Para preencher minha mente esvaziada pela complexidade dos sistemas vazios de Tears of The Kingdom, que já vinha jogando há mais de um mês, eu precisava de um jogo "no brainer" pra desligar o cérebro e atirar com a @cellerepe.
Em Left 4 Dead, encontrei o que queria, e mais.

Zeramos rápido, mas as noites de jogatina foram revitalizadoras. O que eu pensava que era um jogo muito divertido com um design maestro típico da Valve e criador de tendências, se mostrou mais genial ainda quando compreendi os sistemas de randomização e como cada coisinha faz os jogadores agirem como o jogo quer sem perceberem. Nós já jogamos Back 4 Bçood, e aquele foi nosso Skywalker Saga pro The Complete Saga que é esse jogo.
Inteligente e divertido.

The definition of a classic zombie game.

Left 4 dead was a big part of my time growing up and playing video games. I feel like it's been sort of forgotten about by many, but this was one of the definitive Co-op zombie games that really took off and started the big zombie craze in gaming.

There's so much I could say about this now, somewhat dead franchise but it's something you really have to experience. Basically, this is a first-person co-op shooter game set in a zombie apocalypse. It has horror, humor and action segments. The campaign mode can be played co-op or single player with AI and involves you traveling from safe room to safe room in cities, woods, suburbs and more. The infected run at full speed and swarm you fast so it's best to be on your toes constantly and watch out for different infected types. The different zombie types are all unique and actually fun to traverse and deal with where I feel like often modern games get them all wrong. The Tank is a roided out Hulk zombie, The Hunter crawls around and pounces on you. The smoker has a tongue that grabs and pulls you in, the boomer explodes green slime that blinds your vision and attracts the horde, and everyone's favorite is the witch. She acts as almost a banshee, crying to attract attention and then once disturbed unleashes all hell on you like some type of demon. All fun designs here with a lot of great memories. The different levels of the game all act like the continuation of the same story of survivors getting from point A to point B with them having their own unique movie poster and fun end credits that calls to your gamer tags as the actors playing the 4 main characters. The characters Zoe, Francis, Bill and Louis are all unique and fun to get to know as you play. The voice acting for the cast is pretty well done all around, along with an incredibly memorable sound design I still remember to this day. There is a story to follow here that continues to the DLC that carries onto L4D2, but it isn't incredibly deep. A lot of the replay ability comes from the co-op and Verses modes where you face other players as survivors or become infected with the ability to attack other teammates. Though this first game is a classic and very memorable there really isn't much reason to play this first one because almost everything in this game including all levels and characters are added to LFD2 as DLC. There are some level, enemy and weapon changes they made in LFD2 so it is a bit of a different experience from the original but still great and probably a better version of the game, but this is still a classic.

9.5/10

Damn fun game. Pity I needed the Hard Drive space and my internet isn't the best, but it was well worth it just for the fun to go around killing zombies. Not to mention it's fun when you get to play as the zombies.

Edit: Had quite a bit of fun with this game whilst playing it. The way the AI director adjusts things is so interesting as the items are not in the same location and then the special infected like Witches and that are often placed in new and different locations where no two sessions are the same.

Left 4 Dead is - in my opinion, one of the best examples of Valve's ingenuity when it comes to game design. They really could have been a less kid-friendly Nintendo if they wanted to. In a time where so many FPS'es were gritty, realistic and built around PVP multiplayer and story-driven campaigns, along comes a game like Left 4 Dead to subvert your every expectation.

Left 4 Dead is simultaneously a silly, arcadey shooter with charming, quotable characters and also an incredibly tense, nailbiting fight for survival. The "AI Director", the game's AI that chooses when to spawn in hordes of zombies and when to spawn in special infected does so much legwork for fuelling the sense of dread the game is able to instil in the player, even when they're replaying the same campaign for the 100th time.

If you stay in one place too long, the AI Director spawns in hordes and special infected to punish you and encourage you to get moving. It does the same thing if you're progressing too quickly and vice versa, if you're really struggling early on in a map - it lets off a little and eases the breaks to give you a breather. It's such a genius little system and the knowledge that this AI Director exists, the feeling that you're being watched by something, or someone at all times is really pretty daunting.

Left 4 Dead's atmosphere is helped a great deal by its sound design. The noises that the terrifying Witch makes, the Tank's theme song that often comes blaring in out of nowhere - alarming the whole party, and the Horde theme are all near-iconic at this rate. Even those who haven't played the game can likely recognise them from having heard L4D players talk about their 1st Witch encounter and the time their friend accidentally triggered a car alarm or something. Each of the game's uniquely dangerous special infected have their own musical sting that plays when there's one nearby. You can tell a Hunter is stalking you just for listening out for that creepy little piano riff. Valve put in so many little pieces of design like this in the game that they didn't need to, just to give it that identity. To make it so much more memorable.

A ton of great and very intelligent design choices come together in Left 4 Dead to make it endlessly replayable. This is a game that is more than the sum of its parts. There's no iron sights on the guns, and the moment-to-moment gameplay is incredibly simplistic with little depth, and yet the AI Director makes every playthrough of the game's relatively small number of maps feel markedly different, and all the little touches give it an unrivalled atmosphere that I don't even think its sequel could match.

this is game 24/71 of my backlog.

i played this game exclusively in singleplayer, so that's what i'll be talking about, but i did try out multiplayer for a bit, and it just wasn't much fun because 1) teammates are very bad, 2) lag was unbearable.

This game is great! the campaigns themselves are not too much to write home about in terms of narrative, there IS lore but it's just kinda lame and not worth caring about, but level design it's a MASTERPIECE, everywhere you go feels like somewhere you wouldn't be able to go to in normal day-to-day life, and that you're perhaps going the wrong way, but somehow you just always get funneled right into the right path, and that isn't to say that the levels are all linear, more so that they somehow managed to make so that every unexplored path feels like the right path.

One weird thing i noticed is that there's just a lot of... empty room, no loot, no furniture, just empty, i'm not sure why or perhaps it's an rng thing but i saw a lot of those during my playthrough.

In regards to the weapons, the choices are a bit boring, i almost always went with the autoshotgun when i could, it just seems to do way more damage than anything else, and since it's a shotgun i don't have to care about spread fucking me over like the other weapons, but at the same time i wish i felt more of a reason to use the other ones.

This game is also very buggy, like zombies clipping through doors, or trying to scale up ceilings but getting offset weirdly and failing to, some things are just a bit clunky, but considering how ambitious the zombie AI (and their reactions to gunshots) i can let it slip, after all they made the very act of just shooting zombies very fun and weighty.

pretty good game, but with the sequel being a thing, i wonder if there's any point still playing this.

This game just feels so good to play. Everything is fast and fluid. What it lacks in story (and I'd say a game like this would be bogged down by one), the characters make up for in quips and personality as you play.

One of my biggest gripes comes from the maps. I had forgotten just how bland and lacking in personality most of them are. You could basically mix and match any of the 5 stages from each campaign and it wouldn't feel that out of place. There are obvious exceptions, but just in general I feel like 80% of maps are just generic buildings, streets and dirt roads in woods. I guess it makes sense that before I replayed this my first thoughts when the game came up were the cornfield and hospital levels.

And I know it's a primarily co-op game, but it punishes players way too harshly if they want to play solo. Ai is just so bad, and they don't even use pipe bombs or Molotov's. And on top of that, the game acts as if you're the only player when it comes to being killed, as opposed to playing with others where you have a chance to be revived from a closet. Couldn't they have just had the Ai carry on without you for a while and potentially rescue you? Or have you get an "extra life" and assume control of another player if you die, since that'd still be harder than just playing with at least 1 other person anyway.

But yeah, it's just a fun zombie killing game. It just so happens to be outclassed entirely by the second game in every aspect, so there's absolutely zero reason to play this one these days unless you're the kind of person who wants to have a fresh playthrough to log on Backloggd, like I am...

There's an argument to be had that Left 4 Dead is still worth playing, even though it's basically been recreated in its entirety in Left 4 Dead 2. L4D1 is much stronger as a tonal piece - no melee weapons means you have little in the way of comfortable fallback options, and you have to be conscious of every bullet. When you run into a Witch, you're making a much harder decision about how to handle her here. Less variation in gameplay modes means you're simply running for longer stretches of time from set piece to set piece, which adds that tasteful wearying sort of experience you want out of a straight horror game. These are all subtle differences, and chances are good that you'd like both games if you like one. Personally, I find all the maps I've played across both titles much stronger in their L4D2 incarnations, but I can respect someone who holds the opposite opinion.

Were there not a sequel, this may very well had been my favorite zombie game. Sorry Dead Rising, you’re a close runner-up. Everything about this 2008 arcade-y classic brings me back to a simpler time. Even though I didn’t play this entry as much as its sequel, it still blast-from-the-past jettisons me to that cozy mood of ever-present melancholy.

What’s weird is that I’m not typically a fan of Valve’s shooting mechanics. I’m one of the few people that just didn’t click with Counterstrike’s shooting and movement scheme. It felt clunky, odd, and unfit for first-person PvP gameplay. But for Left 4 Dead, it can’t feel more natural. The lack of aiming doesn’t bother me, the crouching for increased accuracy doesn’t frustrate me, and there being no running is simply incidental. I really think a large part of that difference lies in the transition from PvP to PvE, as well as the fact that these enemies don’t shoot back at you. The moderately fast run speed and the enemies running right up to you makes it perfect for both fast-paced speedruns or wait-back hunker down playstyles. Just don’t be too terribly slow or you’ll face quite a few AFK hordes.

Delightfully, this meat-and-potatoes design philosophy also extends to every other aspect of the game. All you have is a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, a healing item, a throwable explosive, and your wits. No esoteric perks, unique traits, or numerically ranked gear. Just run and shoot. Nothing but prime meat-grinder gameplay. Which brings me to my next adulation, the map design. Left 4 Dead proved all the way back in 2008 that you don’t need hand-holding to get across a map. Every corridor, stairwell, and alleyway flows so naturally into the next setpiece. It’s almost impossible to get lost. More importantly, it doesn’t come at the cost of contrived design choices made to baby-proof progression. I mean it when I say every aspect of this game is tightly designed to a T.

The narrative elements are sparse, with every new kernel acquired by safe-room writings, environmental storytelling, or voice lines by the characters you’re playing. All you need to know is a zombie outbreak just started (who would have thought?), and you’re rushing with your ragtag group of colorful survivors to reach the nearest safe haven. A task easier said than done judging by the number of missions in the game. As you could probably guess, I’m a big fan of this minimalistic style. We’ve all seen a million zombie stories. So when Left 4 Dead says let’s forgo the traditional song-and-dance and get right into the action I’m more than happy to oblige. Especially if I can play as my favorite cranky geriatric veteran Bill.

Now I know I’ve been gushing uncontrollably thus far, but why stop now. The lighting. Me likey. One of the biggest differences between Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 is the lighting, and with that, the mood. Though I think Left 4 Dead 2 improves on 1 in almost every facet, the dark, moody lighting in this game reigns supreme. It’s just so creepy and dreary, exactly how I’d like to imagine the end of the world would be. Gimme that overcast, week-late-on-the-electric-bill apocalypse all day every day. The very first chapter is a prime example of this, setting a thematically bleak tone for the rest of the game.

To add a hint of flavor and strategy the game, Left 4 Dead also introduces Special Infected, stronger, scarier, and dangerously enhanced zombies with their own gimmicks. Beyond having iconic designs, they also serve to address certain playstyles and challenge the player to switch tactics up when the situation allows for it. For example the Boomer punishes survivors who funnel hordes into point-blank kill-corridors, and the Hunter punishes survivors who go to far ahead of their teammates. Coupled with crescendo events — environmental interactions that causes an extra large horde to come after you— these touches of character help break up the potential monotony of just having the normal infected.

Bottom line being: try the game. With friends, alone, with the homeless man down the street. You’d have to be trying pretty hard to not have a fun time with this treat. There’s even a huge modding community. But don’t just take my word, there’s a reason the game has such a lively community 15 years later, and it’s not because Bill is just so damn charming.

A twitchy and ultra-fast FPS that--like any good Source Engine game--has almost no moments to catch your breath! This zombie-filled action game really cements the idea of co-operative play as it's detrimental to the design and most players' hopes in getting through the campaigns. The competitive aspect was also pretty unique, and really started to form a scene that would only mutate further with its legendary sequel!

The story is pretty minimal, with a lot of it told through the presentation. Hearing certain character dialogue (which isn't consistent) and reading things etched on the environment is a very video game-y way to tell the story of this zombifying pandemic that turned the world upside down, and you're with a group of survivors who are only trying to . . . well, survive.