Left 4 Dead Demo Impressions, Plus Watch Me Suck

Those who pre-ordered Left 4 Dead at GameStop were treated to access to the demo a week before the general public. I downloaded the demo early this morning and gave it a spin. I actually played through it a few times. I tried both single player and online co-op modes and the game is very fun. Left 4 Dead is frantic first person zombie action. I love it! The art style which is similar to the Half Life 2 series just works. Its realistic but not over done. There are no shiny CG looking charachters. The environments are detailed and varied. I was able to find an online game pretty easy and I did not notice any lag issues.

From my time playing the demo Left 4 Dead seems like a good mix between Resident Evil, Half Life, Halo 3 and Call of Duty. If you play the game in single player mode the computer AI takes control of the other three on your team. The Zombies come at you but they are varied in size and speed. Some will just stand there and some will rush you. There are different weapons including an machine gun, shot gun, pistols that can be dual wielded and you also have melee attacks.

In multiplayer your friends or those matched up randomly on Xbox Live are added to your game and control the other players on your team. Full voice chat is enabled during multiplayer which is great. A very cool feature in multiplayer mode included is called “Take Break.” Break mode is like pausing a multiplayer game but your not actually pausing anything because the computer AI takes over for you and continues to play for you with your online friends. You become a “spectator” and when you are ready you can take the game back over from the computer AI. Pure genius. In a nutshell this demo sealed the deal and my pre-order will be a final purchase.

Here are some screens from my demo run through:… read more…