Last night Electronic Arts had an event in the San Francisco Supperclub showing off many games including Left 4 Dead, resulting in two new videos and some hands-on impressions. The first of the hands-on impressions comes from Brian Crecente over at Kotaku. Crecente explains a new part of the Hospital map:
After replenishing we made our way into a warehouse where the doors and windows blew open and zombies began to pour in. The seemingly insurmountable odds were evened a bit when one of the other gamers noticed a room blocked off by a wall of sand bags and a mounted machine gun. The three of us stayed in the room fighting off the zombies as the flooded the warehouse. At one point I found a gas can and threw it on the other side of the sand bags. Shooting it, created a wall of flames which slowed the zombie attack, but didn’t stop it.
In the past, the only parts of the campaigns which featured barricade-like gameplay were the finales – it sounds like Valve is trying to expand that aspect into other parts of the maps, which is sure to please many of the more traditional zombie genre fans. Crecente also says that the zombies were “a nice mix of the ambling Dawn of the Dead variety and the liquid fast 28 Days Later breed” and that “some can be killed with a single shot, others take a full clip to knock down. Some hide, others mil, some bound around the map, others come straight at you.” We’re not sure if this is the truth or just perception, but it does sound like a good idea either way. Everybody in the real world runs at different speeds and have different levels of constitution, so it would make sense that after being infected there would be differences. We’ll see what turns up.
Scott Sharkey at 1UP had his first play with Left 4 Dead and noticed a neat detail with friendly fire:
I couldn’t help but notice that a shotgun blast to a buddy’s face hurt a lot when he was at full health, not so much when he was at half health, and less than a sliver when he was almost dead. And it didn’t damage people at all when they were lying on the ground or being mauled by zombies — seems like a clever compromise. Watching your fire and not pissing off your teammates adds a lot, especially when they’re going to be pulling a zombie off your back and patching you up a few minutes later. Putting friendly damage on an inverse curve is a great way of preserving that while minimizing the chance of a lone idiot insta-gibbing the whole squad with a badly tossed pipe bomb. Yeah, it seemed worth trying.
Many other games were shown at the event, and Left 4 Dead sounds like it stood out:
You can learn a lot just watching the movement of people at an event like this, and one thing I couldn’t help but notice was that while every other game’s station was shut down or left alone in the drunken lateness of the hour, Left 4 Dead retained the largest clot of observers — and eventually, the only clot. Everyone liked this thing. They were crowding it after the bar closed — and that says a lot.
The last preview is pretty brief, by Patrick Klepek at MTV Multiplayer. The best things to come from this event are the two new gameplay videos.
The above picture comes from one of the two great new videos posted at GameTrailers.com. For those of you that have been paying close attention to L4D, you might notice the significant change that took place in the HUD. Current loadout and player health is on the bottom right and teammate health and healthkit/pill/nade loadout along with a small head icon are present on the bottom left. If you have any comments, please post them on the forums because this is just one version of probably many that Valve will go through until the November release. One thing I really liked was the ease of being able to tell the difference between actual health and temporary health, which you can see by the solid color versus the little bars.
For a split second, the above checkpoint screen flashes. Total kills, damage taken, healthkits and pills used are all useful stats. The campaign progress windows at the top are another nice addition, but the event history on the right might not be very useful especially if players are unable to scroll through the list.
Overall, the graphics are looking more gruesome and gritty than ever. The screenshot above on the left is a capture of the aftereffects of a shotgun blast, with a nice cloud of smoke. All of the muzzle flashes look improved. Valve has also been adding in some body language as you can see from the screenshot above on the right. Francis is about to get pounced on by a Hunter which he is pointing out to his teammates. Communication is vital and these extra details show how much of an importance that Valve is placing on it.
The above picture shows Louis getting absolutely destroyed by a Hunter. Go watch the videos, holy crap.. poor Louis, always seems to be getting singled out. The second video has much more fitting music than the first, make sure you watch both.
So there we have it, some new media and impressions. One of the really cool things that we all get to experience as fans is the continual changes of Left 4 Dead. The team at Valve have been very open in their design decisions and we appreciate it. Can’t wait to see how the added resources of Valve put the shine on this game to be released in November.
