Left 4 Dead
The higher difficulties are also pretty much exclusively for those playing co-op with friends rather than solo with the admittedly very capable bots. Despite managing much of the gameplay on advanced, the AI controlled survivors fail utterly at handling the hectic finale on higher difficulties, bunching up and easily getting confused by allies and enemies on multiple levels.
It’s certainly a shame considering how the bots support real players throughout the rest of the campaign so well and is a real frustration if you don’t have enough Steam friends online that are willing to make up the numbers.
And that’s where perhaps our biggest concern is with Left 4 Dead – its greatest strength, the awesome four player co-op, is also its greatest weakness. The game is nowhere near as fun played solo with bots and you’ll find the fun increases directly with the number of friends that join you, reaching a point approaching gaming nirvana when you’ve got a full team working in sync.
As if the challenge of playing co-op on expert wasn’t enough, Valve have also included an eight player versus option for the No Mercy and Blood Harvest campaigns, allowing two teams to square off as the survivors and boss infected respectively, with the chance to undo all the survivors' teamwork and coordination as the hideous bosses.
For the survivors, the experience is very much the same, except the boss infected are now driven by intelligent players rather than the AI director. Because of this, they are, unsurprisingly, much more sneaky and co-ordinated.
Once the survivors leave the safe room the infected can move around the level in a ghost mode, choosing to spawn anywhere so long as it’s sufficiently far away from the survivors before doing their best to thwart their efforts. Points are awarded for damage done to the survivors as a result of your special attacks. When the survivors have either reached the next safe room (or in all likelihood all died) the teams swap, allowing both sets of players to dish it out as the bosses.
It’s all great fun, with the mischievous thrill of emerging from a side room as a Boomer to vomit all over the survivors (and thus calling down a mighty swarm of zombies onto the unfortunate player) being our particular favourite highlight. With that said though, the Hunter and Smoker are also very entertaining while the Tank is a joyful exercise in Incredible Hulk like smashing and general mayhem.
The problem is that unless the survivors are experienced at both the level and the game as a whole the infected will have an enormous advantage, easily picking off stragglers and ambushing lost groups of survivors. While this will likely resolve itself as people get better at the game, versus mode, unlike the rest of Left 4 Dead, is most certainly not n00b friendly and we’d encourage people to play through all four campaigns a few times before trying it out. If you don't, you risk having your butt whooped in a rather convincing fashion.
It’s certainly a shame considering how the bots support real players throughout the rest of the campaign so well and is a real frustration if you don’t have enough Steam friends online that are willing to make up the numbers.
And that’s where perhaps our biggest concern is with Left 4 Dead – its greatest strength, the awesome four player co-op, is also its greatest weakness. The game is nowhere near as fun played solo with bots and you’ll find the fun increases directly with the number of friends that join you, reaching a point approaching gaming nirvana when you’ve got a full team working in sync.
As if the challenge of playing co-op on expert wasn’t enough, Valve have also included an eight player versus option for the No Mercy and Blood Harvest campaigns, allowing two teams to square off as the survivors and boss infected respectively, with the chance to undo all the survivors' teamwork and coordination as the hideous bosses.
For the survivors, the experience is very much the same, except the boss infected are now driven by intelligent players rather than the AI director. Because of this, they are, unsurprisingly, much more sneaky and co-ordinated.
Once the survivors leave the safe room the infected can move around the level in a ghost mode, choosing to spawn anywhere so long as it’s sufficiently far away from the survivors before doing their best to thwart their efforts. Points are awarded for damage done to the survivors as a result of your special attacks. When the survivors have either reached the next safe room (or in all likelihood all died) the teams swap, allowing both sets of players to dish it out as the bosses.
It’s all great fun, with the mischievous thrill of emerging from a side room as a Boomer to vomit all over the survivors (and thus calling down a mighty swarm of zombies onto the unfortunate player) being our particular favourite highlight. With that said though, the Hunter and Smoker are also very entertaining while the Tank is a joyful exercise in Incredible Hulk like smashing and general mayhem.
The problem is that unless the survivors are experienced at both the level and the game as a whole the infected will have an enormous advantage, easily picking off stragglers and ambushing lost groups of survivors. While this will likely resolve itself as people get better at the game, versus mode, unlike the rest of Left 4 Dead, is most certainly not n00b friendly and we’d encourage people to play through all four campaigns a few times before trying it out. If you don't, you risk having your butt whooped in a rather convincing fashion.
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