If by “it” I meant co-op, there would be no point in your reading this as you would already know, and if you didn’t know that, there would again be no point in you reading this, as you would be in the car on your way to pick up a copy.

However, by “it” I mean difficulty, so to spell it out for you, Left 4 dead is the only game to ever do the difficulty right.

Whenever I boot up a game and it asks me to select the difficulty, I crank it, almost without question, to the hardest. I do this not for achievements, but because one, I like a challenge, and two, I tend to get much more time out of the game, even if it is by doing the same section over and over again. This of course forces me to often master the game, and often use my brain to find the best way to go about doing things. By doing so, I often find I have the most fun on the hardest difficulty. COD2 and 4 for example, ten or so hour games I believe, but I likely spent twice that, I think I got pretty good at the game, and working though some of the harder parts was pretty darn fun. Some parts did get a bit annoying, like of course the Ferris wheel, but I tell you getting into that chopper was so damn satisfying. The downside of this though is that playing game like COD on veteran sure as hell sucks the life out of you, and you’ll never want to do it again.

Then you get games like COD5, which just suck on the hardest difficulty (or any difficulty for that case), you get grenades spawning up your ass and you never have any fun. It was apparent that the game would suck on Veteran about 2 levels in, but for me it became a matter of pride, I was going to make that game my bitch no matter how long it took. I can say COD5 is now my bitch, but I can also say I've never given a game away so fast. The problem is, most games resort to becoming stupid cheap to make the game appear hard, and they resort to tactics such as the aforementioned grenade-in-ass spawning, or AI gets perfect aim with perfectly accurate one hit kill guns, and a health bars that triples, and bullets that turn to peas when you pick them up, Halo 2 being another example.

This is of course where Left 4 Dead comes in. My goodness I’ve never had more fun on the hardest difficulty. It has its own tactic of becoming hard, it doesn’t just send one hit kill zombies at you or make use of other cheap tactics, it pushes your back up against the wall and keeps you there. One wrong move and you’ll fall, but start to move forwards and you will quickly be slammed back against that wall. At one point I was doing so well with some friends, we were half way through the level, tank already defeated, I even pulled up the menu to check the difficulty make sure it was still maxed, and it was. I turn the corner and I see nothing other then tank number two, that left us in a very bad way, and sadly we didn’t make it. I trust I don’t need to say what that kind of suspense that adds to a game.

I don’t know my playtime, but I am 7,000 kills into the game, and I’ve still yet to beat the first campaign. Don’t say I suck just yet, here are some excuses: One, I’m on xbox so you know what kind of teammates I get, being the case, I only ever play with one other friend, leaving us with two AI. Two, I’ve been playing locally with other friends, so I’ve gone from the first to last level several times, and its fun enough for me to do so. No equation on this, but 7,000 kills, I’m betting I’ve played for at least seven hours, and I’m still not even a fourth of the way through, that is damn impressive, not to mention I’m still having fun with the same four levels.

I don’t need to praise the game on all other areas because I’ve sure it’s already been done, but I’m so impressed with what the AI Director does for the game, not to say its something that can work with other games, but seeing a new approach to difficulty is very welcome, and I would love to see this at least tried in other games. Of all the bars raised by Left 4 Dead, how to make a game hard is one of them, and I just hope other developers try to reach that bar, we’d all benefit.