The quick and the undead - Military Video Games, computer games, games, gaming - Navy Times

The quick and the undead

Isn’t it lucky how every time zombies attack, some thoughtful Good Samaritan has sprinkled the city with piles of crew-served weapons for use in fending off the undead? You will make good use of the stockpiled shotguns, M16s and Gatling guns in the last great pre-Christmas shooter “Left 4 Dead,” because if you don’t, you’ll be zombie food.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I’m not enough of a game historian to know whether “Left 4 Dead” is the first title in which you can be bitten by a zombie, join the horde and come back to feast on the living, but it’s the first one I’ve tried.

In “Left 4 Dead,” you play as one of four human survivors in a city suffering from a bad outbreak of zombification. Your band must stick together to avoid being consumed by the stumbling, groaning army of former neighbors. You can play by yourself in a single-player mode; with three other online players in the campaign mode; or in a four-on-four, humans-vs.-zombies death match.

The graphics and sound design are pleasantly eerie. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the spookiness of the game, which typically wouldn’t be my pinch of snuff. That could have to do with the rock-solid movement and weapons in the game, as well as the focus on combat, as opposed to scary surprises. “Left 4 Dead” doesn’t hide its monsters so they can jump from behind corners; it makes them unpleasant so you look forward to killing them.

The main adversaries in the game are your average, working-man zombies, lumbering around with the standard yen for sweet, sweet human flesh. They pose a threat when they attack at high speed in groups, but they’re manageable so long as you have plenty of ammo. The real challenge in “Left 4 Dead” comes from a set of high-skill zombies, gifted with additional capabilities: One can lasso you with a lizardlike tongue; one can leap hundreds of feet to pounce; and one huge Baby Huey zombie explodes when shot, showering the place with devastating zombie goo.

Fortunately, you advance through the game with your three counterparts, whether or not they’re being controlled by human players, and you can save each other from attacks. I was pleased at how useful my computer-controlled squadmates were for shooting zombies, and surprised that they rescued me more often than I would have expected.

That four-against-the-world dynamic didn’t work as well online, I thought, where human players are less likely to play as a team and stick their necks out for each other. When the super-zombies pin you down, only a human teammate can free you, but when I played online I found that my counterparts only occasionally were willing to break away from wastin’ zombies to help me. “Left 4 Dead” online definitely punishes inexperienced players, and — although I know I wouldn’t listen either if I heard this — I recommend getting comfortable with the single-player mode before you try Internet play.

One of the online modes includes the ability to return as a zombie after your human character has been bitten, putting you in control of the tongue-lasso guy, the leap-strike guy or Baby Huey. I know many players will master the subtleties of the zombie attack and take full advantage of the back hallways and hidden corners that are open to the zombies on the multiplayer boards. Although they’re weaker than the humans, zombies can ascend walls and generally take better advantage of the terrain than their living prey.

Not quite as satisfying as slamming in a new magazine with which to shred a dozen monsters, but I guess nature has a way of evening the balance.

Game review

Left 4 Dead. $59.99. For PC, Xbox 360. Rated M for “Mature.”

www.left4dead.com.

Buy? Rent? Skip?

Our verdict: BUY