Hell came to Earth. You must send it back

Left 4 Dead

Developer: Valve

Publisher: Valve

Platform: PC (Reviewed), 360

Price: $49.99 (Shop.Ars)

Rating: Mature

Valve seems dedicated to the cause of multiplayer gaming on the PC. Sure, you can get Left 4 Dead on the 360, and I'm sure many people will enjoy it, but the best way to play this game is with a mouse and a keyboard, headphones on, screaming at your teammates that you're surrounded and need backup. You can also play the game in single-player mode, and it's not a bad time, but without your friends alongside you reacting to the game and later telling stories of your play sessions night after night, the title does lose something. Mark my words: you'll want to play this game on the PC with three people you know, and it's best played in the dark.





There will be blood

The setup is simple, and the story is essentially meaningless: the world has been overrun by zombies. You are with a group of four survivors desperately trying to get to some place safe. That's it. Each "movie," the game's version of levels, ends with "The Survivors have Escaped." The characters may be paper-thin, but the archetypes work, mainly due to the many lines of dialog that they spout in different situations. You'll never really learn where they come from or who they are, but each one has gobs of personality. In a game that never plays the same way twice, there is a remarkable amount of humor and laughs to be had while fending off the zombie horde.

Each movie begins with a poster, giving you some idea of what you're getting into. You fight through the four sections, and then there's a finale where the game throws insane amounts of bad guys at you. If you survive—a single player can beat each movie if his or her teammates all succumb—you get an achievement. It sounds sparse, and it certainly is, but the trick here is the "director," a nifty piece of artificial intelligence that makes sure each movie is different every time. If you're doing well as a team, expect more enemies and a tougher challenge. If you're getting beaten up, you'll see fewer enemies. If you're really getting torn to pieces? Sometimes the director throws you a tank, one of the game's special enemies. You see, the director is something of a dick.

If you play the game in single-player on easy, then you can see everything there is to see in about four hours. That being said, this is a game that has caused me and my friends to spend hours and hours in the demo. The demo has two levels, one of which is half the size it is in the full game. The full game has twenty levels, in four movies. Even though I plan on beating the game again tonight with a new group of people, in one sitting, I know I'll want to play again the night after that. Read on to see why this game is so special, and why twenty levels can last forever.