It's just a shame that Left 4 Dead isn't great itself yet.
I want to really like Left 4 Dead but it's lacking in content and has a few issues which badly break the game right now. For example if you do not have friends who can play it with you then I wouldn't really bother with Left 4 Dead because it can be so hard to find a good game that it'll leave a bad taste in your mouth and wondering why everyone likes it. Really what would have been better if this was released in the N64 days with 4 player split screen coop when all your mates were round. The thing is now all my friends have grown up and don't play games anymore and I'm the only one left that I know who plays games other than the annoying Wii. So for me it has been a nightmare to find a good game.
Left 4 Dead really nails the core mechanics down and I just love it so much because of the look and feel of the game that Valve always seems to get right. I love how the Source Engine feels for shooters and you just get that feel back and weight of your character that no other Engine seems to be able to do these days. I really like all the characters too because they have great personalities but you can't help but feel that you just wanted a proper single player game to care about them more. I heard Valve had alot of cutscenes for Left 4 Dead but they removed them because play testers didn't want to sit through them....... This leaves me thinking two things 1. Why not have just put the cutscenes into the single player game and 2. why not make them skipable? I just don't get why you'd remove a storyline that would have made sense of the 4 campaigns and made it feel like you're getting abit more for your money.
I also found there to be a real lack of weapons because really for a zombie game you want to be able to pick up all kinds of crap, like in Dead Rising and kill zombies with it. Really the only useful weapons are the two types of shotguns, the pipe bombs and the cocktail for the tank. Everything else is useless and it's just a shame they couldn't have put a gravity gun in there for laughs and let you throw saws at zombies to chop off their heads.
This brings me onto the lack of modes because really all you get is coop and versus mode. The Single Player doesn't really exist because it is just coop with bots and the versus is very flawed. The problems with Versus is it keeps switching the teams around and people only find it fun to play as the zombies so when the teams switch the whole other team leaves and thats a real bummer. Wheres my Horde mode? Where my Single Player story mode? Wheres my Source Forts type mode where you'd have two teams who build forts and you have to try and hold out and keep repairing your fort against waves of zombies and the winner is whoever lasts the longest. Wheres the competetive combat side of like Survivors vs military vs AI director controlled zombies? It would be like CS with zombies thrown in. Wheres Gravity gun mode? Theres so many things that could have been done and it is all missing.
There was once this service called tournament.com that you played CS for money 5 vs 5 and they had such a perfect setup for Left 4 Dead, much better than the matchmaking which is breaking the game right now. What it did was list 5 vs 5 games that arn't full yet, like lobbies and it would shown you both teams and you could switch teams, which is what Versus is missing. Once the game started it was taken off the server browser and if you left half-way through the game then you'd lose points or rating. Right now how it works is you spend ages for the matchmaking to set you up and forget finding a game in anything other than Advance or Expert mode. If you go to the server browser it doesn't list games that are waiting to start but games that have already started which just sucks. So Valve really need to fix the whole system of finding a game and punish you for leaving a game early.
Valve said the game would be replayable because of the Ai Director but it hasn't really turned out that way because the levels are so linear that you really only want to play through each one once or twice. What I found though is each movie played the same so you'd be bored of the gameplay by the time you hit blood Harvest. So I wish'd they had made more open levels like Crysis or something where it is still linear and pointing you in a direction but it is also more open. Imagine the width of that Tank level in Crysis but with lots of buildings because you're in a city and it would feel like a more open city with lots of ways to get to the goal. The AI director doesn't play out how I thought too because I thought it would change the difficulty of the game depending on how good you are. Instead you change the difficulty of the game and the AI director just throws zombies at you but you eventually notice a pattern and I dunno..... it just never seems that different. Sure the zombies are standing in a different place each time but you can get that with any FPS really as the enemies arn't on rails.
All the bad things I've said about Left 4 Dead are only improvements based on a lack of content and broken matchmaking system. I still feel like the game is really well made and a great idea. I love the characters and the look of the game and I just love how the shooting feels because it is on the Source Engine. Valve has done an amazing job with the atmosphere and the music is just fantastic, really reminds you of a horror movie. It's so frustrating because everything is there and who doesn't love zombies? They're my fave kind of zombies too, the fast running 28 days later ones which are actually scary. Just the game is lacking content and I really wish'd they had made a great single player story and one that was more realistic without the crazy super zombies but just the normal ones. I feel like the super zombies are great and everything for fun multiplayer but lets keep things serious for a single player story if Valve ever does one.
So what Valve have done with Left 4 Dead is created a fantastic foundation for a potential good game in the future. I just feel like the user generated content will not make up for the lack of official made content like it will in Little big Planet. So really I'll have to wait for Left 4 Dead 2 before I see any major improvements to the game like Single Player story. I do hope Valve adds more modes into Left 4 Dead though because right now that's the major problem. Something like a proper server browser and game modes with more people would really improve the game by leaps and bounds just because it would then be viable to play the game with people you don't know over the internet.
Valve have done the outlines but it's time to colour it in and then I'll rereview Left 4 Dead in the future and hopefully it'll be a much better game.
+ Left 4 Dead needs Zombie Dogs!
