No, you shouldn't play "Left 4 Dead" by yourself.
PAX 2008 was not the first time I touched Valve and Turtle Rock's zombie thriller, but it was the first time I played alongside the game's built-in artificial intelligence.
How good -- or how bad -- is the humans vs. fast zombies games when a computer controls your human allies? I learned the answer at the Penny Arcade Expo.
Yelling around me would do nothing. While people next to me barked orders at one another, I was left to battle the undead menace with a bunch of bots. How did I fare?
That's debatable.
The A.I. in "Left 4 Dead" -- at least what was present in the incomplete build shown at PAX 2008 -- is functional. They faithfully follow you, firing at the surrounding zombie hordes and applying health patches when you're wounded. My A.I. allies didn't get lost or stuck in hallways. The A.I. accomplished what it needed to. It just can't compensate for the absence of human-controlled allies.
"Left 4 Dead" was designed as a co-op experience among four players. You lose much of what makes the game tense and exciting without someone to scream at. When one of your A.I. teammates goes down for the count because they took a wrong turn, you don't feel compelled to throw yourself into danger and save them. It's easier to keep moving forward and save yourself.
I had a little trouble getting immersed in the game because PAX is so loud. "Left 4 Dead" is as much about the atmosphere as it is about the combat. The game encourages you to pick up on subtle audio cues that let you know if a particular enemy is nearby. You don't have a way to hear them when there's a crowd of people screaming at "Gears of War 2" behind you.
I never expected to enjoy "Left 4 Dead" as a single-player game nearly as much without a group of close friends backing me up. While my 15 single-player minutes at PAX 2008 confirmed such obvious suspicions, my enthusiasm remains as high as ever. I just want to stop playing it with strangers. And I don't want to play it with the computer.
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