QuakeCon 2007 Left 4 Dead Coverage

Chris Ashton, Jaime Sue, and Jerry Bennett from Turtle Rock Studios went with Chet Faliszek, Erik Johnson, and Eric Twelker from Valve to QuakeCon to let real gamers play the game and give feedback. QuakeCon 2007 is now over, providing us with over an HOUR of new gameplay footage (61:46 minutes). WOW. On top of all the video, we have a couple interviews, a new screenshot from Game Informer, and some thoughts from gamers that played it while they were there.

In case you haven't heard, let's get the bad out of the way first: Left 4 Dead will be released in early 2008. Take your time, let it all out. Take deep breaths. I know it hurts, but suck it up, soldier! It's not all bad - on top of having more time to make the most kick-ass game possible, Turtle Rock Studios is aiming for a simultaneous XBox 360 and PC launch which would be very cool. We can hope for some cross-platform play (which we've heard nothing about yet).

This page is separated into a few different parts: the list of different videos and articles, what people thought of the game, and finally the highlights of the videos and what we learned.

QuakeCon Article/Video List

• Gametrailers.com Videos
  These awesome videos available in HD show Chris "MacMan" Ashton (Turtle Rock Studios' environmental artist, zombie killer and Viper driver extraordinaire) playing through the first two maps of the Hospital mission. If you're going to spend your time downloading videos, these are the ones to get. Make sure you start at the beginning (the one farthest down the page, 'City Survival').
• Game Informer Videos
  These videos are unfortunately broken up into 10 different files, but they do provide 18 minutes of a couple areas which we've never seen before. Starting in video 8 we can watch the Survivors going through the warehouse and through the sewers. If you're just looking for the interesting stuff, videos 8, 9, and 10 are very well worth your while.
• Eurogamer Interview with Chet Faliszek
  Tom Bradwell talks with Chet Faliszek about many things, from where they are in development, the Xbox 360 version, questions of future success, Steam Community, post-release content, hints of a pre-release free weekend and more. Definitely worth reading.
• Gamevideos.com Video and 1UP Wrap-up
  The Wrap-up shows infected-side footage (explained above), and the video is a good 9 minutes of the Survivors getting pounded.
• IGN Hands-on/Booth Pictures/Videos
  IGN is excited for it. The booth pictures are nice and the 4 videos are the first to show what the inside of the hospital looks like, along with some Tank flaming goodness and finale Horde. Also you can see the three strikes state (where the screen turns black and white and you hear your heart beating).
• GameSpot Hands-on/Chet Video Interview/Videos
  GameSpot is excited too. The gameplay videos take place after where the Gametrailers.com videos leave off. We get to see a cool gasoline station explosion and the outside/part of the inside of the warehouse. In the video interview Chet is sporting an L4D shirt that many attendees were unable to get as a big "HAHA!" to them. Only kidding of course - they unfortunately ran out of shirts and did all they could to appease the angry masses. They brought 800 shirts and ran out early Saturday morning!
• Gamevideos.com Chet Faliszek Video Interview
  Chet talks about Survivor AI and boss infected spawns.
• Shacknews HD Footage
  If you want to see what Left 4 Dead would play like if you've never handled a PC FPS before, check these 6 minutes out. Shows what the Gametrailers.com videos do, only this time it'll give you a headache.
• GameSpy Preview
  They liked what they saw, saying the lighting and facial animations are much improved from the first time they played.
• Gaming Today Q&A with Chet Faliszek
  Honestly, I had to go reread it to remember if anything important was said. My memory was right - besides being the first official early 2008 announcement, if you know anything about L4D there's nothing new here.

Gamer reactions

"tomservo, ajax, filthysock and I played this earlier. It was really really fun, as the zombie battling mechanics are really interesting. We played humans and it really really emphasizes teamwork. The zombie players sound like alot of fun, very different. The melee stuff for zombies actually seemed to work well, like there was one where you could knock down a human and stand on them, shredding, so another human would have to shoot him off. Plus there's a tank zombie that has like 5000 hp, so the humans totally have to work together to have any chance of surviving. As long as the voip to keep the players talking works, well and it's priced reasonably for a multi-only game, it's a hardcore winner."
-geedock, shacknews comments

"i can tell you that left for dead is the single greatest gaming experience ive had ALL FREAKING YEAR and i can say with no doubt at all that you will have an orgasm the moment you start up this game , the graphics rock , the gameplay smooth, and every last zombie ,moves as they should, really really really really really fast, it truely is eye crack, but... it sucks because now every game im gunna play from now until it comes out sometime around christmas is not going to come anywhere close to being as good, and, i wont wanna play it =\ ill be waiting"
-ddd3, destructoid comments

"I played a complete round today with a few other shackers here at quakecon and it's seriously awesome. Very unique and very fast paced gameplay makes this a must buy."
--efx-, shacknews comments

"Dudes. Left 4 Dead was AWESOME. Standing in line with Shackers for 45 - 60 minutes to PLAY it was awesome."
-tomservo, shacknews comments

"I'm not sure which of the enemies we confronted were actually played by Turtle Rock developers and which were AI controlled. The developers are working on an AI system that tries to make the two indistinguishable from each other - at least in the context of Left 4 Dead - and I have to say that they have done a great job so far."
-Jeff Buckland, atomicgamer.com

What we saw

With over an hour of video, there's far too much to be able to cover it all, but we'll point out some of the important things we saw.

In video 10 of the Game Informer videos, we saw the sewers for the first time. They are long corridors with the gross stuff running through the middle, with tiny hallway-like passages along the sides for shortcuts/sneaky infected.

In video number 6 of the Game Informer videos at :30 you can see the Survivors shooting through the door eventually making it basically a large hole. At 1:55 in the same video it happens again and the entire door crumbles down. On video number 7 at 1:26 another type of door (wooden) can be seen damaged with wood sticking out.

If you notice on the bottom left you can see not only that Louis is down (imagine that), but also that he is getting revived. Everyone on the team can see this progress bar which is very nice, maybe they'll implement the same type of bar for healing? Speaking of healing, it looks cool right now but we really hope to see some actual bandages being applied. Either have them fade right after the animation or maybe have it so it's actually a permanent thing throughout the mission? It'd be pretty cool to see who got beat up on the most. Another UI feature we noticed was that when somebody gets vomited on by the Boomer, the background of their portrait turns all red. This lets the team know who to stay away from. :D

Thanks to Chris Ashton playing on the Gametrailers.com videos, we saw all three voice communication wheels (middle to top, then clockwise around):

Wheel 1: Ready?, Thank you, I'm with you, No, Where Are You?, Sorry, *$@#, Yes, You're Welcome

Wheel 2: Look!, I hear a Tank, I hear a Witch, I hear a Hunter, Clear, Be Careful, Hurrah!, I hear a Boomer, I hear a Smoker

Wheel 3: Help!, Let's Go, Hurry!, Cover me!, Lights Out!, Watch Behind, Follow Me, Stay Together!, You Take the Lead

Tonjohn from the forums posted pictures from QuakeCon here. In the picture above we can see the hunting rifle being held for the first time. There's another picture of a hunting rifle scoped, but it is very blurry.

This is a problem very noticeable in the videos and we hope to death that it's a problem fixed before release. When a player aims at something they can pick up (such as guns, ammo (pictured), and medkits) the glow actually goes through any model. It might be so you don't miss things, but it looks very bad.

The 1UP video wrap-up on gamevideos.com featured some infected side footage. This particular moment in time is a Boomer puking on Francis. It looks okay, but kind of weird (more like a quick spray than a puke).

In the second Gametrailers.com video 'Subway Slaughter' we saw that not only can you shoot out of the spiffy looking checkpoint doors, but infected will also try to reach through the bars and get you!

We saw Tanks on fire. In the Shacknews 6 minute video, at the beginning near :31 it shows a gigantic fire that looks amazing.

In the last Gametrailers.com video Zoey is on the ground for a while bleeding out. We tried to time how fast it went down, and from what we got it takes about 1 second for every 3 health. This means in order to die from 300 of the bleed-out health, it would take a minute and forty seconds.

People have been saying the flashlights out of the wrists looks pretty weird. It does. Is there any way we could have a wristband flashlight attachment on all the Survivors to make it more realistic?

Also, outside the warehouse (on Game Informer video 8), you'll see the lift with 4 people on it (although just barely). We were surprised to see this, as when we played it only fit 2. We had some really fun moments because of this (2 people going up, the other 2 getting swarmed by zombies) that were very memorable. Why exactly Turtle Rock chose to took out this very interesting game mechanic, we don't know, but we are quite sad.

So, there you have it. If you want some more detailed information on the videos, we have already pointed things out on the frontpage news, just find the post where it mentions the videos. Thank you QuakeCon/Turtle Rock/Valve/all the reporters and people that took videos and shared their thoughts.