After another fun night of playing Left 4 Dead, but this time with a friend, I learned one important thing. The Tanks aren't there to kill you, they are there to guide you in the right direction if you get lost. They also keep you from wasting time, dilly dadaling by giving you that little nudge to move on.

I don't know if any of you remember this, but there was this 4 player Simpsons game in the arcade. It was a basic side-scroller beat-em up. After you clear the screen of enemies you could progress on to the next encounter. You knew you could press on when a flashing gloved hand would appear on the left side of the screen pointing in the direction you needed to go. Now if for any reason you didn't move on, albeit if you were collecting or looking for items the hand would flash faster. If you were still there the hand would come down and start attacking the characters. You couldn't kill it, but you could push it away. Basically this was the games way of pushing you to the next area.

Fast forward 10 or so years and we see the return of this concept. While playing Left 4 Dead if the players get to comfortable in a spot or are hanging around in an area for too long the game will give them a little nudge. All the exploration and screwing around ends when you hear the music change and the sound of something massive, rampaging your way. Of course unlike the hand you can actually fight back and kill it but the effect is still the same.

Last night I this all became clear to me after two very interesting games. The first one on No Mercy was pretty straight forward. It wasn't until the end when I noticed the helping hands of the Tank. We basically had the roof top secured even though it was slowly getting over run. One Tank showed up and he went after Francis, who was played by Ossisk. We killed the Tank but the roof had was now swarming with the little infected buggers. We stayed on the roof trying to clear it off. During this we got a transmission from the pilot saying he would be there in another 5 minutes. Right after that we here the sound of another Tank. Once again it went after Francis, who had not really moved from his spot. It put him down before we could kill it. Zoey helped him up and we went inside of the room and closed what was left of the door. As they healed I went back up to the roof and used the mini-gun to thin the heard. In the distance I saw chopper Zoey and Bill made a break for it while I stayed on the mini-gun, and Francis was down stairs doing something.

I should have moved after my experience yesterday. Anyway I was trying to rack up kills with the mini-gun for an achievement, when I got a helpful reminded to move to the chopper to escape. The Tank gave me a helping hand by punching me from the roof top to about halfway up the ramp of the LZ where Bill and Zoey began to lay down cover fire. I was running and punching my way to them when I saw Francis got slimmed by the Boomer. To top it off the Tank was now all over him. Zoey and Bill jumped out of the chopper to help we killed the Tank but at a heavy price. The Tank died after Francis was given the Bloody Mess treatment. The Boomer exploded blinding both me and Zoey, and Bill got snatched by a Smoker. With my health fading and my teammates dropping like flies I decided I should honor their memory by escaping. Zoey was behind me at one point, but I guess she used her body as a shield to catch a Hunter in mid pounce. Bill was a little tongue tied at the moment (see what I did there) so it was up to me. I had 6 health and at least 3 feet between me and freedom. Well with no one to watch my back as I dragged myself to the chopper the zombie swarm behind made short work out of me. I was in mid jump too, i could taste the freedom before it was replaced by the taste of my own blood as I was stomped to death.

All this time the Tanks were trying to tell us to move. The roof top with the mini gun on it, isn't the safest place to be. There are just too many places you can get attacked from. Also the Tank wanted us to escape he didn't want us to share the same fate as all the other. Why else would he propel me towards the escape? The Tanks are just misunderstood is all. They are there to guide us in the right direction and get you there in a timely fashion. If I could I would ride around on the shoulder of a Tank, throwing cookies at the other infected while singing "So happy together".