Left 4 Dead logo

Left 4 Dead (L4D) is still the paramount zombie apocalypse videogame — there are no contenders, no second place awards. It’s a frenetic, hair-trigger suicide mission into an infected wasteland that doses players with relentless fun.

Even five months after its release, the original Campaign mode continues to be both exciting and trying, while Versus still turns up the intensity by forcing players to alternate between the roles of survivor and infected.

But despite the release version’s polish, there was always some tiny element missing, something teased but never fully delivered: unadulterated intensity free from the stairstep pacing of the campaign. The strongest moments of L4D lay in its massive NPC crescendos, where a horde of the undead claw, vomit, smash, strangle and pounce to ensure every survivor is indeed, left for dead.

Valve finally realized it could hack all of that terror and confusion into one sanguine slab of gameplay, resulting in the recently added DLC pack.

Read the rest of this entry »