I know I’ve been talking about Left4Dead for months now, but I’m still very much in love with my zombie filled game.

All I’ve been playing is expert campaign and versus…and expert difficulty is insanely hard. My usual Left4Dead group (Brandon, Ben, and Matt) have tried to make it through all four scenarios on Expert difficulty. Sadly, we’ve only successfully beaten one out of the four campaigns. I mean, Advanced is fairly tough as is, but for those teeth-grinding, white-knuckle moments there is Expert. Our sessions usually last about five hours, which mostly end in tragedy. It’s disheartening, yes, but it’s incredibly satisfying if accomplished. Not only do the zombies do much more damage in this mode, but so does friendly fire. For example, Matt is a great player. He’s a good shot. He’s dedicated to play a game for five hours that he might not even win… but he uses the sniper rifle, which is a one shot kill to anyone on his team.

‘BANG’

Matt has incapacitated Bonnie!

“… Sorry.”

Not to say that the Assault Rifle or the Auto-Shottie are any better, but you don’t have to be point blank with the Sniper Rifle to take down one of your compadres with a misplaced shot.

Also, the AI Director is a jerk. I’m sure everyone has had a defining gameplay moment where the invisible jackass has thwarted their efforts and killed off the whole party. In my experience, it’s always on the last level when this moment occurs. It’s always with the escape vehicle on the horizon. So it goes something like this:

After the unrelenting horde of the undead has beaten down on our heroes, they start staggering toward the rescue vehicle. Zoey is near death. Her health is dwindling by the second as she gimps behind her teammates who are in slightly better shape than she is. However, they’re all bleeding out and recovering from the last Tank attack, when there it is: the escape vehicle is in sight. Glorious survival and victory are just a few steps away. The rest of the team gets inside and starts shouting while providing support fire. Amidst the chaos and the roar of the zombies approaching behind Zoey, Bill meagerly shouts out, “Smoker!”… Which has already grabbed Zoey and is dragging her toward the throng.

Smoker has incapacitated Bonnie!

Zoey is left to die for the good of the team.
/roll credits

“…For the good of the team”

I hate hearing that when I’m down. Although, it does give me a good excuse to warble, “L-leave me!” or “Don’t let them eat me! Shoooot meeee!” like I’m actually in a zombie flick. Yes, I’m an idiot and probably the worst person to play Left4Dead with, but at least I’m having fun.

Speaking of idiots, last week Ryan and I decided to play Versus. After exhausting our options of playing with actual people, mostly by saying “brah” every few minutes (don’t ask), we finally got into a game… with just us two. We connected to a party chat and started Blood Harvest. Surprisingly, the game isn’t quite as taught with only two people (What. No way!). The infected side has one special zombie that spawns-in every ten seconds or so (much faster than the twenty some seconds in the standard four on four). This doesn’t help with the crackshot AI-support that a single survivor gets. The AI is merciless and could explode an infected from the darkest corner or through the thickest tree. The match was pretty even throughout our whole campaign, until Ryan met with an open window followed by a mighty long drop. Either way, the entire experience was worth the stupid smack talk and watching Ryan plummet to his death. Very satisfying.

The game is refreshing to play online as I stated in my previous post. It’s weird. I can’t explain why zombies bring people together, but I can only hope that the zombie apocalypse happens… and heals the world.