Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead is easily the best zombie game out there, ever. its graphics are great, gameplay is easy, characters are great and the stages to play in are so well made you'll want to explore every single alley way, house or shop.

But some people have been saying how horribly short this game is, four levels, around an hour each. That's why you should never purchase this game if you're never going to play online, as great as it is to play through each stage over and over again alone on single player or on couch coop, it can get boring.

Online modes (coop campaign and versus) are great fun, especially versus mode, where you can choose to play as the infected.

Easily 5/5, but just don't pay a whole $100 for this game if you're only getting it for single player.

Left 4 dead is a fun game to play split screen coop, with the thousands of zombies running at you from all directions and awesome visuals even people like myself who aren't really into this style of game will love it!

Plot: Zombies. Guns. Shoot said zombies with said guns. Get rescued. Repeat. In a nutshell.

Not in a nutshell, you have four stereotypical characters. The Badass biker who is badass with a shotgun, President Obama...I mean a black office worker (Who was originally designed as a ganster) and a Vietnam veteran, who seems to kill anything no one else does. Or sees. Each campaign takes place in a different environment, and you are supposed to get to...oh wait, I forgot a character. A college girl who watched way to many old horror B-Movies. Anyway, you are supposed to be rescued. That's basically it for the story. You do hear a few things from the characters that somewhat describe them, but nothing amazing. The only parts that give anything about the story is during the in between scenes, where you are in safe-rooms. Messages have been written on the wall from people to other people, Infected kill scores, helpful (Not really) information and someone missing the Internet.

Gameplay: A lot of games are pretty good sinle-player, but sometimes much better when playing with others. Nothing says Multiplayer bigger than Left 4 Dead. A zombie FPS. An interesting cross over, which I thought was gonna be way to easy, until I found out the zombies run...which means when you set off a single car alarm, and are playing on hard, consider yourself royally boned. The game plays like a standard FPS, quite similar to that of Half-Life, that might have something to do with it being made by Valve, most popular known for their epic game, Portal. You get about 8 or so different weapons. Pistols, rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns and molotovs and pipe bombs. Your normal zombies are easy to kill by shooting them anywhere. There are also special zombies. The Hunter is a guy dressed like a shop lifter that will leap from great distances to tear at your nipples, whilst screaming like a loon. The Boomer is a giant fat guy that throws up on you, summoning more Infected to eat your face. Don't shoot him when you're too close, or he'll explode on you, calling even more face eaters. The Smoker has a giant tongue, which grabs you from afar and then tears at your shoulders, very kinky looking.

The Tank is a giant version of Hulk Hogan crossed with The Terminator...and then made bigger and slightly less attractive. It will smash anything out of its way just to get to you, hit you in the face and send you flying across the map. If too far away, it will tear a chunk of ground up and hurl it at you. And now for my favorite...The Witch. She sits in corners, or in the middle of your path and cries. She cries and cries and cries and then tears you apart if you disturb her from her crying. Seriously, stay away from her. Don't fire at her, don't point your light at her and DO NOT MAKE EMO JOKES! Witches take as much damage, if not more, than the Tank.

Another feature of the game is the AI Director. A program that takes into account how you play, and then decides where to place zombies Infected, and the specials. And the weapons. And health. In fact, everything but you is placed where-ever by the Director. The Director tries to make the game much more replayable by placing different things in different places all the time. If you saw a shotgun near the beginning, don't go there. there will only remain a witch, which spells "MY INTESTINES". To complete a chapter, you must get from the beginning of a level to the end, where a safe-room awaits filled with ammo, health and creepy written messages. There are five chapters in a campaign, with the ending involving holding up in a small area with nothing but you, your gun, a large amount of Infected and a number of Tanks.

Graphics: Left 4 Dead, when played by ones self on a screen looks amazing. You can see cities on fire far off in the distance, and you can see nametags on the dead bodies of all the nurses you just shot in the hospital. If you've played Half-Life and Portal before, you're not going to be that excited with the physics engine, as A: it's all been done before and B: You're going to spend more time worrying where the Infected are rather than how that mailbox didn't move when you ran into it, but a bigger box did. The sound is pretty awesome, and does creep you out at moments, even if the music sounds like it's years old. However, when played in split-screen mode, the game almost seems to lose a large portion of it's looks.

Overall: This game is much better played with others, because the friendly AI seems to like shooting normal infected than saving you from a Smoker. But no matter how many people you play this with, eventually it will get tiring, seeing as how you can complete the entire game (4 campaigns) in about four/five hours. That doesn't mean you will stop playing it, you just won't be playing it ALL the time like when you first got it. The game does have a pretty decent replayability, in the sense of things are different each time you play, but eventually you will realize you are still just running the same paces, with your normal shoot and kill strategy still working. Then again, you will ignore that for a while as you get the Achievements, some of which are fun. Like setting a Witch, or a Tank, on fire. Or trying to shoot a Witch in the head and killing her with a single shot.

I really want to give this game a four and a half... This game is awesome, one minute it is completely quiet, the next your being rushed by hordes upon hordes of zombies. The gameplay is easy to remember and the controls are simple.

One thing I didn't realize when buying this game was that you could play as the special infected and when I went to play versus I was thinking it would be gimmicky and stupid but in actual fact it works beautifully and it was been done well. If only there was a campaign made for the special infected.

The one thing that I think makes the game a 4.5 out of 5 is the fact that there is only 20 maps in total In which you go from point A to point B but this will be fixed soon because there will be Download content that will include a new mode called survival, which I'm presuming will mean you will have to survive for as long as possibly before you get overwhelmed.

Buy this game you will not regret it. : )

Left 4 Dead is hands down the best co-op experience ever. The game may be short but it is so replayable you won't care if you play the same campaign 10 times over and the finales at the end of each campaign are just awesome. As long as you have xbox live or friends available to play this is a fantastic game.