At this very moment thousands of ignorant little Valve slaves are flocking to pick up the newest zombie horror game to hit the market--Left 4 Dead. Little do they know that they are about to get home and promptly shout a blood curdling WTF after playing the first chapter of the game. I'm not even going to try and fluff around the edges with this one. It sucks, it's boring, it's repetitive, it looks six years out of date, and it's little more than a bunch of multiplayer maps that can be played in single player. In fact, that's the game's only redeeming quality whatsoever. I'm not going to lie, I had huge expectations for this game, but the reality is a complete joke.

Yesterday like many other slaves to the market, I trudged over to the local Gamestop to pick up my reserved copy of Left 4 Dead. On the way home I was extremely pumped... partially from my recent Fallout 3 high, but also because I knew this was going to be some quality zombie killing action. Holy shit, was I completely wrong! After an hour I was already itching to turn the game off and after two I completely stopped taking the game seriously and started to just wander into zombies in order to let my teammates save me for fun.

First off, this is not the game you thought it was. This isn't a Resident Evil zombie game, or even a classic survival horror like Dead Space (a fucking gem of a game I must add). This is Painkiller with zombies. YES, it's that simple. Actually, it's worse. I liked Painkiller! It was a game that didn't advertise anything more than stupid fun killing hordes of enemies with weird, yet fucking cool weapons... not too mention the largest boss fights you've ever seen! Instead, Left 4 Dead is a pointless "get from point A to point B" game, with no variation, no story (I mean it. They actually leave the story out!), stupid weapons, and no fucking point. You are essentially dropped into a random city scene with three teammates, a stupidly limited selection of weapons, the ability to carry only one med pack, and the simple task of getting to the end of the level. THAT'S IT. No dialog, no story, no point.. hell, I don't even know why they name the team members! When one dies they just reappear around the corner as a "new" person, but with the same name and model of course. Fucking stupid.

As far as the enemies go, there are about ten different models that they just throw at you constantly and they are all the same grey washed out color with absolutely no AI other than to run the fuck at you... and when I say throw at you I mean it. Maybe one of the only redeeming points of the game is how they have the ability to spawn literally hundreds of running zombies at you. I'll give them some cool points for that, but it becomes fucking old quick. That's about the whole game. Walk around corner, shoot, have zombies run at you, kill, walk some more. Not in a classic FPS way... this is more simplistic. The level maps are retardedly simplistic and small, the enemies are in every room and every space just standing there, and there is no "scare" element to it whatsoever. Honestly, the game is just bland with no climax and no spooky "OMG zombies! element.

What about the weapons? Yeah lots more suck ahead. There's your basic pistol, rifle, shotgun, automatic, etc. that each carry a ridiculous amount of ammo. Nothing out of the ordinary and all shoot perfectly and accurately. There are also random piles of unlimited ammo laying around in convenient areas. Oh... and you can only hold one weapon at a time. Whoops! *sigh* this game completely killed any Valve buzz I had and makes me hate the pointlessness of multiplayer games now.

...speaking of Multiplayer, this game is a multiplayer game with a single player option. That's as simple as it gets. No saves, no story progression. Nothing. In fact you can play any map at anytime right from the beginning. Stupid AND boring. It makes the game so pointless. After the 1000th zombie I killed I realized there was no fucking point and just turned the game off. Each of the "chapters" are nothing more than a different area that you have to make it to rescue... that's as complicated as it gets.

One last thing thing, the graphics SUCK. Yes they do, I don't care what you think. It's the Source engine which looked great for Half-Life 2, but some how they actually managed to make it worse. No HDR, a shit ton of low-res textures, of and the fact that everything has the polygon count of a circa 2003 game. Maybe this was necessary to propagate such huge numbers of "the horde", but it makes the game simply looks retarded and cartoony. Especially the fact that you can see through walls apparently and watch wherever your team members are. Not to mention that fact that your characters seem to float and jump and fly wherever they need to be. There is no immersion or scary horror elements. I guess they figured that they would throw a bunch of blood around and everything would be amazing.

So, at this point I'm wondering "holy shit, why even release a game like this?" I'm guessing it's for the multiplayer co-op. Supposedly the multiplayer element is huge. *shrug* You can create the scene, play as the zombies, or be part of the team and have to work as a group. Very cool ideas, and I'm sure they work fine, but as for a single player game... What's the point? They should have never created a single player game out of this and focused completely on a Team Fortress type of game. It probably is the second coming of multiplayer games, but I fucking hate the thing to no end in single player mode. Fuck this game. I'm done.