DEMO-LITION: Left 4 dead edition

you may have heard about a game called Left 4 Dead. catchy little title. i first heard about this at E3. in between fallout 3 and gears of war 2, was a game i'd never heard of called Left 4 Dead. being a valve game, i didn't pay it much mind since my laptop isn't as awesome as it should be to run a valve game and head honcho Gabe Newell doesn't think that certain gaming systems are worth the headache of programing for.

i didn't pay much attention to the title since there wasn't much chance that i was going to play it. months go by. fallout 3 comes out and is awesome and huge. then i start hearing about this game, left 4 dead again. i see videos. it looks cool. a new take on survival horror and co-op. whatever. "i'm not going to play it." i said.

so, i opened up my steam account because i like to justify still having it on my laptop since no games i like to play will run on it, and i found that i had 23 hours to play the demo for L4D. hmmm. so i go to canyourunit.com and found that i could run it, on very low settings. so i DL'ed it to see what the fuss was about.

first off, the game is FUCKING SCARY!!! i jumped out of my chair more than a few times. and playing it in the dark isn't the move. the whole point of the game was the feeling of being alone with three other people and the fact that at any moment, you could possibly get ripped to shreds by half dead freaks. it was insane! playing with other people was very interesting. the people i played with weren't the normal, out for self, ass clowns that don't help when you're getting pinned down by gunfire. they healed me when i was down, shot boomers and smokers when i was about to get wasted while my back was turned and they yelled for me to hurry up when i was getting to far away from the group. the sparse music only added to the fright. string stabs and general droning ambiance mixed with the silence made hearing the oncoming footsteps that much more dreadful. you know they are coming. you don't know how many there are, but you know there's going to be alot of them. i quickly got sucked into to game. something i wasn't planning on.

i now see what Max was going on about. it's shaping up to being a really good time and with the possibility of a 360 showing up in my house this x-mas, i could be jumping out of my skin more often than playing the last level of manhunt.

Left 4 Dead is out tomorrow. demo is available now. and the original manhunt is really good. not like that other manhunt.......


J.