The Games of Christmas '08: GPU Performance Part 1

Left 4 Dead

Zombies and guns; what more is there to say about Left 4 Dead? The basic premise is to kill as many zombies as you can while keeping your teammates alive for as long as possible.


While there are single player missions, the real meat behind Left 4 Dead lies in its multiplayer features which will have you and your friends caught up in no time. In these missions you and your teammates get to play as either the Survivors (the few humans left alive) or as the Infected (zombies) which puts a pretty unique twist on the usual zombie-based action game. Since the Infected players don’t have guns, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails, they need to make do with various ambush techniques in order to ferret out the Survivors. One the other hand, the Survivors need to stick together or risk being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of zombies coming at them.


Many of you will be used to the usual repetitive pace and layout many shooters take by now so you will be in for a fresh surprise with Left 4 Dead’s game mechanics. Valve has used what they call The Director so that every time you make your way through a specific level, everything from the number of enemies to the locations of weapon drops will be different.


Since it is designed from the ground up on Valve’s vaunted Source game engine (the same which powered Half Life 2), it will be familiar to many of you who have played Valve’s previous games. This also means the graphics are quite good if a bit dated but the number of enemies on the screen at any one time can reach amazing proportions when a huge horde of zombies is trying to gang-bang you.