Left 4 Dead is for losers -- try Left 2 Die

1:01 PM on 11.09.2008   |   Anthony Burch

46 comments

So, I've been playing the Left 4 Dead demo pretty much incessantly since it came out. I've been thrilled at the ever-changing director AI, I've screamed in terror and amazement at the huge crowds of Infected, and I've cursed my teammates for getting me killed.

Yet, no matter how fun the demo is, it's still only two levels. With another week to go, I needed to  find a way to stretch that little taste of the full game as far as possible -- get some mileage out of that sucker, you know?

That's where Left 2 Die, my new, made-up Left 4 Dead campaign mode, came in. The other night, I played through the demo a few more times, with one important caveat: I would play only with one other human friend (in this case, my friend Jeff), and would kill the two AI-controlled human companions to prevent them from helping us. Where there were once four uninfected warriors, there would now be only two.

Could Jeff and I successfully survive the demo despite halving the size of the human team? Would the game be more or less fun when it turns from a 4-player cooperative game into a 2-player experience? Would I be able to resist the urge to kill Jeff just a few inches outside of the final saferoom, gleefully sprinting past his disabled body before shutting the door behind me?

Hit the jump to find out.

The most unusually gratifying part of the Left 2 Die experience comes at the beginning, as you and your human partner remorselessly slaughter your AI compatriots. Considering how good the AI is about healing itself and other members of the team, you've gotta  whittle down both of the NPCs' life bars to the very last inch before finishing them off simultaneously. It'll take a good ten to fifteen shotgun blasts to finish off another human being, but it's pretty satisfying once you do. After that, you're free to continue the rest of the campaign with your buddy, free from the irritations of having to worry about two other schmucks (though as they bleed out, you will have to listen to their incessant cries for help).

Interestingly, the game is somewhat easier with only two people. Since you only have to worry about friendly fire from one other individual, you'll tend to take less damage. Since you're only worrying about your single partner, the huge gunfights are less chaotic and there's much more reason to stick together and watch one another's backs. With only two humans firing at the undead rather than four, the chances of startling a Witch or activating a car alarm are much reduced as well. Also, the boss Infected will initially go for easy kills on the injured NPC humans while they're bleeding out, which means your chances of running into a boss are somewhat reduced for the first half of any given level. Somewhat.

Apart from the odd Hunter or Smoker (boss Infected which, as I found out this morning, make it effectively impossible to play a game of Left 1 Dead since they necessitate another player free you from their clutches), Jeff and I made it through the demo with surprising ease. Sure, we both lost about half our health during the door defense sequence at the end of the second level, and when we ran into a Tank we both died really, really quickly, but we still managed to beat the demo on both Normal and Advanced with only two human players.

We thought that was kind of weird.

One of the main factors that prompted us to create the Left 2 Die scenario was the demo's unusual difficulty settings. Normal was way too easy, Advanced was only somewhat more difficult, and Expert was a rapefest. We thought that by reducing our team number by half, we could find a happy medium between Advanced and Expert, yet found ourselves playing something closer to a Normal/Advanced hybrid. Hell, on Advanced, the two of us even managed to kill a Witch by ourselves.

I can't decide whether that's a bad thing or not. On the one hand, it's really cool how the game unintentionally self-corrects for their being only two living players by sending the boss Infected after the dying NPC characters. On the other hand, even on advanced mode, we didn't have that much trouble getting through the door defense section at the demo's end: we just defended the area for as long as we could, then sprinted to the saferoom with most of our health gone. It's almost as if Left 4 Dead derives its difficulty not from the strength of the Infected or the director AI, but from the foibles of its human players.

When I played the demo with four people, we always stopped and made sure every single grunt Infected was taken out before moving onto the next area. We told ourselves we were just protecting our backs from a future assault from the rear, but in reality we just liked seeing Infected heads explode. When playing Left 2 Die, however, Jeff and I acted with measurably more caution -- arguably, the way one should act in a survival horror game. As we reached the end of the first level, we saw a huge crowd of Infected stumbling around near the safehouse entrance, oblivious to our presence. Rather than blasting at them from a distance, as we would have in a regular round of Left 4 Dead, we simply turned off our flashlights and ran around them. They caught onto our ruse just before we got to the safehouse and we had to slam the door in the faces of roughly a dozen snarling, bloody faces, but still -- we acted far more responsibly when there were only two of us, and were rewarded for it by not having to fight through a huge crowd of  bad guys. It would have been more of a hassle with an additional two players. Is that a statement on Left 4 Dead's difficulty problems, or the inherent carelessness of humans? I can't say for sure.

Now, all of that said, could the director AI have reduced the number of zombies it spawned once it realized Jeff and I were the only humans left? It's entirely possible. This prompts a whole new set of questions unto itself (is it good that the game scales its difficulty down when there are only two humans left? Shouldn't the game remain just as harsh in an effort to punish the players for not working as a team?), but I can't count it out as a possibility for Left 2 Die's relative lack of difficulty.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share my experiences with Left 2 Die. I still prefer playing the game with four human players if only so your strategy in dealing with the Tank extends beyond "pray to God that the director AI doesn't spawn one," but if you can only find one other friend to play with, it's definitely more fun to kill your AI companions and go at it Army of Two style than it would be to have the NPC humans constantly backing you up and taking out boss Infected with their too-impressive aiming and reflexes. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try to come up with a more clever name for Left 1 Dead.