Left 4 Dead, finally a shooter I can enjoy

When it comes to games I’m not a big first-person shooter (FPS) gamer. Part of the reason is that many of them focus on on-line play, which I just can’t keep up with anymore. Back in the days when I was Doom-ing and Duke Nukem-ing all night it was a different story. So these days it takes a little more to get me hooked.

Since I essentially grew up with shooters, many of the games these days just seem like old games with better graphics. All the Halos and Call of Duty games are just too fast and I don’t believe shooters are made for consoles. Analog controls are just not sensative or fast enough. Give me a mouse to aim and a keyboard to walk and I’m a happy duck.

So with all that, it’s hard for me to get into shooters. Only after I downloaded the Left 4 Dead demo from XBL did I something finally click. And that click was zombies.

Left 4 Dead probably isn’t anything special as far as shooters are concerned. You have your guns, your health, your maps, and your AI players - all pretty standard stuff. But L4D has a shit ton of zombies and drops you in a “real” world. I’m not on a mystic planet fightinng bug monsters, nor am I (back) on Mars shooting demon imps, nor am I in the middle of Europe fighting the Germans. This time I’m in some random back alley blowing away dozens of zombies at once.

It all boils down to theme. Zombies is a theme I can get into, and L4D delivers. The environments in L4D are perfect. It’s not all pitch black but it’s not all bright and happy - it’s a real world mix. In the demo you start in an apartment building and some floors have good lighting, some don’t. Then you end up in a subway with great ambiance too, and both are places I can relate to in real life.

The weapons in L4D (at least as far as the demo is concerned) are spot on even if not all too original. But when you’re fighting zombies, all you need is a shotgun, right? That and a pistol, M-16, rifle and occasional uzi. Now that’s fun.

Left 4 Dead is designed to be a co-op game and in single-player mode the computer runs the other four characters and they actually act and react pretty well. This isn’t a tactical game where you have to worry about telling your team to move here or move there, which is nice. They turn out to be pretty smart and shoot anything in their way. You get decent control over your teammates just by how you move within a room. They follow you blindly, so unless you just run for the door, they’ll cover you.

One neat part about L4D is the team help aspect, which works sort of like freeze tag. If you’re attacked and your health runs down, you drop to the floor and can’t move. But a teammate can come revive you and restore your health, bringing you back to normal playing status. It’s a nice aspect that I’ve never seen before work so transparently.

Left 4 Dead comes out Tuesday. I doubt I’ll run out and buy it right away. Frankly, the demo is fun enough that I can play it a few times over and have a blast. The game is pretty linear, which is nice. It has explorable buildings and whatnot, but at no point will you be able to get lost from your goal direction.

Not only does L4D look good, it plays good and is a great balance of simple management with plenty of action. You are really allowed to focus on killing zombies and making your way down the street rather than worrying about inventory, bullets, or other things.