Starting off each level your squad of four survivors are barricaded in a safe room with a stockpile of weapons, ammunition and health packs. Once your team has secured enough inventory for your Point-A to Point-B onslaught the safe room door is manually opened and you, for the lack of a better term, run like hell. The game acts as you've heard it should, as you progress throughout a level zombies attack in groups from all angles. First your garden variety 28 Days Later-esque fast zombies and later by enemies with special abilities. Sticking together is key and in the beginning three of us were never beyond steps of the other, while our fourth felt the game was tracking completion time on an online leaderboard and disappeared into the eerie night.
Ironically our fourth survived the longest as the swarms of enemies focused their attack on the Joystiq trio. Left 4 Dead's biggest draw is the absolute importance of team play which is both based on the AI Director and in forced encounters. The AI Director is a known feature but to quickly recap, the better you perform as a team the more intense the game becomes. Forced encounters are situations that a player gets in where they are unable to help themselves and require team assistance. If a group of zombies circle you and close in, you'll need to call out for help to your team who can quickly spot your character's aura change from a relaxed state (blue) to an engaged state (red). Some encounters require a teammate to save you from being pinned down or captured by aggressive enemies and being left alone in these instances means death.
Once you're ... err... dead in Left 4 Dead, and you will die, your teammates are able to respawn you into the fray by opening a nearby closet where your character's aura can be spotted banging on the door for help. It's an element that sounds like nothing at first but the concept of bringing you back, trapped in a room, again adds to the cooperative experience. In any given level you are able to respawn a limited number of times without using health packs. Your final "life" changes the game colors to black-and-white while slowing your character's speed down substantially as a in-game nudge reminding you to seek help immediately.
Those wary of console controls for such a twitch shooter will rest easy when they finally get their hands on Left 4 Dead. The default settings are reminiscent of other console shooters where the right trigger fires and the face buttons control reload, jumping and action functions and the directional pad is mapped to specific inventory items like bombs, health and your flashlight. A bumper button is also mapped for quick turns which spins your character 180-degrees on a dime to engage enemies attacking from behind.
Our first round ended rather quickly as our female companion, the one who went for an Olympic Time Trail record in the level, literally leaving us for dead. Once we died he was quickly finished off. Our second attempt was more noteworthy as our team stuck together as a brutal zombie killing unit. In the end only two, myself and Dustin Burg, made it the the next level which is signified by entering and closing the door of a safe room.
It was intense, exciting and fun. Zombies were killed and laughs were had. This is what all co-op experiences should be, working together rather than being in the same game. Left 4 Dead is hitting this November and we're already working on our Zombie Apocalypse Plan in preparation.
