LEFT 4 DEAD DEMO
Written by SAKY // Filed in SAKY's Picks, Xbox 360 // Viewed 1,611 times
[November 8, 2008]
Alternate Controls:
-Southpaw
I got my hands on the Left 4 Dead early Demo this past Thursday and my lazy self is just getting around to this. Left 4 Dead is developed by Turtle Rocks Studios, under Valve. This game uses the same game engine as all those games in The Orange box, Source. I must say that I had the highest hopes for the control options in this game but my hopes were crushed upon reviewing this Demo. As stated above this title only supports Southpaw. In addition to that the game doesn’t have button mapping found in it’s Orange Box brethren. Replacing that, instead, is four preset controller layouts. Really these are just hard times for Legacy guys.
The demo, on the other hand, was great fun and there is nothing quite like the first swarm of Infected coming at you in a dark a claustrophobic house. My first reaction was screaming “OH $#*%!!!” as this moment made for a great scare. L4D isn’t a graphical tour de force but it does have pretty good atmosphere with very dark rooms and intelligent use of lighting effects. Muzzle flashes from your weapons light up the faces and your infected attackers which creates a great strobe effect of your enemies getting closer with each passing millisecond. Also the flashlight works well enough but not so much as take away all the tension, it’s very Doom 3 like is it’s limited but needed use. Players must deal with the tension that with only two hands, the flashlight isn’t going to point forward when reloading weapons.
I’m sure that after extensive playtime with this game those “OH $#*%!!!” moments will dissipate and primary feature of this game Co-Op will standout as some great gameplay or wither with disappointment. But with randomly generated boss infected and Swarms being thrown at players you can bet that each play through will not be the same as the last and players will find excitement and dread in never REALLY knowing where the next threat will come from. The demo does a great job of showing this off if you play through it a few times. Now, I can’t wait play as the infected. The public Left 4 Dead Demo will release on Xbox Live November 11th.
- Control Options Screenshots
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 8th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under SAKY's Picks, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
15 Responses to “LEFT 4 DEAD DEMO”
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2Three says:
November 8th, 2008 at 6:50 pmBummer
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SAKY says:
November 8th, 2008 at 9:06 pm@2Three
um yeah, lol.
Controls aside, people will be too distracted with Gears 2 and COD:W@W to care about this title. From simply playing the demo I can honestly say that this is going to be GOTY for me but I still have to give Gears 2 a try. This is a sigh of relief because I wasn’t sure L4D would be this good of a game.
I’ve played the two level demo about 15 times and it’s great because the enemy placement is never the same and tougher enemies are thrown at you if your team plays well. This is also a great example of a game that can only be pulled off on next gen hardware, the combination of great lighting, level design, and droves of nermous characters on screen couldn’t be done on previous hardware.
If you don’t play this, you are missing out. /L4D fanboy rant
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2Three says:
November 9th, 2008 at 2:44 pmTrue,
There are a number of games that will be overlooked this Fall in favor of higher profile titles. But I think L4D still has the potential to do well because of the co-op factor.
And after the holidays when all the hype of the new titles from more established franchises dies down a little, you’ll see people starting to try out some of the games they may have skipped initially.
For me, L4D is not a number one on my list - but I’ll definitely try it out after playing through Gears 2 and W@W a couple times.
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SAKY says:
November 9th, 2008 at 4:17 pm@2Three
You gotta get online for L4D, granted you CAN play with 3 CPU controlled characters. Let me know if you want that wireless adaptor.
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mclovin says:
November 10th, 2008 at 1:28 ammake sure its a .n draft wireless, those .g’s are hopeless (though mine has to go through about three walls and 40 metres away!
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SAKY says:
November 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am@mclovin
i’m pretty sure that the M$ 360 wireless adaptor only does a/b/g standards.
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ryan says:
November 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pmjust got l4d. i had been waiting for this one for a long time and the demo was awesome. this and gow2 are my current season favorites. see you on live saky.
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SAKY says:
November 19th, 2008 at 7:27 am@ryan
Retail game seems even harder than the demo. intense game for sure. We couldn’tget past the third level on the advanced difficulty. I got onto NXE yesterday through the preview program so I have loaded this one to my 360’s hard drive.
Feel free to send me a Friend Request -
ryan says:
November 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pmi played a bit just on normal and it seemed more challenging than the demo. my xbox gamertag is arrtee
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Corey says:
November 20th, 2008 at 9:06 amThe lack of the legacy setting really kills it for me. I’m not amazing at these kind of games but I can at least dodge stuff thrown at me. When a tank throws concrete at me, I turn instead of sidestep. I sidestep when I meant to turn and shoot a zombie. I liked this game when I played the demo on the PC, but for some reason got it on the 360. Bad idea.
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2Three says:
November 20th, 2008 at 9:56 am@ Corey
Been there. I can manage with default until quick reactions are needed - then I instinctively start trying to use Legacy and it doesn’t go well, as you know…
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SAKY says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am@Corey
you could proably sell the 360 gameandget Pc version for the buy back price (damn you gamestop!) On the other hand this game will work perfectly with a modded controller.
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Gamerschoice says:
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 pmI sent an email to Valve telling them that I’m sick of supporting games that don’t support legacy, so I informed them that I won’t be purchasing their game. I think EVERYONE who visits this site needs to send off an email in the same vein. Let them know that we want the control style we play with!
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ghost1 says:
February 10th, 2009 at 9:22 pmbummer to hear about lack of legacy support. i really cannot see why it is so hard to include in games. i could play this game because i just play southpaw with inversion… which is a little more common than legacy… but still shamefully lacking in a lot of games. why? i don’t get it.
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Hailey says:
July 18th, 2009 at 12:16 pmWhere do you play the demo?!?!?!?!