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Left 4 Dead

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Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead box art
Developer(s)Valve Corporation
Publisher(s)Valve Corporation
EngineSource
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360
Release
November 18, 2008
Genre(s)Survival horror
First-person shooter
Mode(s)Cooperative multiplayer

Left 4 Dead is an upcoming multiplayer co-operative survival horror first-person shooter game by Valve Corporation. The game has been built using Valve's Source engine and will be available on Steam and the Xbox 360.

Left 4 Dead puts four human playable or AI controlled survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic against hordes of aggressive "Infected" zombies in a cinematic backdrop in which the players "star" as each character in a fictional movie. The Survivors' goal is to help each other make it through various scenarios to safety. The Infected are controlled by an AI that dynamically balances difficulty and mood depending on the players' progress and situation. In an alternate game mode, human players can control up to four different monsters with special abilities and cooperate to stop the Survivor players.

The expected release date for Left 4 Dead is November 18, 2008 in the United States and November 21, 2008 in Europe to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the release of Half-Life.[5][6] A five-minute trailer was released on Halloween.[7] A public demo was released on November 6 for pre-purchasers and was released for the general public on November 11 for both systems. The demo contains the first two out of five maps of the "No Mercy" campaign and is playable in both single player and multi-player. Left 4 Dead went gold on November 13, 2008.


Gameplay

Left 4 Dead is played in first person. Players take control of the four main characters of the game, known as the Survivors. If four human players are not available to play, the remaining Survivors can be AI-controlled bots. They play through the levels fighting off the Infected, which are humans who have been infected with an unknown virus.

The game is focused on cooperation and team play; coloured outlines of teammates are visible through walls to help players stick together and coordinate their movement, and Survivors can be knocked down by the Infected and only helped up by another player. If a teammate is knocked down after being helped up twice, without tending to his wounds in between, the player will experience a distorted black and white vision, and the next takeout will kill the player, forcing them to wait until the survivors find a safe room before respawning. There are respawn areas scattered around the map that can be opened to find respawned survivors.[8]

"Boss Infected" also command special attacks, such as a Hunter's pin, Boomer's vomit, the Smoker's choke, and the Tank's rock throw, which require assistance from a teammate to get out of or to get back up after being knocked down. Survivors can also share first-aid kits and help each other heal. Left 4 Dead has full friendly fire that cannot be switched off, increasing the need for caution around other Survivors.[9]

The Survivors communicate by voice commands that are accessed by quick menus, and some will also sound off automatically when doing such things as reloading or spotting Infected. Over 1000 unique lines have been recorded for each Survivor.[9] Additional communication of player actions is conveyed through character lights. Also, weapon-mounted flashlights and muzzle flashes help the players in determining whether their companions are shooting, performing melee attacks, reloading or moving. Due to control issues and to the fact that players will probably be using a LIVE headset, the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead will omit the quick phrases feature.[10]

The game is experienced through four scenarios that take place in various urban and rural locales, such as a hospital, an airport and a murky countryside. Each scenario is divided into several shorter sections marked by safehouse checkpoints, where players can heal, re-arm, calm their nerves, save their progress and retrieve players who were killed.[11] The levels are neither linear nor completely open-ended or free-roaming. There are a number of alternate routes to follow with more supplies and alternate objectives.[12] At the end of each scenario, the players must defend a position from an onslaught of Infected until rescue arrives.[9] Each scenario lasts between 45 and 75 minutes.[13]

AI and the Director

The artificial intelligence of Left 4 Dead features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty called the Director. Instead of set spawn points for enemies, the Director places enemies and pick-ups (e.g. weapons, bombs etc.) in varying positions and numbers based upon each player's current situation, status, skill and location, creating a new experience for each playthrough.[9] The Director also creates mood and tension with emotional cues such as visual effects, dynamic music and character communication.[10]

Versus mode

Left 4 Dead will introduce a new 8 player versus experience. In the deathmatch Versus mode, four additional players can take control of powerful Infected with unique abilities, amongst the other AI-controlled Infected. The playable Infected numbers are limited so players must select their preferred Infected and wait for it to spawn, with the Tank as the exception, it being able to only spawn once per scenario. The Infected have the ability to see Survivors through the walls at a certain range if the Survivors are running, have the flashlight on, or are talking. The Infected can also see in the dark, unlike the Survivors. Infected spawn ahead of the Survivors and can, if they stay still, see a marker for their likely path of advance so they can set up ambushes. Throughout levels, Infected-only ways up buildings are marked with symbols. These can be climbed and used for ambushes, especially with the Infected immunity to falling damage.[citation needed] Versus mode will be playable on half of the maps that come with the game.

Award system

Left 4 Dead will include Steam's achievement system, recording players' accomplishments and mishaps. Part of the intent of this system is to help players to avoid griefers and to find teammates with more experience. The Xbox 360 version will feature 50 official achievements that differ from Steam's achievement system.

Xbox 360 version

The Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead has the same game modes as the PC version. The game supports split screen and system link play.[14] Players can mix split screen and online play in the same game.[15] A new matchmaking system is also included for online play.[10]

Valve will run dedicated servers on Xbox Live for Left 4 Dead.[15]


Survivor characters

The final design of the Survivors. Left to right: Francis, Bill, Zoey, Louis
File:L4DP.JPG
The original design of the Survivors. Left to right: Louis, Francis, Zoey, Bill

There are four playable human characters in the game (hence the "4" in the title).[16] Early plans were for players to be randomly assigned to characters, though in the final release players can choose any character they would like so long as another player has not selected it first.[9]

  • Francis is a tattoo-covered biker.
  • Zoey is a college student and horror movie expert.
  • Louis is a Junior Systems Analyst in his company's IT department.
  • Bill is a Green Beret and a Vietnam veteran.

First tier weapons

Survivors are armed with various firearms divided into two tiers. The first tier is available for everyone to select from when the scenario starts in addition to the one or two Springfield Armory 1911 pistols[17] all Survivors always carry. The pistols have unlimited ammo and are the only weapon that Survivors can use when they are knocked down by the Infected. Survivors all have a melee attack, which is very useful as you can use it to push away infected by hitting them. Survivors use this to push infected away and then attack them, or to get time to reload. Also, you can reload, melee, and continue the reload process throughout the melee attack.

Second tier weapons

Weapons in the second tier can be found throughout the maps and at the end of the scenario, just before the final fight. The second tier, in addition to having a wider variety of weapons, also provides weapons that fulfill the same role as first tier weapons but are inherently better, such as replacing the Uzi submachine gun with the M16A3 assault rifle - and the standard pump-action Shotgun with the Benelli M4 Super 90 shotgun.

Additional weapons

In addition to firearms, Survivors can also carry either a Molotov cocktail or a pipe bomb bedecked with bright strobe lights and a high pitched siren squeal designed to attract the Infected.[18] In addition to these weapons, miniguns can be found mounted in defensible positions in some areas of the game, while gas cans and propane tanks could be placed and set off for a wide-area fire, similar to the Molotov cocktail. A player can also lose health by walking into the fire. The player would burn for a few seconds, losing health until the fire is extinguished.

Additional items

Each survivor is able to carry a single first-aid kit which will restore a fraction of health depending on how damaged the player is (a player who is close to death would benefit more from a first-aid kit than one who has taken little damage). First-aid kits are primarily found in the safe rooms at the end of each level. Also scattered about the levels are pain killers which grant a temporary boost to a survivor's health. Any survivor can heal or give pain pills to a teammate.

Infected characters

The Infected are the Survivors' foes in Left 4 Dead, and they appear to be partly inspired by the infected from several modern films, including Dawn of the Dead (2004) and 28 Days Later.[19] The Infected, as opposed to the slow, shuffling zombies associated with George A. Romero's Dead series, the Resident Evil series and Half-Life, are fast and agile, creating quite a formidable foe. They can be dealt with easily on their own, but in great numbers are difficult to defeat. In addition, there are five mutated Infected who have their own special mutant abilities and are more powerful than the regular Infected. Four of the six Infected characters are playable in Versus mode.

  • The Horde is a massive group of normal Infected who fast attack at once similar to 28 days later, using their sheer number to attempt to overcome the Survivors. Hordes can occur due to a Survivor being splattered by a Boomer, setting off a car alarm, at seemingly random moments, or staying at an area for too long. The Horde is prefaced by a musical horn cue in the soundtrack.
  • The Boomer is a hugely obese Infected that can spew projectile vomit at the Survivors, blinding them temporarily and attracting swarms of nearby Infected to them. Boomers blow up when they die, spraying nearby Survivors with bile that also attracts the Infected. Boomers also have the ability to hurl themselves off buildings and detonate on impact with the ground.
  • The Hunter is an agile Infected who can climb walls and jump over rooftops, similar to I Am Legend Infected and Half-Life 2's Fast Zombie. Crouching for some time gives the Hunter access to a powerful pounce attack that pins a Survivor down until the Hunter is knocked off. The Hunter can be identified by its distinctive scream.
  • The Smoker has a long, whip-like tongue which can stretch up to 15 meters (50 feet). It can strangle Survivors and drag them away from their team mates, or dangle them a foot off the ground if pulled from a rooftop, similar to Half-Life's Barnacle and Resident Evil's Licker. When the Smoker is destroyed, it leaves a haze of green smoke that distorts the players' vision in the game and causes the character to start coughing, preventing them from using voice commands.
  • The Tank, a huge, muscular, and noisy Infected, and bears some resemblance to The Hulk is capable of throwing large items such as cars or blocks of concrete. Players cannot choose to be the Tank; infected players are randomly chosen to spawn as one. The Tank can take a large amount of damage before dying and can deal a lot of damage. The tank has a "Frustration Meter" which means that control will be taken away from a human player if the Tank does not engage the survivors for a certain time when playing as the Tank. The Tank's presence is foreshadowed by a musical cue and the area quaking. The Tank also has the odd habit of dying after long periods of time, probably due to the Frustration Meter.
  • The Witch is the only mutant Infected that cannot be played by human players and appears in all four difficulty modes.[20] They are normally passive and can be avoided by careful players, but flashlight beams, physical contact, prolonged staring, and loud sounds such as gunfire or car alarms in their vicinity rouse them, causing them to attack whichever player startled them. The lethality of a witch is dependent on the difficulty of the game, and on the "expert" difficulty, the witch can kill (not just knock down) a player in one attack. They can take a good amount of punishment, but die far more easily than a tank. Witches can easily be detected by their loud, distinctive crying and the eerie choir music that plays. When they take sufficient damage or kill the player that startled them, they retreat covering their face and screaming horrifically.

Development

File:L4d filmic.jpg
Before and after the application of cinematic effects

Development on Left 4 Dead started in mid-2005.[21] Valve aimed to create a horror film-inspired game that merges single player games' character-driven narrative structure with multiplayer games' social interaction and high replayability.[10] The game was first revealed in the Christmas 2006 publication of PC Gamer UK with a six-page article describing a playthrough at Valve's headquarters. A teaser was released with The Orange Box. The game was first playable at the Showdown 2007 LAN in San Jose and at QuakeCon 2007.[22] Turtle Rock Studios announced Left 4 Dead on November 20 2006,[23] and was acquired by Valve Corporation on January 10, 2008 because of the game and long-standing relationship between the companies.[24][25] Certain Affinity announced in February 2008 that they are assisting with the Xbox 360 version of the game. The game opened up to pre-purchasing on Valve's Steam system on October 15 2008.[26]

Left 4 Dead uses the latest version of Valve's Source engine, with improvements such as multi-core processor support and physics-based animation to more realistically portray hair and clothing, and to improve physics interaction with enemies when shot or shoved in different body parts. Animation was also improved to allow characters to lean realistically when moving in curved paths. Rendering and artificial intelligence were scaled up to allow for greater number of enemies who can navigate the world in better ways, such as climbing, jumping or breaking obstacles. Lighting has been enhanced with new self-shadowing normal mapping and advanced shadow rendering that is important to convey information about the environment and player actions.[27][10] Wet surfaces and fog are used to create mood.[28][29]

Many kinds of post processing cinematic visual effects inspired by horror movies have been added to the game. There is dynamic colour correction that accentuates details based on importance, contrast and sharpening to focus attention on critical areas, film grain to expose details or imply details in dark areas, and vignetting to evoke tension and a horror-film look.[10]

Demo

Early access to the Left 4 Dead demo for people who pre-ordered the game began Thursday, November 6, 2008 on both Windows and Xbox 360. It gave users access to both online and single player play in 2 levels of one story within the game. This promotion is being offered in addition to the 10% savings for those who pre-order and applies to all Steam Windows pre-orders and all Windows and Xbox 360 pre-orders from GameStop and EB Games in North America. However, many of the people who pre-ordered the game through GameStop did not receive their demo codes on time to play the demo on release. This may have been due to a glitch in GameStop's website, which allowed anyone who signed up to receive the demo key, whether they had pre-ordered or not.[citation needed]

As of November 11, the Left 4 Dead demo has been made available to all Windows and Xbox 360 gamers worldwide, with no obligation to purchase. The online portion of the demo concludes on November 18, when Left 4 Dead will be made available at retail outlets across North America and worldwide via Steam, in order to use the dedicated servers for the full game.

Demo private server issues

The demo had many server problems and game glitches, primarily Valve's strategy for server management which made it impossible to set up a dedicated private server with administrator controls.[30] However, a stream of patches led to the availability of a server browser and basic private server functionality as well as Valve's acknowledgment of player concerns.[30] It appears that a patch released just before the game itself has resolved many of the connection issues that demo players were having.[31]

Reception

On October 28, 2008, Valve reported that preorders for Left 4 Dead had beaten those of The Orange Box by 95% after the Steam pre-order was launched.[32] Left 4 Dead has received a 9.5 out of 10 on OXM.[33] Edge Magazine awarded Left 4 Dead an 9/10 in their November issue. [citation needed]. IGN gave the game a 9.0 out of 10 for both the PC and 360 versions on November 17, 2008. [34]

See also

References

  1. ^ "British Board of Film Classification". BBFC. 2008-11-08.
  2. ^ "Office of Film and Literature Classification". OFLC. 2008-11-08.
  3. ^ "Pan European Game Information". PEGI. 2008-11-08.
  4. ^ "Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (German Voluntary Monitoring Organisation of Entertainment Software)". USK. 2008-11-08.
  5. ^ a b "Left 4 Dead". Steam. Valve Corporation. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  6. ^ Faylor, Chris (2008-08-25). "Left 4 Dead Delayed, Now Due November 18". Shacknews. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  7. ^ "Holy Shit, L4D Opening Cinematic". Left 4 Dead 411. Valve Corporation. 2008-10-31. Retrieved 2008-11-08.
  8. ^ "IGN Command Prompt Podcast, Episode 21". IGN PC. 2008-08-14.
  9. ^ a b c d e "Left 4 Dead Hands-on Preview - Survivor Side". Left 4 Dead 411. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  10. ^ a b c d e f Gabe Newell. Making Left 4 Dead E3 2008 Presentation (Video presentation). Valve Corporation. {{cite AV media}}: Unknown parameter |year2= ignored (help)
  11. ^ "Left 4 Dead Hands-on Previews". Shacknews. 2008-01-17. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  12. ^ "GameSpot Video: Left 4 Dead E3 2008 Stage Show Demo". GameSpot. 2008-07-23. Retrieved 2008-07-23.
  13. ^ Chan, Norman (2008-07-21). "E3 2008: Left4Dead Interview. New Graphics, Weapons, and Steam Achievement Details". Maximum PC. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  14. ^ "Left 4 Dead". Xbox.com. Microsoft. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
  15. ^ a b "Left 4 Dead for Xbox 360 Using Dedicated Servers on Live". 1UP. 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2008-08-28.
  16. ^ Linde, Aaron (2008-07-16). "Left 4 Dead E3 Preview: New Characters, New Weapons, New Details". Shacknews. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  17. ^ "Left 4 Dead Information - FAQ". Left 4 Dead 411. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  18. ^ "Left 4 Dead Information - FAQ". Left 4 Dead 411. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  19. ^ Rossignol, Jim (2006-12-12). "Preview: Left 4 Dead". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  20. ^ "Left 4 Dead Infected Bosses: Witch". Left 4 Dead 411. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  21. ^ Guttridge, Luke (2008-05-01). "Valve Software's Doug Lombardi interview". play.tm. Retrieved 2008-08-20.
  22. ^ "First Left 4 Dead In-Game Footage/Pics Caught At Showdown LAN 2007". Gaming Today. FileFront. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  23. ^ "Turtle Rock and Valve Announce Left 4 Dead". Shacknews. 2006-11-20. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  24. ^ "Valve Acquires Turtle Rock Studios". Steam. Valve Corporation. 2008-01-10. Retrieved 2008-01-10.
  25. ^ "Outta The Bag". Certain Affinity. 2008-02-04. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  26. ^ "Left 4 Dead Pre-Purchase Infection on Now". Valve Corporation. 2008-10-15. Retrieved 2008-10-25.
  27. ^ Callaham, John (2007-03-22). "Left 4 Dead Interview". FiringSquad. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
  28. ^ Valve Corporation (July 2008). "How Valve Connects Art Direction to Gameplay" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-08-02.
  29. ^ Carless, Simon (2008-07-31). "In-Depth: How Valve Makes Art To Enhance Gameplay". GameSetWatch. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  30. ^ a b "Server socialism: Valve's fumbles mar Left 4 Dead demo". 2008-11-07.
  31. ^ "Left 4 Dead Demo Update Released". 2008-11-17.
  32. ^ Left 4 Dead Tops Orange Box Pre-orders by 95%, Valve Launches New Contest
  33. ^ Giant Bomb review of Left 4 Dead
  34. ^ IGN: Left 4 Dead Review
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