Left 4 Dead is a cooperative first-person shooter video game. It was developed by Turtle Rock Studios, which was purchased by Valve Corporation during development. The game uses Valve's proprietary Source engine, and is available for Windows and the Xbox 360. Development on the game was completed on November 13, 2008 and was released on November 18, 2008 in the United States and on November 21, 2008 in Europe.
Set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, the game pits its four protagonists—dubbed the "Survivors"—against hordes of the infected. There are four game modes: a single-player mode in which allied characters are controlled by AI; a four-player, co-op campaign mode; an eight-player online versus mode; and a four-player survival mode. In all modes, an artificial intelligence (AI), dubbed the "Director", controls level pacing and item spawns, in an attempt to create a dynamic experience and increase replay value.
Left 4 Dead was well received by the industry media upon its release, with praise given for its replay value, focus on cooperative play, and movie-like experience. Several criticisms were aimed at limited level selection and the lack of a narrative. The game has won several publication awards, as well as distinctions from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and British Academy of Film and Television Arts. As was done with Team Fortress 2, Valve plans on supplementing the game with free downloadable content. The first of these, called the "Survival Pack", was released on April 21, 2009, with the second, in the form of a new DLC Campaign entitled "Crash Course," released for both the PC and Xbox 360 on September 29, 2009. The popularity of the game led to the development of a sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, which will be released in November 2009.
Gameplay
In
Left 4 Dead, the four survivors must fight off infected humans while trying to escape or make their way to a safe house.
Left 4 Dead is a first-person shooter. In campaign mode, the player takes control of one of the survivors; if four human players are not available, then the remaining survivors are AI-controlled bots. They play through the levels fighting off the infected—living humans who have been infected with a rabies-like virus that causes psychosis, to which the survivors are immune.[2][3]
The game is focused on cooperation and team play; colored outlines of teammates are visible through walls to help players stick together and coordinate their movement. If a survivor falls off a ledge, then they may automatically hang onto it and can only be helped up by another survivor. If a survivor's health is depleted, then they become incapacitated and can only be revived by another survivor, at which point they continue playing with a low amount of health that decreases over time. If a survivor has been incapacitated and revived twice without tending to their wounds, then they will experience distorted black-and-white vision, and the next incapacitation will kill the character. If a survivor takes enough damage while incapacitated, or is not eventually helped up by teammates, then the incapacitated character will die. During "Campaign" mode, if a survivor is killed, then they will respawn in a closet or other enclosed space after a period of time (except during key points in the scenario), but must be freed by another survivor to rejoin the team. Otherwise, the player must wait until the next level.[4] Survivors can share first-aid kits and pain pills and help each other heal. Left 4 Dead has friendly fire that cannot be disabled, increasing the need for caution around other survivors. On the easy difficulty level, friendly fire does not harm teammates but still registers as having occurred with a notice on the screen saying, "Don't shoot teammates!"
The survivors communicate by voice commands that are accessed by quick menus, and some sound off automatically when performing actions such as reloading or spotting infected.[5] Over 1,000 unique lines have been recorded for each survivor.[6] Additional communication of player actions is conveyed through character lights. Also, weapon-mounted flashlights and muzzle flashes help the players in determining whether their companions are shooting, performing melee attacks, reloading or moving. Due to control issues and the likelihood of players using a LIVE headset, the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead omits the quick phrases feature.[7]
The game is experienced through five campaigns that take place in various urban and rural locales. Multiple visual in-game hints—including license plates, park signs, markings on airport equipment, and lines of dialogue spoken by the survivors—suggest that these locations are in Pennsylvania,[8] and similarly a memorial wall giving names of those who have died in the infection (actually names of the game's development team) along with their dates of birth and death suggests that the game takes place in October 2009.[9] Each campaign is divided into five chapters, except Crash Course, which has two chapters, marked by safe rooms, which are checkpoints where players can heal, re-arm and revive characters who were killed.[10] Specifically, the four campaigns are: "No Mercy", an urban setting culminating in a hospital skyscraper; "Death Toll", a small-town and countryside setting; "Dead Air", an airport setting; and "Blood Harvest", a woodland and farm setting. A two-level campaign, "Crash Course", was released on September 29, and is set in the outskirts of a small industrial town. The levels have distinct beginnings and ends, but there are a number of alternate routes to follow with more supplies, helping to create a sense of non-linearity.[11] In the final chapter of each campaign, the players must defend a position from an onslaught of infected until rescue arrives.[6] Each campaign typically lasts between 35 and 75 minutes depending on the difficulty level. Both platform versions of the game utilize an achievement system.[12]
Survivor characters
The final design of the survivors, shown on the poster for the "No Mercy" campaign. Left to right: Francis, Bill, Zoey, Louis
There are four playable human characters in the game:[13] Francis (voiced by Vince Valenzuela), a tattoo-covered biker; Bill (voiced by Jim French), a former Green Beret and a Vietnam veteran; Zoey (voiced by Jen Taylor), a college student and horror movie enthusiast; and Louis (voiced by Earl Alexander), a junior systems analyst in his company's IT department.[14] Early plans were for players to be randomly assigned to characters but in the final release, players can choose any character—provided that the character has not already been selected—or be randomly assigned an unselected character.[6]
Survivors are armed with various firearms. Each player starts the game with an M1911 pistol.[15] It has unlimited ammo and is the only weapon that the survivor can use when they are incapacitated. When a second pistol is found, the player can dual wield them. At the beginning of each campaign, the player can choose between an Uzi submachine gun and a pump-action shotgun. As the survivors progress through a campaign, more powerful weapons can be found: the fully automatic M16A3 assault rifle (an upgrade to the Uzi), Benelli M4 Super 90 semi-automatic shotgun (an upgrade to the pump-action shotgun), and a scoped Ruger Mini-14 hunting rifle. In addition to firearms, a player can also carry three other items in their inventory: improvised grenades (either a Molotov cocktail to create a wall of fire or a pipe bomb, modified with an attached smoke alarm designed to attract the infected to it before it explodes[15]); a first-aid kit, which can be used to heal any survivor; and pain pills, which provide temporary health that depletes gradually and quicker with damage from infected, and can be handed to teammates for later use. Regardless of what weapon or item a player is using, a melee attack can be used to shove away any infected within reach. Also available are environmental weapons, such as gasoline cans, oxygen cylinders, and propane tanks, all of which explode when shot. These can be picked up, moved, and used as a melee weapon by the survivors, but while carrying an object they cannot use their weapons or health items. Strategically-placed minigun turrets are encountered at various locations throughout the different maps, but they are not without their complications. Due to their limited turn radius and lackluster heat tolerance, they may not always be the best choice. However, the infinite ammo and raw stopping power may offer some relief to an overwhelmed, ammo-starved player.
Infected characters
The infected (voiced by experimental musician Mike Patton and voice actor Fred Tatasciore)[16] are the survivors' foes in Left 4 Dead, and they appear to be partly inspired by the infected from several modern films, including Dawn of the Dead[17] or 28 Days Later.[18] An important distinction from the former is that while the infected do resemble traditional undead zombies, they are, as cited in the game's manual, living humans infected with a rabies-like pathogen, very much like the infected in the latter film. While they are never seen eating human flesh or brains, the manner in which they are portrayed is meant to create and sustain a more brutal, believable reality for the player to immerse his or herself in. In an interview with 1Up.com, Mike Booth commented on the concept of using a pathogen as an inspiration for the setting:
| “ | Even though we obviously pushed well beyond the realm of believability with many of our "boss" infected, the core idea of a mind-destroying, civilization-collapsing pathogen is more horrifying to me than magically animated corpses, precisely because it is plausible. Rabies is a good example of a pathogen that can turn a loyal, friendly, protective family pet into a slavering attack machine. It's a virus that reprograms the behaviors of a complex animal – a mammal, in fact. What if something similar happened to humans? Left 4 Dead is one possible answer.[2] | ” |
The common infected encountered during the game are fast and agile, weak individually, but may be overwhelming in numbers. They display a special attraction to high-pitched alarm-type sounds, such as the beeping device attached to pipe bombs and car alarms. Common infected will often chase down the source of these noises while ignoring lower-pitched, but much louder sounds such as gunfire. They occasionally attack in masses referred to in-game as a "horde".[19]
In addition to the common infected, there are five "special" or "boss" infected whose mutations grant them special attacks that make them far more dangerous. Each of the special infected, as well as approaching hordes, have a distinctive sound or a timely musical cue, making their presence easily recognizable by players. They are: the Boomer, a bloated infected whose vomit and bile (which may be released at will and upon death) blinds the player briefly and attracts a horde of common infected; the Hunter, an agile infected that can pounce on survivors from great distances; the Smoker, an infected that can ensnare survivors with its long tongue from a distance and, upon death, releases a cloud of smoke that obscures vision; the Tank, a gigantic, muscular infected that is powerful and difficult to kill. It can knock players backwards, dealing massive damage, or attack from afar by throwing a lump of debris - it also has the ability to bash certain objects, such as cars and dumpsters, towards survivors, that will cause incapacitation on contact; the Witch, a passive female infected, who, when provoked by loud sounds, lights, or proximity of survivors, will attack her provoker - she is able to incapacitate or kill the provoker (depending on the difficulty setting) in one hit. If her victim survives, she will attempt to kill them if not killed herself.[20]
In versus mode, four additional players can take control of the special infected—apart from the witch, which remains computer-controlled. Each infected player is randomly assigned a class of special infected when they enter a spawn mode. While in spawn mode, the infected can quickly roam around the map in search of an appropriate place in which to spawn. This location must be sufficiently distant from any survivor, out of the line of sight of any survivor, and outside restricted areas such as safe rooms. Upon death, the infected player must wait up to 10–25 seconds before reentering spawn mode, depending on how many players are on the infected team. When a tank is spawned in the game, infected players receive a message indicating which player will control it. The human-controlled infected can see their teammates' outlines through walls similar to the survivors, but can also see each survivor's outline, which is colored according to the survivor's health and fades out if the survivor refrains from attacking, running and vocalizing. Vertical pathways exclusive to the infected, such as pipes and vines, are marked with animated symbols for the infected players. These can be climbed and used for ambushes.
Game modes
Left 4 Dead contains four game modes: campaign, versus, survival, and single-player. The cooperative campaign consists of up to four human-controlled survivors who attempt to make their way between safe rooms and eventually to rescue. In this mode, the special infected are controlled by the AI. In a versus campaign, each team of four players plays each chapter of the campaign as both survivor and infected, swapping sides once per chapter.[25] Unlike campaign mode, dead survivors do not respawn. If at least one survivor finishes the chapter, then the team playing the survivors earns points according to their average progress through the chapter, as well as bonus points based on their health and the health items in their inventory. These points are then multiplied by the chapter's difficulty level, and the number of survivors who finished. If all the survivors are killed, then they only earn progress points and the difficulty multiplier.[26] Survival mode consists of a timed challenge where players try to survive as long as possible against a never-ending flood of the infected.[27] Single-player mode is basically the same as campaign mode, but played offline with three AI-controlled bots as the other survivors, however other players can join in on the same console to turn single player into an offline co-op game. The game can also be played through a system link, or local area network.
Source : Wikipedia
I started playing this game when my friend introduced me to this game. Its pure horror at itsbest!
