Yesterday I experienced my first proper Left 4 Dead Versus Mode game. Previously I'd only spent five minutes in it with a friend but last night Aerox and a whole bunch of other people, GuttlessWonder and ME spring to mind. Ah, sod it: my memory for names is not all that good and this is the first time I've multiplayer'd properly with Dtoid folks so your names might be different here - tell me who you were!



Anyway, while I couldn't stay for the whole thing, I have to say it was the most enjoyable multiplayer experience I've had for a long, long while. This is what I've been waiting for as a gamer who has largely turned away from multiplayer games since around 2000. Here's why I had so much fun:

1) Dying is joyous
Just like in co-op mode, there's a certain glee in getting completely and utterly overrun by the hordes of infected. Almost every time I was finished off on the survivor team I was laughing like hell or clapping at the clever trap the other team had laid for me. There's a sense of anything-can-happen about Left 4 Dead and this is heightened by having human opponents, so it's absolutely right and okay that occasionally you will get completely slaughtered.

Counterstrike, back when it was a mod, was one of the first games to put me off multiplayer - it seemed no fun at all if your team was losing. This game couldn't be further from that. If anything, there's a sense that if I'm not at least fighting to within an inch of my life, something is wrong.



2) Succeeding as an Infected is immensely satisfying.
When you're Infected, you have to understand that your life is fleeting. A smart team will stick together and take care of threats quickly, so your job is not to run around stacking up kills but to do as much as possible to mix things up in the short time you have. If you keep at that, eventually the team may get into enough disarray to enable you to get one of them on their own after respawning, or pull off an attack unnoticed.

When this works, the feeling of accomplishment as you gleefully tear into the soon to be ex-survivor is quite something. Oh, how we laughed when Aerox (I think accidentally) opened the safe room door, letting my waiting Hunter inside for some good ol' fashioned evisceratin'.



3) Destructoid
One of the other reasons I've been put off multiplayer is that I could never find people I wanted to play with. XBox Live games I've played have simply been ruined by, for example, the whiny 13 year old racist that everyone who has played with a headset must by now be familiar with. Back in reality, few of my local friends are enough into gaming to arrange regular sessions.

Praise be to Destructoid, then. I've only been posting around the site a few months and I don't know many of you all that well yet. Still, I know well enough now that if I get into a game with you folks then I am going to have an enjoyable time with like minded people and I don't care if that sounds like I'm describing a swingers' party. The point is, I'm so glad that this place exists and may there be many epic tales of zombie battles to come.

If you'd like to join me, just chuck your keys in the bowl over th-- uh, I mean, add me to Steam. If 'SurplusGamer' doesn't work, try 'InsoFox' or look for me in the group (Steam's friend system seems to go weird, sometimes).