VALVE’s latest zombie-themed game breathes new life into an otherwise dead genre.

By Michael Lum

To be fair, zombie-themed games have been around for ages, and video game developer VALVE did nothing much to popularise the genre.

That credit should go to CAPCOM’s best-selling video game, Resident Evil, which is arguably the most respected series in the realm of zombie-themed games. After all, nothing can be more fun than torching a zombie to kingdom come with a flamethrower, a promise that Resident Evil has never failed to deliver.

So just what’s so special about VALVE’s latest video shooter game, Left 4 Dead, which has reviewers and gamers singing its praises?

Dynamic Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Oddly enough, it was the game’s unpredictable situations generated by a powerful and yet mysterious in-game mechanism which gained significant attention.

Aptly known as The Director, it controls every aspect of the game like the difficulty level, visual effects and locations of spawn points and items, based on every single action the player makes.

VALVE developer Gabe Newell explained in a recent magazine interview that the goal of The Director is to make the game more cinematic and unpredictable, thereby increasing replay value.

“The events are trying to give [the players] a sense of narrative,” he explains. “We look at sequences of events and try to take what their actions are to generate new sequences.”

“This is what makes procedural narrative more of a story-telling device than a simple difficulty mechanism.”

With the zombies’ role as pivotal characters to the game, most of the hard work was naturally reserved for the undeads to ensure that they looked as realistic as possible.

The need for realism ran down to the zombies’ movement and facial expressions, as mentioned by developers Matt Campbell and Phil Robb, who explained why such efforts were made.

“We treat the infected horde as a major character, and spent a lot of time in making their movements believable,” said Phill Robb, revealing that the animation for the zombies were motion-captured by a stuntman and integrated into the game’s engine, allowing for greater realism instead of relying on simple ragdoll physics.

In addition, the zombies also boast some of the most advanced AI ever seen in such games, where they are usually depicted as mindless, bloodthirsty scum.

“We spent a great deal of time on the AI systems for the common horde,” said developer Matt Campbell, elaborating that extra effort spent was to ensure that there would be no safe spots for players to hide where an Infected could not access, a problem which is common in other zombie-themed shooter games. The idea was to force passive players out of their comfort zones and into the carnage where they should be.

Unique gameplay

While The Director may have been revolutionary from the technical standpoint, it was the team-centric gameplay and the option to play as predators which made the difference for fans.

Unlike most zombie-themed games that only allow players to play the hero, or in certain cases, as the human villain manipulating the story from behind the scenes, Left 4 Dead allows four additional players to control four of the five zombie bosses in the game, albeit only in the game’s versus mode.

While the zombie players are not able to use weapons, each playable zombie boss has his own unique attack which is implemented in a way to ensure that the game remains balanced. In addition, players rotate between the human survivors and the zombie bosses once every chapter.

Final-year National University of Singapore student Matthias Mar, 22, who listed Left 4 Dead as one of his favourite games, thinks that it was these aspects that sealed the deal.

“You help each other out, like reviving teammates and stuff, things that don’t appear at all in other games,” he says. “That’s the social aspect of the game.”

As for playing as the zombies, he was a little more candid.

“I prefer to kill them actually!” he jokes. “But it’s exciting to play as something different once in awhile.”

Sounds good enough for us. And now, if you’ll excuse us, we will be off to appreciate the unique features of Left 4 Dead in typical hype fashion: by torching the Infected till extra-crispy.

So VALVE has announced a sequel to the L4D game, that is to be titled, well, Left 4 Dead 2. That would probably stink if you already own the first game, since it is barely a year old and instead of providing more downloadable content, out comes VALVE with the easy way.

Still, there are new features to look forward to in L4D 2 like:

– An all new cast of survivors with the likes of a conman, a reporter, a mechanic and a football coach.

– Better rewards like more ammo and health power-ups for taking risks like choosing a longer and more dangerous path to your destination.

– Melee weapons like an axe for chopping zombies up, a frying pan (which even sounds like one when it connects with a zombie’s head), and the good ‘ol chainsaw.

– Brand new Infected, like zombies donning fireproof suits, the Wandering Witch (don’t worry because the old wailing Witch will still be around) and a brand new Special Infected, the Charger.