Left for dead is first person zombie survival shooter made my TurtleRock studios, the creators of the counterstrike mod for the original half life. Left for dead is built on valves amazing source engine, meaning it will feature all of the aspects of the source engine, including real time physics havoc engine and now introducing the new director technology made specifically for left for dead.
The game itself centres around a team of four people trying to get from a to b. There are four maps per a "movie" which is essentially a set of four maps which are played consecutively. Each of these "Movies" are centred around a theme, such as the hospital, and all the maps are stages within this theme. You play a survivor against the zombie horde in this game, your team of four must survive the zombies while getting to the different checkpoints through the map. You must all work as a team, watching over teammates that are reloading, kiting enemies, organising how to kill bosses, healing each other, and knocking off zombies that jump your mates. The real thing that separates this game apart from other zombie games is the Director. This is an AI built from the ground up for the source engine, which controls your game experience. Through a system of troughs and peaks of intensity the director tries to control how scared you are. It uses this intensity system, to sometimes completely overwhelm with you zombies, but also provides parts of the game which are silent and empty, to build the tension and to increase your paranoia. The Director also controls where and when the zombies spawn, in conjunction with the intensity system. This also means it controls your difficulty. If your team is really beaten down, you’ve lost a member, and are almost out of ammo, it sometimes goes easy on you. But if your trashing down on the game, have full ammo ect, the director will put out some nasty tricks from its sleeves, whether it’s a zombie horde breaking through a wall to the side of you and pouring into the room, or giving you a particularly nasty boss-infected to deal with. The director also controls the lighting and the sound as well as the intensity, difficulty and tension all in real time. If the game is quite, ill will play ire music, if your being swamped with zombies It'll play action music.
This fat and Massive boss infected can belch on players and blur their vision, as well as alerting nearby infected of the player's whereabouts. Also when shot he explodes, dealing AoE damage to all players nearby, or if he drops from a great height he can "pop" some of his boils, doing AoE damage as well.
The smoker is an infected with a long nasty tongue. He can use his tongue to pull survivors out of their group towards him, and also poisoning them in the process. He can also "tongue" enemies from above, which instead of pulling them towards him, hangs them. The only way to stop this is if another survivor sees the smoker and shoots him, interrupting his hanging. Also whenever shot or tongue-attacking the smoker lets out a a gas cloud, making it hard for survivors to see him.
The hunter is a hooded infected than can travel much faster than other infected. He also has the ability to leap great highs and scales buildings and walls. His greatest feat though is the ability to pounce onto players, knocking them down, then riving them apart piece by piece. This ability again is only stopped by another survivor either shooting the hunter or meleeing him off. The punching require the hunter to charge it first them releasing the pounce, the leap can be done at any time. The Hunter also slowly regenerates health
The tank is a massive boss infected, with one mutated arm. The tank has a massive amount of health, and is very fast. It also can knock survivors down and pummel them alive. The Tank can also throw piece of concrete or cars at the survivors and also knock down certain walls. Due to its power the tank is rarely spawned by the director, two are even more rarely used by the director to really challenge a good team.
The witch is a very powerful infected boss as well. She will sit or lay somewhere in the shadows, moaning in pain and not moving. She will not attack survivors actively; instead she will only attack if she is alerted by their presence, so when playing the survivor if you hear her moans you should be especially careful to make as little sound as possible. If you do awaken her on the other hand, she is a nasty bitch to take down. She has near to tank health, runs lightning fast and has a cool down one hit ability, which will kill any survivor in one punch, he normal melee attack is a bitch on its own too.
You can play as the infected bosses, except the witch, in death match mode, where player play both survivors and infected bosses in a 4v4. The tank due to its spawn routine is not selectable as well as the witch, instead a random player will be granted Tank control if one (or even two!) spawns. There are also various other game modes.
The game itself comes out on the 18th November 2008, the free demo is out on the 11th.
I've been playing the demo quite heavily, and it's awesome... It really forces you to work as a team, moreso than any other game I've ever played. On Expert it's really challenging and each playthrough is almost completely unique.
Can't wait for the full version where in 4v4 one team gets to be the infected bosses... Would jack up the tension 100x...
ah unfortunatly my dad found it cheaper than all the pre-order ones with the demo codes and a website, so ill have to wait untill the public demo comes out on the 11th. It sounds pretty awesome, I've watched alot of vidoes. How hard exactly is it, for like a seasoned fps player after playing the game for like a month, cos thats what really worries me. How long will the game stay hard?
On Expert, it is difficult in the sense that a lot of the bosses incapacitate you once they hit you (and it's easy to get hit, since they attack fast and from a lot of directions)... So, once you're hit, you need to rely on your teammates to rescue you fast... Also, you can't take too many hits... The regular zombies do 20 damage per swipe, the Smoker does 30 damage every couple of seconds, and the Tank and witches take you down in 1 hit.
There are always like 5-6 directions from which the zombies can come at you, so you really need everyone to watch your back and rescue you if you get hit... Makes the game very tense and fun
I have also been playing the demo with 3 friends and expert is a fucking joke, i had hoped this game would actualy have a hard coop "singelplayer" but we cleared the demo on expert in 25-30 min.
Besides that its fucking easy its a great game. Tho its just spray and pray =D
On November 09 2008 03:16 -_- wrote: Are you a viral marketer?
lol ^^
On November 09 2008 03:26 Ziph wrote: I have also been playing the demo with 3 friends and expert is a fucking joke, i had hoped this game would actualy have a hard coop "singelplayer" but we cleared the demo on expert in 25-30 min.
Besides that its fucking easy its a great game. Tho its just spray and pray =D
On November 09 2008 03:26 Ziph wrote: I have also been playing the demo with 3 friends and expert is a fucking joke, i had hoped this game would actualy have a hard coop "singelplayer" but we cleared the demo on expert in 25-30 min.
Besides that its fucking easy its a great game. Tho its just spray and pray =D
The Director must have gone easy with you... Play it again, I guarantee you guys won't beat it on your first try...
I didn't realise the game was about the players vs the AI director, I had always thought it was being developed for competitive multiplayer 4v4. Maybe I'm wrong, but fighting against the AI will always get boring after a while, whereas going up against player controlled infested bosses sounds like much more of a challenge and much more fun.
I've been playing the demo and it's a very easy game to whoever asked (my fps experience from css, 1.6, tf2) The competetive aspect will be in the "versus" mode that's not in the demo.
Also if anyone doesn't know: read the Steam forum and there's info on how to play as the Infected bosses in the demo on a sv_cheats 1 server! (yes, throwing cars at people with Tank is very fun!)
On November 09 2008 05:08 jigga wrote: I didn't realise the game was about the players vs the AI director, I had always thought it was being developed for competitive multiplayer 4v4. Maybe I'm wrong, but fighting against the AI will always get boring after a while, whereas going up against player controlled infested bosses sounds like much more of a challenge and much more fun.
well the director AI controls the game, as well as other players controlling the bosses in 4v4 i belive. Correct me if im wrong.
well after you learn the maps and play with some competent teammates even expert mode gets a little easier, but its still pretty challenging. it's always fun when a tank comes and wipes the whole group.
the most fun i have is having a duel to the death with all the remaining players right before the last saferoom. Survival of the fittest!
Basicly infected now have 2x hp, alot more of them and they spwan more often. There is also an "Impossible" difficulty setting some people have found in console through doing callvote command, but no-ones managed to unlock it yet.