Left 4 Dead -- The S & M Factor.

So yeah, Valkyria Chronicles. No, Left 4 Dead. I bought Left 4 Dead for the concept of the online play. You and three other living players shooting your way through the zombie apocalypse. Although they're not really zombies, in the Romero ghoul sense, they're infected in the 28 Days Later sense. The zombie horde can really move in other words. They come flooding out of just about everywhere and come at you in a full run. Also added to the mix are so called special infected. The special infected include five varieties. They are Boomers, Smokers, Hunters, Witches, and Tanks. Boomers are obese zombies who vomit on you from upwards of twenty feet away. They also explode when killed. Getting vomited on or being caught too close to an exploding Boomer results in the same thing and that's being covered with a substance that initiates a zombie feeding frenzy. A hell of a lot of zombies will pour out of everywhere and make a B-line for those unfortunately covered in goop. Smokers have a tongue they can shoot out and grab with. They're able to grab a survivor from what seems to be two-hundred feet. The grabbed have about a second and a half to shoot the smoker to break free. Otherwise they'll find themselves being dragged toward the Smoker or hung up and otherwise incapacitated. The other survivors will have to free the grabbed survivor before it's too late. Hunters can leap about the same distance the Smokers can grab from. They leap on their victim instantly knocking them down and the other survivors will have to knock or shoot the hunter off the victim. The Witches are emotionally unstable and can be found just sitting there on the floor crying. They don't like bright lights or loud noises and essentially just want to be left alone for a good cry. They get seriously pissed off if that good cry is in any way interrupted. They'll charge whoever disturbed them and one-hit incapacitate said survivor with a slash from their extremely long claws. If you can sneak around the Witches without disturbing them, they'll leave you alone. The Tanks are hulking monstrosities. A zombie with steroid rage, if you will. They are extremely fast, can one-hit incapacitate you, and have an immense amount of hit points. They're extremely difficult to bring down. All of that sounds great, doesn't it? Well it is great. But now we add in The Director. You remember what I said about The Director from initial impression, don't you? The Director is a the AI routine that controls the ebb and flow of the zombie horde. It sits there watching all the action and decides that it needs to spawn a horde of zombies out of that room behind you. Again, it all sounds great in theory. There is only one problem. The further you go up the chain of difficulties in the game the more obvious it becomes that The Director is a total sadist. And again there's nothing really wrong there in theory. Some people are masochists. Some people like the pain. And to a point the pain is pleasant enough in Left 4 Dead. The real issue here is that The Director out and out cheats. A couple of times a few of us have literally seen special infected or horde spawn before our eyes. It's actually a rare occurrence and can generally be forgiven. A slap on the ass if you will. But the following scenario is ultimately all too common for forgiveness. You enter a large office room filled with cubicles. It's filled with computers and desks and the like but it's devoid of any infected. There are doors to one side. You go over and open one up and look inside because you're on the lookout for med kits and pills and ammo and the like. You find out it's a storage room. Concrete walls on all sides, the single door is the way you've come in. No other possible exits, no windows, or even vents in the ceiling. You head back out into the room with the cubicles shutting the door behind you. A Hunter or Smoker has wandered into the room at the other end. You take care of it, no big deal. Suddenly a massive horde of zombies spills out of the storage room behind you. Even though there was no possible way for anything to be in there. And a Boomer waddles out and someone shoots in reflexively and three of the four are covered and the feeding frenzy flood starts. And when all is said and done you're limping out of the room much worse for wear. The pain there is a little bit much, a total sucker punch to the face if you will. In the campaigns you move through the levels until you reach the final location where a massive siege battle takes place. You initiate the battle in the guise of hitting a radio and awaiting the rescue vehicle. You have to hold out until help arrives. And it's the same basic pattern. Waves of base infected peppered with special infected assault your location. And then you'll have to face off against a Tank. That's followed by more waves peppered with special infected until you'll face another Tank. Then the vehicle will arrive amidst the final waves. Everybody boards the vehicle and the level ends. On expert, the display of cheapness on The Director's part especially in the final stage of a campaign is bordering on cruelty to the point of being purely unfair. The Director will spawn multiple special infected when the situation is at its worst. It's kicking you while you're down in other words, and mocking you all the way. Having to deal with a Tank while someone gets caught by a Smoker and another one is leapt on by a Hunter not half of a second later is obscenely mean. There is just no possible way to recover, at all. It's funny for a while but then it quickly grows otherwise. Maybe it would be acceptable if it weren't exacerbated by some of the problems in the behavior of the AI. The special infected know where you are entirely. In fact you'll often see them moving around backwards. You'll come across a Hunter with its back to you and it'll make the leap backwards and knock you down. Smokers will grab you with their tongues through open windows and under this and over that and at such extreme angles that no living thing could pull off. Only a computer could see that as a viable angle and it shows. It's made worse by how the tongue will clip through corners and the like and how it homes in on you. You're clearly moving beyond where it aimed by the AI adjusts over a few feet and grabs you anyway. The Tank will tear up slabs of concrete out of the ground and throw them at you. But it doesn't really do that. It throws where you're going to be. Which wouldn't be too bad if it didn't throw fast enough to close the gap of two-hundred feet in about a second. And it's made worse that it also throws through corners and other things in the level that it shouldn't be able to. At the higher difficulty levels Left 4 Dead just blatantly cheats and abuses the hell out of you. The question becomes how much of a masochist is the gamer supposed to be? Next time should be the final opinion on Left 4 Dead.