.
The Boomer is a zombie that hit the doughnuts a little too heavy as a human. This bloated corpse can vomit blood onto a survivor, blurring their vision and attracting nearby zombies – this move did me in during my playthrough. When finally downed, the Boomer explodes, damaging all survivors in the vicinity.
This may sound silly since zombies are not known for their brilliance, but The Tank can easily be classified as the “stupid” one. Players can’t directly choose to play as the Tank – the AI director will assign this task to an Infected player at times during the campaign. The Tank is huge, makes a bunch of noise, and is designed purely to run in and tear everything up.
The Hunter rounds out the playable Infected. Hunters are all about stealth with their small frame and quiet movement – they even turn invisible when standing still. These Infected can “pounce” on a Survivor, knocking them to the ground and slapping the crap out of them until other players chase them off.
There’s a fifth, non-playable boss Infected – The Witch. This is the one that will really evoke colorful language from players. Capable of killing players in one hit and decimating entire groups, this Infected will be found screaming and wallowing around on the floor. Players will have to turn off flashlights and tip-toe around The Witch, hoping to not draw its attention. I can already tell this will be one hell of a tense moment.
Here’s the interesting bit – most of the boss Infected's attacks are designed to require teamplay to defeat. The Smoker can tangle a player up with his tongue, completely immobilizing the player until another one comes along to help him out. Players caught by the Hunter pounce are pinned to the ground until other players shoot the Hunter off.
Concepts to promote co-operative play run through the entire game, too. For example, if a player is on a high ledge and they accidentally step off the edge (or are shoved off by a zombie), instead of falling instantly to their death they desperately cling to the edge. There they cling, helpless, until another player comes along to pull them up. Turtle Rock also implements an automatic vocalization system. If a player backs up in a hallway and hits a teammate, they’ll automatically say “Back up!”
Some other concepts have been re-imagined to make a little more sense given the setting, too. Left 4 Dead doesn’t feature the standard radar to locate teammates; after all, not just any old shmuck has an advanced GPS radar system. Instead, players will be able to see a glowing aura around other players that are nearby, but behind a wall. This way, players won’t freak out when another player simply runs into another room.
Survivor respawns work a little differently as well. When a player ends up on the dinner plate of an Infected, they move to spectator mode. If the other players can find and free another stranded Survivor (for instance, a guy locked in a bathroom), the dead player will take control of that character.
The end of every match is summarized in a screen presenting awards and demerits to each player. It may be fun to lure all the Infected toward your teammates and then snort-laugh as they get devoured, but everyone will sure know about it come end of the round. Turtle Rock is even looking at tying these awards to players across multiple rounds, so when “420SnipahKilla” joins the game players will know whether or not he can pull his weight.
Left 4 Dead’s development has been unique in that Valve releases weekly updates to the Source engine during the development cycle. All the fancy new Half-Life 2: Episode Two tweaks will be in fine form in Left 4 Dead. Rim lighting gives character models a spooky and colorful glow, and you can look forward to a fantastic light show after a Smoker does his thing. All the muzzle flashes in the smoke cloud create a strobing effect that reminded me of that really awesome part at the end of Attack of the Clones.
Free epilepsy test.
Turtle Rock also worked a lot of nice details into the character models. After blasting a zombie at close range, not only are the walls painted with the zombie’s innards, but so are the player models. Seeing a man drenched in blood stumble out of a room full of freshly-killed (re-killed?) zombies is quite a sight.
While Left 4 Dead should appeal to anyone that enjoys blowing up a zombie or two (and let’s face it, that’s pretty much everyone), the game also brings something new to the table. Co-op in Left 4 Dead is so much more than a bullet point on a features list; it’s the driving idea behind every facet of gameplay. Even though I only spent ten minutes with the game, I already have some fond memories and stories to tell. When Left 4 Dead comes out early next year, hopefully I won’t be too busy going “Aoouuugh!” to help out my teammates.
