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L4D Demo First Impressions

Well it's been a while coming seeing as though the demo for L4D finished up a few days ago but I've decided to post what I think about it. Also this post was written a while back but it's been a busy few days so I figured I'd store it away.

Firstly L4D is a Steam game, availible via the steam client or from a local game retailer which will simply load the game files onto your system and add a licence to steam. Might as well just buy it through steam if you have a decent connection.

L4D is availible online through Steam for $49.99 (please note people that that IS USD) they also have a special going for a 4 pack, the reason for which will be obvious when you read down a bit!

L4D tries to set itself apart in that the campaign is designed to be played by 4 human players. Of course you can play it by yourself with AI controlling the other four players or you can play it online with 3 other people. For the demo I played by myself as I don't have decent gameplaying net atm.

The game makes a huge deal out of it's "AI Director" and rightly so. This neat little system helps keep the game fresh, even after playing the 2 demo levels 8 or 9 times over in varying difficulty levels. Sometimes the Zombies will burst out of a wall, sometimes a hoard will come flying out of alleyway towards you and sometimes you'll even get pulled up towards the roof of a building by a Zombie hiding on the roof.

It quickly becomes obvious that this game is meant to be played by 4 humans as the game reminds you that staying together is important if you want to survive, and that becomes very true if you push the difficulty up a few notches. If you go off by yourself you can quickly find yourself surrounded by 50 Zombies all wanting a peace of your juicy juicy flesh, and there's only so many shells in a pump action!

It's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when at the beginning you rip through the Zombies easily, able to get away with just your single pistol. That is until you realise that Zombies aren't dangerous when they're on their own, it's when theres forty or fifty of them coming at you down an alleyway that you find yourself in real trouble, and as I said before, it's only so long before you have to reload, and it's that reload time that will really get you screwed over!

I would have some screenies here but I neglected to take any while the game was still open in demo mode so there are none. Rest assured the visuals are nice, but it's mowing down a hundred or so undead corpses as they charge towards you that I really enjoyed.

Highlight - Turning off the torch in a pitch black room and using the flare from my shotgun to aim my next shot and blow the head off a charging Zombie!

Lowlight - Teammates AI sometimes was a little dodgy, it's hard to tell the difference between a mass of undead and my mates!

Overall rating - 8.5/10

Hopefully the first of many game reviews