Left 4 Dead Review
Submitted By Greg on Dec 30 2008 at 7:48 PM
Introduction, Story
Valve's Left 4 Dead
With the successful release of The Orange Box just over a year behind them, Valve has already turned around and introduced a new, and oddly innovative, game to their star-studded lineup. This new title is the zombie-themed, Co-op, First Person Shooter, Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead was originally conceived by Turtle Rock Studios, now Valve South, during the development of Counter-Strike Source. What began as developers playing against knife-wielding AI, slowly formed into Valve's first successful venture in combining the strengths of their singleplayer (Half-Life) and multiplayer (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress) franchises. A challenging proposition to say the least, but the end result is easily the most solid and enjoyable multiplayer experience of 2008.
Left 4 Dead drops the player into the role of one of four iconic survivors in the midst of a zombie epidemic. These four characters are a who's-who of horror-movie heroes; representing the everyman, girl-next-door, roughneck, and old soldier paradigms. The survivors' goal is to simply scramble from one point to the next, dodging hordes of Infected along the way, in the vain hope of being rescued. This constant, bewildering chase through exemplars of zombie-movie locales, is essentially the game's story; mostly due to a lack of an obvious plot or story-progression. But given Left 4 Dead's frantic, highly mobile and replayable nature, a traditional video game narrative wouldn't exactly be viable. Interestingly, the game was slated to have transitional cutscenes between the campaigns, thereby connecting the four acts into a single overarching story. This segue concept was scrapped during the playtesting-phase of development, mostly due to gameplay reasons (as described, in detail, in the game's Developer's Commentary).
While it is disappointing that Left 4 Dead's story was streamlined and ultimately marginalized, it may have been for the greater good. In doing this, Valve has -by separating the campaigns into individual movies and minimizing scripted sequences- decreased the likelihood of player fatigue and opened up the story for future content and the toils of the Steam community. But above all else, the lack of a structured narrative allows the player to become more immersed in the action. This immersion, when coupled with the cooperative free-form gameplay, begets personal narratives. At their best, these happenstances turned anecdotes are more exhilarating and memorable than what any predefined sequence could hope to be. Of course, there is just as likely a chance that these moments will be drawn-out and painful tests of player endurance. In the end, Valve has successfully created the framework for the player's adventure, but it is your exploits and the endeavors of your friends (or strangers) that becomes Left 4 Dead's true story.
