The PC has, for years, been haunted by a distinct lack of decent co-operative games. Sure, you could always blow your friends to bits in Doom, or play against the computer in Command and Conquer, but where have all the co-operative campaigns been hiding? Similarly, developers have largely avoided the setting of a zombie apocalypse in their creations. Why is hard to understand. Apart from a few zombie themed games, the genre is largely unexplored. Enter Valve, who brought us the gaming yumminess of Half-Life and Half-Life 2. They certainly found a niche with Left 4 Dead, a co-operative based, zombie-survival shooter. But how good is Left 4 Dead? Is it still worth buying, considering that a sequel is immanent? Click here to find out!

Left 4 Dead follows the tenacious struggle for life of four human survivors, Bill, Louis, Francis, and Zoey, in the midst of a severe outbreak of zombitis ( a new word is born!). So there are zombies, lots of them, and they aren't the stumbling, lethargic, George A. Romero type either. These zombies are fast and tremendously agile; they can run as fast as a human, climb over obstacles, and bash their way through doors. But it gets better (or worse, depending on your attitude towards adversity); there are also five 'special' infected, the hunter, smoker, boomer, witch, and tank, all of which have special abilities and attributes. The hunter and smoker are able to quickly pin a single survivor. The boomer is a corpulent sack of bile and gases who can vomit on a survivor, thus drawing out a horde of normal infected who will target the unfortunate individual. The witch is a haggard looking former female, who sits idly on the ground weeping; however, she will attack if any of the survivors get too close, or shines a flashlight on her. When active, the witch is incredibly fast, and a single hit from her claws will down a survivor. As if things weren't bad enough in Left 4 Dead without having to fumble around with no light. Finally, the tank. A ten foot tall, twisted monstrosity who is fast, powerful, and incredibly resilient. The survivors will need to work together to take this guy down.

From the intro: Louis, Francis, Bill, and Zoey.

Thankfully, the survivors have more than a couple of plastic knifes and an air-gun at their disposal. The basic weapon is the pistol, it has infinite ammo and is pretty accurate, yet lacks stopping power; if a second pistol is found along the way, they can be wielded akimbo. Players may also choose between a sub-machinegun and shotgun on commencement of a campaign. The SMG sprays low power bullets and is accurate up to medium range, whereas the shotgun has decent firepower, but poor range and rate of fire. The next tier of weapons, which are found at random points along the route are the assault rifle, hunting rifle, and automatic shotgun. The assault rifle is the most versatile as it is useful at short to long range, has decent power, and a high rate of fire. The auto-shotgun is a close combat monster, while the hunting rifle offers supreme accuracy, range, and firepower. When zombies get too close it is possible to use a melee attack which knocks them to the ground, thus buying a few seconds for a reload or to reposition. Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs can be found; the latter are extremely useful as they attract all nearby zombies (except special infected), before vaporising them. Innocuous items such as petrol tanks and pressurised canisters can also be employed against the undead legions. The selection of guns in Left 4 Dead are reasonably diverse and fun to use, but they lack the variety and kinetic punch of the weapons in Killing Floor.

Using choke points is the most efficient way of dealing with hordes of zombies.

Presentation is great all round. The introduction video is one of the best I have ever seen. I'm not going to try to describe it, but if you haven't got the game it's worth having a look at the intro. The visuals are sharp and effective; the desolation of the tattered environment is well captured. The music is atmospheric, moody, and responsive to events in the game. There's an especially good piece of music at the beginning of each stage, which mixes electronic music with something akin to a Spanish guitar. Apparently a total several thousand lines of speech have been recorded for the characters. This allows players to communicate the basics to each other with a key-stroke. The large quantity of in-game speech also helps to flesh out the characters while building the game's atmosphere. The zombies sound genuinely feral and scary and the gun fire also is convincing, though once more, they are not as meaty as in Killing Floor.

The loading screen combines zombie movie posters with a splash of tongue-in-cheek humour.

Left 4 Dead is structured into four campaigns, each of which has five stages. The objective in each stage, except the last, is to reach the safe-house. Each campaign culminates in a finale, which involves surviving relentless zombie and special infected attacks, for between 5 and 10 minutes. The finale is generally the most fun, as the survivors have time to find supplies and plan the best defence. Along the way there are mini finales called crescendo events which generally involve interacting with the landscape to allow passage, for example, ramming a parked van through a barrier and thus drawing the attention of nearby zombies. There are also panic events, which can be triggered by carelessness on the part of the survivors, an example of which would be shooting an alarmed car, which attracts a horde of zombies. Two of the campaigns, No Mercy and Dead Air, are primarily urban based, and pass through locations such as deserted alleyways, wrecked buildings, and car parks. Death Toll and Blood Harvest tend towards the rustic, so the survivors will find themselves in more open terrain, such as forests or country highways. I found the rural maps to be somehow more enjoyable, perhaps due to the setting, which lends itself to a greater sense of isolation. Unfortunately, the game's plot is a little under-developed, it could have benefitted from a more integrated story. There are four difficulty levels; easy and normal are fairly handy. After a few games most people will find themselves playing on advanced. Expert is horrible. Friendly fire does massive damage and between five and ten hits from regular zombies will down a player. A campaign should take between thirty minutes and two hours to complete, depending on difficulty.

The zombies look and act convincingly; the overall effect is genuinely scary.

'Four hours of gameplay!', I hear you exclaim. Yep. There are several factors which mitigate the effects of limited content on the game's longevity. First, the deployment of enemies and items (ammo, health, weapons) is controlled by an AI director; this means that although the levels are the same, the way they play out will differ slightly each time. If you are doing well, the director will throw more random hordes of zombies at you, or reduce the amount of health or ammo; the opposite also applies if the survivors are doing poorly. Another factor is that the game is team based, thus a host of tendencies and personalities are thrown into the fray. It encourages friendships between players in a way that few other games do, by making players dependant on one another. When a player's health has been reduced to zero they enter an incapacitated state, and cannot move or use any weapon other than the pistol. The only way they can get up is to be helped by an ally. If pinned by a smoker or hunter, the help of a friend is your only salvation. If you slip and fall, who do you call? You guessed it. Left 4 Dead is a game which punishes individualism and rewards cohesive team action like no other. Apart from the co-operative mode, there is an option to play the campaign as infected, against other people. There is also a survival mode, which has been made available as downloadable content. In survival, the players must attempt to prolong their lives for as long as possible in a confined area, against increasingly difficult waves. Apart from a few small tracts of land, survival doesn't really add anything. A new campaign is expected soon, but on the doorstep of Left 4 Dead 2 why bother? When I bought the game around Christmas 08, I genuinely expected to see a new campaign by March. Surely they realised that people would quickly tire with four hours of content? Instead of working on content for the original game, they moved on to develop Left 4 Dead 2, which is expected before Christmas. Although quality can go some way in making up for quantity, its highly questionable to neglect so many of their customers.

Bill embarks on a career as an amateur photgrapher much to the chagrin of the other survivors.

To conclude, Left 4 Dead is probably the best co-operative shooter available at present. The combat is fun, the presentation is slick, the game mechanics and overall feel of the game border on revolutionary. Left 4 Dead could be played on and off for months, but without downloading user-made maps it will eventually lose its appeal. Don't buy it now, wait for the sequel. Valve are very unlikely to slip up. Also, next time they may not jump overboard so soon.