Left 4 Dead Survival Mode

The Left 4 Dead DLC dropped onto the tubes yesterday after an almighty internet shitstorm caused by the PC version being released after the 360 version. News stories can tell us PC gaming is dead all they want, you haven't seen it alive until you've seen something like that. The last time I saw such a great show of PC gaming solidarity was the massive 2k fuck up that was the Bioshock online activation.

One commenter on the CVG forums said:

"WHAT THE f**k! VALVE f**ked US!!!!! VALVE f**king f**ked US!!!!! ONE BETRAYAL BY VALVE IS A BETRAYAL TOO FAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I like to portray console owners as immature preening dick heads but the PC has more than its fair share of them as evidenced by that comment and anyone who's played more than thirty seconds of counterstrike.

Anyway, I got an hours play with it last night and about half an hour this morning, before work. I have the following observations:

1) Fuck me, it's intense. In my second round, I killed 300 zombies in five minutes. In 45 minute campaigns, I normally only kill about 700...

2) Playing with people is awesome, as you'd expect, and when you get a good team it can feel like the old Aliens Vs Predator matches I used to play... I had one round in the finale of Dead Air where four of us were perched on top of a truck, each with the M4, mowing down zombies row by row by row. It was fantastic :D

3) You won't last long.

The hype about you only lasting a couple of minutes may well be true for the console tards. I've found the shit really starts hitting the fan at about 5 minutes in... that's when you start getting multiple smokers, boomers and hunters. At one point, we got attacked by two smokers, vomed on by a boomer and had a hunter pouncing around at the same time. Hee.

4) Two tanks is fucking insane

In all the game modes previously, as soon as a tank shows up, you ignore everything else and concentrate fire on it. When two turn up at once, you suddenly have no idea what to do... you can't run as the chances are you'll run into the path of the other one. You can't stay where you are because the tank can kill you far faster than you can kill it and you can't work together as a team because you're all panicking about there being two tanks in the room.

I've only had two tanks once, so far. I was the only survivor of that particular event and I didn't last long after that. Great fun though.


5) The new map is really good

It's well thought out, there are loads of places you can camp or run to, many varied weapons stashes etc. etc.


6) They only give you tier 2 weapons

Now. I love the tier 2 weapons but the survival mode is about desperation and fighting the horde off with whatever weapons you have available. It would be nice if there were occasional stashes of the Tier 1 weapons for you to grab and be angry at.


7) It's really good fun :D

It provides what Left 4 Dead was missing - 5/10 minute bursts of gameplay. A very welcome addition. Now give us the SDK.