Left 4 Dead

Ready for the zombie apocalypse? Good — in Left 4 Dead, you’re in it. You’ve heard something about a nasty new strain of rabies mutating everyone into flesh-eaters — and you’ve seen them yourself. And lucky you, you’re on foot, skittering from safehouse to safehouse with three other survivors, shooting anything that tries to snack on your brain while praying that your shotgun ammo will hold out until the next checkpoint.

That’s all you need to know — and not coincidentally, it’s also all publisher Valve wants to say. “We’re not really talking much about backstory,” explains Valve’s Chet Faliszek, “because we want to tell it from the view of the survivors — and what would they know? What would you know if something horrible happened? Very little — you’d hear rumors, you wouldn’t be sure. But at the same time, these people do live in a world where they’ve seen zombie movies. All of a sudden, oh my god, these things are real now. Is it cool? No, it’s not cool.”

Coulda fooled us. We got to play two of Left 4 Dead’s four scenarios on PC; each was split into five smaller segments, with breaks for loading in-between. One campaign is currently nicknamed “Hospital” in honor of its location goal: survive life on the streets, reloading between urban buildings, and make it to the roof of the medical center, where a helicopter waits to whisk you to safety. In another campaign — one we also saw running on 360 development hardware, albeit in a very early stage — you’re en route to a rural farmhouse for a rendezvous with a heavily armed flatbed that will get you the truck out of there. Of course, between the time that you radio for help and when it actually arrives, the Infected unleash hell. “We’re trying to deliver the idea of you being in a zombie movie, and having that mayhem,” says Faliszek. “Crazy fast-paced, running with your buddies, and you’re gonna make it out…or maybe not.”

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