Left 4 Dead

[Goffs]

Re: Left 4 Dead

One thing that bugs me is it looks like the zombies are running. I'm the type of dude that likes my zombies to kinda trudge along with a limp. I'm all for zombie beasts running around at mach 2 and everything, but I like my zombie humans to be slow as hell.

ah old school zombies...i kinda agree but what kind of fun would you have if you can just walk by zombies and pop a few shots here and there it worked for resident evil since they limited the ammo but for this game it looks arcadey fun with friends running around trying to run away from the zombie horde...i cant wait to play this



but movie wise im old school i prefer the slow creeping death thats right outside the door...

[KENYON06]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Ok reading that preview, I am pretty excited for it even if it's not split screen. It sounds like a game I've been waiting for, for a long time.

I remember playing Resident Evil Outbreak for the first time online on PS2, and man, that stuff was epic. Nailgunning the doors shut and getting your teammates killed, or the feeling of being owned when you get incapacitated and your teammate picks you up and throws you down in a pile of zombies, was fun as hell. And then they released an update which allowed team killing....you know how that went. I like the possibilities this game may present, especially if theres any sort of interacting environment aside from doors.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Boss Infected in PC gamer

The cover story on the new March issue of PC Gamer highlights upcoming zombie games of 2008, featuring an article on the Left 4 Dead boss infected side. This is the first time since our preview almost a year ago that somebody outside of Valve has been able to both play and write about the experience, and could be taken as a positive indicator of development progress.

The article gives a general overview of the game, then dives into the individual bosses and describes either a story or some strategy of each. Something that has remained a mystery due to heavy development has been the boss infected respawn system, and PC Gamer has given us a glimpse of the current state of things:

Before I spawned, I could wander the map as an invisible entity, getting up close to Surivivors to observe the action and study their tactics in order to identify the weakest player. Then I climbed exclusive "zombie ladders" that gave me access to rooftops and railings where I could spawn out of sight.

..I could also see a bright glowing line that indicated a dynamic checkpoint; I could only spawn after a Survivor crossed that scrimmage line.

..while this mechanic will probably change in the final version, the idea is that the AI Director paces the game to give Survivors time to build up their suspense after large hordes attacks, and gives the boss infected adequate time to prepare their scares.

It's very unclear exactly how the system works, hopefully as they iron things out we'll get a better idea. So what did PC Gamer think of the boss infected side?

Making the survivors' lives hell has great sadistic appeal. Valve's ambition to institutionalize game griefing could really revolutionize online gaming.

The article concludes with the following:

What'll be interesting is how well this "house of horrors" mechanic holds up in the long run, when Survivors begin to learn all of each map's nooks and crannies. The game's designers told me that they're actually targeting the competitive Counter Strike crowd with Left 4 Dead, a group of gamers notorious for scrutinizing every multiplayer map detail for balance. Thats part of the reason Left 4 Dead is now scheduled for a fall 2008 release; Valve knows it has something special, and the team plans to keep play-testing, polishing, and iterating the game until it's perfect.

C-S Nation Preview Part 1

Frankly, I'm going to cut to the chase immediately and tell you exactly what you want to know. Yes, the game is amazing. No, the game wasn't near completed when I played it. Yes, you will need teamwork constantly here. There will be no John Rambos in Left 4 Dead. If you fly solo, you're dead, and that's not an exaggeration.

There's dismemberment, gore, human emotion, fear, and vomit. Yes, vomit. In short, this game has it all, makes no apologies, and is everything you could have possibly hoped for.

[baumy300]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Is this only playable online?

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

C-S Nation Preview Part 2

Up until this point, I've discussed various encounters with the player controlled Infected bosses, encounters with the AI controlled Infected, and other gameplay elements. It's now time to talk about the one and only encounter with the Witch, the only AI controlled boss.

The Witch only appears in the difficulties above that of Normal (Difficulties are: Normal, Hard, Expert, and one unknown one) and for good reason. To introduce such a character into the easier difficulty mode would turn away many players given the very deadly nature of the Witch. My encounter with her couldn't have come at a worse time. We were making our way through the halls of the hospital, on our way to our ultimate goal of the hospital's rooftop.

The hallways were eerie with a pale blue color that somehow stood out through the darkness. There were no external sources of light outside of our flashlights. I said it before, and I'm saying it again now - This game really knows how to build up the tension. It went from absolutely silent to an all out brawl in the span of a few seconds, as we're hit with another wave of Infected. The tight corridors made the fight more of a matter of ensuring all pathways were covered by an armed teammate ready to kill anything that moved.

The Infected came from both in front of us and from behind, racing towards us down that dark hallway we were walking. We were inching towards a doorway just a little bit further down the hall, as we clear away the last couple of Infected. It's silent again, except for one thing. I hear a faint murmur. At first, I thought it was a teammate talking and I was just too far away from them to hear clearly just what they were saying, but I realized we were all still grouped together.

The source of the sounds was quickly discovered. Situated in the middle of the room was a motionless figure. My host instructed me to turn off my flashlight and try not to make any noise unless I wanted to suffer a quick death as we had just come across the Witch. The Witch continues to mutter to herself, uttering seemingly nonsensical phrases broken up by what sounds like soft crying and whimpering. We try to creep on by her in the dark. Unfortunately for us, a Hunter was watching us from his position on a side wall. Waiting until we were only half way past the Witch, the Smoker strikes, quickly leaping from his hiding spot. Turning a bad situation worse, a few teammates begin to fire upon the Hunter before he has a chance to attack any more.

This, of course, stirs the Witch from her troubled slumber. At this point, I was trying to make my way past her, standing right next to her when she awoke. She lunges with cat-like reflexes towards a teammate who was a bit behind me. She immediately knocks him down causing him to bleed out. Still on top of her prey, she gets a shotgun blast from the side and a double barrage of rifle bullets tearing into her back.

She doesn't go down easily, but is quite a bit easier to take out than the Tank. Our teammate was lucky, this time, having suffered through an instant knockdown and a sped up bleed out time thanks to the Witch's relentless assault. We continue on to the rooftop.

With the tank's attack coming to an end, we make our way to the roof with no more interruptions. The roof has a raised landing pad fit for a helicopter, and also contains a building with a radio inside. We take our positions on top of the landing pad, able to look down and have a very clear view of the rest of the rooftop area, giving us plenty of opportunities to prepare for an attack. I was told that the nearby radio was the trigger, and that once it is activated the final sequence will begin. We were given a moment to prepare ourselves, checking to see that all weapons were fully loaded before a teammate activated the radio.

At first, it was just a massive assault on the helicopter pad by the AI Infected. Scores of them appeared from all areas as they made their way to the platform we were on. It was easy enough to take them out. It was easy, that is, until both a Smoker and a Boomer show up along with another wave of Infected. Our party starts to become disorganized. The plan of sticking to the helicopter pad had just been thrown out the window and it was now a mad scramble to try to pick off the enemies climbing up to our location. The Smoker is off to my left just below my position, and the Boomer was right in the middle heading towards us as fast as he could move.

Yet again, I was snagged by the Smoker's tongue and dragged towards the edge of the pad. A railing prevented me from being pulled further, however that does not mean I was so quick to escape death. The barrier halted my movement giving my teammates time to try to free me. The health was draining quickly from my player because once you're hooked by the tongue and halted by an object it just serves to tighten the tongue's grip and your character can be strangled to death where they stand, or so I was told.

Our team splits up even more once the adrenaline starts to kick in, and during epic moments like this, the adrenaline will kick in. The game will call upon all of your reflexes to make it past the final battle, especially on the harder difficulty modes that the game has to offer.

Overcome by the stream of enemies, our party slowly succumbs to death's icy grip. I try to revive a teammate that has fallen on a venting system off to the left of the helicopter pad. Unfortunately, I couldn't make the jump and quickly fell down to the level where the Infected were.

Coming from all angles, they struck quickly. I gave a few quick melee attacks to knock them back, after which I managed to put a few of the Infected down for the count with my shotgun. However, all the firepower left in my weapon could not possibly hold them all back. With their twisted fingers lashing out at me relentlessly, I had finally died. I entered a bleed out period and with no teammates left to revive myself or anyone else, our round came to a climactic close. There would be no rescue for any of the four survivors tonight.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Left 4 Dead Xbox 360 Revealed

The March 2008 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine features Left 4 Dead on its cover, revealing the Xbox 360 version for the first time. OXM visited Valve where they played the Hospital and Cornfield scenarios on the PC and they also had the chance to see Cornfield running on Xbox 360 development hardware. This is the first time that the press has been able to see the Xbox 360 version, which still has some ways to go to match the PC: "Valve didn't let us play the 360 edition of Left 4 Dead because it was too early and unbalanced - apparently, the zombies were so overpowered that humans stood no chance." And about the graphics, "'The 360 look is almost to where the PC is, and we'll get it up to the PC look before we ship,' promises Faliszek."

The five page article contains about 8 new screenshots along with some others we've seen before, with some nice lighting going on. The multiplayer capabilities of the Xbox 360 were discussed with Doug Lombardi:

Left 4 Dead will feature four-player co-op and eight-player, 4-on-4 Versus matches via Xbox Live or System Link. What about a split screen mode? "That's the most relevant question that we can't answer for you today," replies Valve's Doug Lombardi with a laugh. "It's a good thing to want. Being able to play two people split-screen ... four player would be even better, but I don't think four- would happen. But for us, the idea of having two people play split-screen, playing co-op on the couch and letting the NPC's fill out the rest ... it's a pretty big feature for us to chase. But right now, we're not ready to say if it's in or it's out."

The other big news from this article is that a separate game company named Certain Affinity is handling the Xbox 360 version. Certain Affinity is a small game developer founded in November 2006 based in Austin, Texas with about 16 employees. Their first product was Halo 2's Blastacular Map Pack for Bungie and Microsoft. Certain Affinity is led by Max Hoberman, a 10-year Bungie veteran who was multiplayer lead for both Halo 2 and Halo 3. OXM explained how the work is divided between the three (now two, since Turtle Rock Studios has been absorbed by Valve):

Left 4 Dead is the work of three companies - Valve Software, Turtle Rock Studios, and Certain Affinity. As the creators of The Orange Box and the Source engine, Valve is handling the games core software functionality. Certain Affinity (the Texas company created by ex-Bungie veteran Max Hoberman) was brought on to handle 360-specific elements like matchmaking, Live support, console customization, and 360 gameplay tweaks. Turtle Rock - developer of Counter-Strike for the original Xbox and the Pc's more recent Counter-Strike: Source - owns Left 4 Dead's design. Monsters, level work, weapons, and especially the game's A.I. all fall to the Turtle Rock crew.

Max Hoberman was in charge of the entire online system for Halo 2 and 3, including matchmaking and the party system. Having that experience behind the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead is very exciting - as I understand it, Halo 2 and 3 did pretty well in the online arena! Some other things of note in the OXM article: The escape vehicle on Cornfield is a "heavily armed flatbed" truck. They played with NPC teammates that "behaved impressively like human players", which is the first time we've seen Survivor AI mentioned.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

IGN has some new impressions and screens up.

Left 4 Dead Hands-On

When actually spawning as one of the three primary boss infected types, you get to pick the exact location to warp in. Initially you're a kind of zombie ghost, and can run around a stage looking for the ideal spot for materialization. It has to be a certain distance away from the band of survivors, though. You can't just spawn in on their heads and start clawing faces.

We got a chance to check out a new map this time around, which takes the survivors through a series of abandoned warehouses, fields, rural mountain paths, and ends in a farmhouse standoff. Each section of the campaign took place during a different time of day, from sunset to deep night, and the environments made for some unnerving zombie battles. While playing as the survivors, it was quite a thrill to creep along abandoned train tracks until zombies bounded from behind a shadowed tree line or tumbled down a rocky mountainside.

During the farmhouse defense section at the end, we found ourselves and team crowded into a dimly lit second story. The team attempted to barricade itself in the upstairs hallway, closing all the doors leading to bedrooms. The monsters started to stream in from downstairs, and we picked them off as they vaulted upwards with shotgun blasts, rifle bursts and melee swipes.

After a while we noticed one of the bedroom doors was starting to splinter. A hunter was smashing it through with his claws, and by the time we'd focused on stopping him, the door was already broken. Leaving our team behind, we walked forward into the bedroom to make sure it was clear. Our mistake. As we approached a window to look outside, a smoker perched on an abandoned car in the driveway darted out his tongue and ripped us right out of the second floor, flinging us to the ground below. A tank, which was on fire at the time, then rumbled out from a Molotov blaze on the house's veranda and smashed us across the face, killing us.

Anyway, the game's an absolute blast to play on the survivor side. The gunplay feels solid, the gameplay quick, varied and fluid, and the sound crisp. There's also a definite sense of mood, greatly augmented by the strikingly expressive facial animations of the survivors. Their faces when injured look genuinely concerned for their lives, so much so we couldn't help but feel sorry for them. This was probably the most memorable aspect of the play session. We went in expecting generally mindless zombie blasting, and emerged from the experience with a lingering emotional attachment to the game's characters.

Finally, a quick note for online matches. Valve is setting it up so if a player drops out in the middle of a campaign, they'll immediately be taken over by an AI. Should another player join up afterwards, that they'll take the AI's place, ensuring a game will continue on even if a majority of the players leave the game.

[jmood88]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Does the game actually look like that or are those cut scenes?

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Not from cut-scenes, but they are from the PC version, which will be the best looking version.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Shows the witch at the end.

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More footage in this video

http://www.gametrailers.com/gametrailerstv_player.php?ep=10&ch=3&sd=1

...

[Smiley79]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Oh, that witch is something else. I don't know what I'd do if I came up on something like that. Especially since you know that if she hears you, you're essentially dead where you stand.

This game is a must-get for me, no question.

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

RPS Interview: Valve’s Chet Faliszek

RPS: An organisational role, rather than writing…

Faliszek: There’s a load of stuff going on with a game like Left 4 Dead, like the conversion to 360 and so on. We have Certain Affinity handling that, but we need to work with them to get everything in place the way we and Turtle Rock wanted it. Certain Affinity are a bunch of guys from Bungie that we hired exactly for that. They’re making sure we’re not just making the Xbox controller working with the game and leaving it at that.

RPS: Do you think gamers really “get” Left 4 Dead? The survivor stuff is pretty straightforward, but there’s this whole asymmetric FPS thing going on… it’s different.

Faliszek: When we describe it people say “yeah, we get the zombie game idea”, and then they actually play it and they say “oh, now we understand”. It’s hard to translate that fact. It’s a game where you know where your team-mates are and you know what they’re doing, and you always have to be aware of them. More than any other game it has that thing where you have to work with the other players. When gamers get that they click and have the “oh wow” moment. That’s what it’s about: four guys trying to survive together. It’s not about the zombie thing, or the horror, it’s about these four characters.

RPS: It’s not like a survival horror experience, though. It’s more intense, less scary.

Faliszek: Yeah, I liken it to the final moments of Counter-Strike. It’s that bit where you’re the last one or two guys on the team and everyone is watching. If you screw up then everyone knows. In Team Fortress you can have a bad day and no one will really notice. You can be off somewhere spamming rockets and no one cares. But in Left 4 Dead you’re always on stage. You throw a grenade into the middle of everyone and they’re going to know it. That’s the intensity of thing.

RPS: So what has happened in the year since I last played Left 4 Dead?

Faliszek: Oh, nothing.

RPS: Okay. That wraps it up.

Faliszek: Ha, well there’s our whole crazy process of playtesting, bringing in outside testers, iterating again and again. It takes it down a load of paths that don’t pan out. And then there’s some other stuff we want to do in terms of develop UI and achievements. I mean, with Valve we don’t tend to set a date and then try and make that date, we set a goal for the kind of game we want to make and then work towards that. We know roughly what we want the end product to be, we hit that, and keep experimenting. So over the year there’s been a number of iterations, loads of art, and plenty of experimentation.

[jmood88]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Is this game strictly multiplayer?

[Flawless]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Is this game strictly multiplayer?

Yes

[chadskee]

Re: Left 4 Dead

Yes

No. You can have AI play as your survivors.

The only thing that is cloudy in my mind is, you have to complete a certain amount of missions per chapter and at the end of the last chapter you have your last stand?

I think it would have been fun just to have a multiplayer online for 4 people to play and save their game to continue later, where you were basically placed in a huge gloomy city at night trying to escape. An enormous city with a bunch of easter eggs, and other things to surprise you, I think that would have been great but this is alright as well.

Looking like a purchase for me so far.