Yesterday amongst a full day I barely had enough time to play through the new Left 4 Dead demo. The demo is pretty short, all things considered but I wanted to just give some of my initial thoughts on it so far.
First the good: The AI director makes this game. I love how the music suddenly builds in tension just before something pops out of nowhere and attacks your group. It’s genius and really great. The whole experience is rather frightening because waves of zombies will just come running at you in a huge mass at random times. Other times they barely seem functional, walking into a wall. It’s great because you can slowly be picking off the brain dead zombies when suddenly (for no apparent reason) they all decide to rush you at the same time. Another great thing were the characters, both zombie and not. The other characters didn’t say alot because they were computer controlled but it’s still nice to know someone has your back…because no matter how many zombies you kill, they’ll still find away to flank you. And the special zombies, though not entirely effective if you team sticks together, were very interesting and made for sudden tense moment. The cry witch was by far the most frightening. One of my team mates says out loud that he thinks he hears a witch. But the fat bloated zombie keeps right around her and us shooting him must have set her off. She was none to pleased to say the least. We downed her but not before she almost killed one of my teammates.
The bad: My computer controlled teammates were none too bright. They were pretty on top of things when it came to sticking together saving your life when a licker gets a hold of you, but no matter how many times I told them there were molotov cocktails or those other bomb types, they just wouldn’t pick it up. While at first playing I wanted them to lead the way, because I ended up walking in circles. But the AI controlled teammates don’t do that, they just follow you blindly. This was also a real bummer when the game told me I had to open a gate in order to continue, but that hordes of zombies were probably waiting on the other side. Luckily we had a chain gun in the room with us. I was hoping I could man the gun and one of them would open the door…nope. Then I was hoping while I was opening the door one of them would man the gun…nope. So I had to open the door and run for my life as dozens of zombies ran after me.
I know this is just the demo and for the most part I am really impressed. This is how horror and survival games should be. The only real draw back so far are my lifeless AI teammates. Now I know I can play with real people (which I’ll try later when I have the chance) but I can already see all the griefers and such that are going to ruin an otherwise fun game.
