In Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, half the fun of playing the game at all is venturing online and playing the game with real live people instead of the AI bots that are more likely to shoot at a wall than the hunter currently lashing your health away with its deadly talons.
Campaign games are fun for this very reason alone. It makes the experience much more real, much more intense – you never know if you’re going to have to leave a man behind, a feat not really optional with the AI bots, since they will always linger by you and never be forced to run off to the chopper because a Tank and a Jockey are in tow.
The problem I have with Left 4 Dead 2 is the Scavenge and Versus modes. I may be alone in thinking this, but playing as the Infected just isn’t that fun. Your health bar is ridiculously low, and since you can choose where to spawn, you can quite easily pick the wrong spot and either go running into the sharp end of an axe, or just find the wrong spot entirely and find yourself wandering around with nothing much to do.
It’s most likely because I’m not very good at playing the infected. When it comes to playing the survivors, Single Player mode exists pretty much as a practice run, so you get to know the levels, the characters and the outlay without having to worry about an angry teammate yelling at you for turning the wrong corner or opening that door with the fire behind it in Dead Center.
With the Infected, you have to just instantly know the kind of infected you’re playing and how to deal with them. I was chuffed when I got my first go at playing the charger, only to find that I couldn’t see where the hell I was going because of that big old arm of his and went running off in the wrong direction.
Or perhaps that’s just me. Either way, the game felt like it was constantly over too quickly and I never felt that I had the chance to ‘get into it’ properly and really enjoy it.
Well, with Left 4 Dead 3 no doubt being out at the end of the year, hopefully Valve will improve the health bars so the infected can make a go of things.
I’ve been playing it a bit more lately and as a result I’m getting quite good at it – plus, a handy tip if you didn’t already know – if you’re the infected, go and slap the first Witch you see – she’ll go after the first survivor she sees!
hehehhehe.