Flashlights OFF!

If the zombie apocalypse happened like a good zombie flick, it would be Left 4 Dead. You'd have your highly mutated zeds with various powers: a rather average pouncing one, one that could suck a golf ball through a garden hose from 100 feet away, a fat pinata zombie filled with candied brains, a crazed witch with devil pincers, and the incredible hulkzor. Oh, and survivors...guess the movie might need a few of those.

The whole point is to escape a very imperiled situation; yay. Though people won't play this game for the story, it's meant for cooperative multiplayer. That's just straight campaign as survivors versus the AI or other players. And the artificial intelligence is no joke. This game is a proof of concept of their new "director AI." It changes the pace, where things come from, when boss zeds appear, if ammo/weapons should be placed up ahead, and even the music on top of it all. It's so good, people have loaded the game up in some other Source engine maps, such as Counterstrike's dust. Put simply: it works.

I haven't played enough or much of it to acquire a full scope of the game yet, but the versus multiplayer is a completely different experience; I do much prefer the company of zombies though. It'll take me awhile to learn how to play as the Boomer effectively, but I find it rather exhilarating to, well, grief the scrumptious, player-driven survivors. And griefing is definitely a reward in itself.

I can't wait to see what Valve has in store for the future downloadable content for the game, but I can already imagine some great custom server variations arising with zombie vs. zombie games or ulterior objective-based games with more than four survivors.

The legs of L4D have yet to be seen, but I bet they'll go great with Mod-sauce.

-- "Who died and made you f***ing king of the zombies?"