The first night of playing some Left 4 Dead on the PC. Fun as hell.

im playing Counter strike with a friend and 4 friends playing the Left 4 Dead demo all i heard in ventrilo was: ohh shit a tank and more. So i downloaded the demo for test. I loved this game for i love to kill al the zombies with molotows and more. The next day came the right game to steam. and on a Thursday come the game to the store. I buy it. But later shows the computer can not play the game. So i most wait to play the game more.

It was The most Funnest Game i have ever played i Have benn playing it None Stop for the Best two weeks its benn the most fun i have ever had with a zombie game its the best of the best zombie games i have ever seen!

clocked 20 hours on the demo, then another 20 in the first week the real game was released

So it started with the finale map in Blood Harvest on expert. My friends and I were leaving the safe house, suddenly the witch, with a scream, eviscerates one of my mates. We let her run off, knowing it's pointless to kill her now. Cue the director deciding it's time to rape us. In a matter of seconds dozens of zombies had surrounded us, and above the yelling and gunfire, we heard the ominous footsteps and roar of a tank. Another of our friends fall, and we are unable to help him. Bashing our way out of the zombies my remaining friend and I leave our downed ally to be crushed. Running backwards and firing at the tank we slowly wear him down. Suddenly he throws a chunk of earth and kills my last remaining friend. It's just me and the tank now. He rips another chunk from the earth, and just as he's about to throw it, a final series of shots rings out from my shotgun. With that, he fell, and I continued on, racing through the cornfield to get to the house before I die. Zombies rushing me, clawing at me, I bashed my way free, and reached my friends in the closet, only to be killed immediately after I freed them.

Originally posted 28 November 2008.

Life is ridiculous.  You set yourself a couple of reasonable, attainable goals with a sensible deadline, and then The Powers That Be pop out of the cupboard where they've been hiding for the past three months and smack you with all kinds of lovely surprises.  Time-consuming volunteer projects, distant in-laws having accidents and needing help; ill health; crazy weather; and to top it all off? - NO BREAD.  I just wanted some toast, dammit.  Anyway, I thought if I didn't write this article now, I was never going to get around to it, so I've put everything else on hold for an hour or so.  Also, gamerDNA appears to have eaten my last post.  It wasn't much, just a heads-up that I'd been busy but hadn't died, and a quick list of the things I wanted to write about in the next week.

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The L4D logo.  Image courtesy of VALVe; click to go to the game's official website.

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The reason this article isn't simply titled "Left 4 Dead" is because, like Baldur's Gate (which was the primary example in my original Sound & Immersion article), L4D does the whole 'immersion' thing very well and it's worth noting how that was achieved.  Also, I wanted to clarify some things I stated in the first article.

I originally said that immersion was about how much you forget that you're playing a game and feel that it is, instead, 'real'.  That's true, and relates mostly to how well a game tells its story, but immersion can also be defined as how involved you get in a game, despite knowing that it's a game; how engaging the game is even if you're constantly calculating and considering the behind-the-scenes mechanics in your head.

Allow me a brief digression.  The thing that always strikes me the hardest about the Forgotten Realms games is the transparency of the entire AD&D system.  They have laid bare the bones of their games - bones that other games share to some extent - and made those bones an integral part of playing.  You don't play an FR game without knowing about attack rolls and hit dice, and the knowledge of those things is at the core of every encounter you have.  And, surprisingly, that stuff is quite interesting.  Knowing you just got a critical because you rolled an 18 for attack and your weapon allows you to GET criticals on a roll of 18 is kind of cool, albeit extremely nerdy.

Anyway - Left 4 Dead, as I said, does well in this department.  As with almost any multiplayer game, the first definition of immersion is suspended somewhat (you can never quite forget that you're playing a game when you have people yelling at you over Vent to turn your torch off), but despite the fumbles and foolish behaviour of your fellow survivors, it is very easy to be sucked into the world of the zombie apocalypse.  (Yes, I know they're not technically zombies, but some of the game's achievements call them that, so don't be snarky, or I'll incapacitate you.  In the face.)

I listened to a bit of the director's commentary last night - not a great deal, about ten minutes' worth, but it was enough to re-impress upon me VALVe's commendable dedication to providing immersive and engaging games.  If you've not actually listened to/walked through the commentary yet, I'd recommend it.  Quite interesting.  They talked about all of the ways they strove to immerse the player in the game, e.g. unusual lighting, believable survivors, etc.  The sound, however, outstrips everything else for atmosphere.  I'll get back to that in a bit - first, some background info.

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Bill, the Vietnam vet, picking off infected in the distance.  Image courtesy of VALVe; click to go to the L4D media page.

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I may have mentioned before that I am severely easy to scare.  I once had nightmares for three weeks about the voodoo guy from Live And Let Die - a James Bond film, for heaven's sake.  An overactive imagination has stood me well in all of my creative classes, projects and work endeavours, but it's also been responsible for ruining several hundred nights of sleep and general peace of mind for a great percentage of my life.  I can, for some reason, watch horror films without too much of a problem (Hannibal grossed me out, but I didn't have nightmares about it), but thrillers and anything with sudden scary moments are a no-go.

So when Digit told me he wanted to get L4D, I made it very clear that he wa...