Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Valve
Publisher: Valve

The Source engine, provider of a rich and robust canvas on which graphics designers can paint beautiful animated imagery using high resolution models, HDR, and skeletal animation, has been in the wild for some time, and so has allowed PC hardware to catch up with it. The advantage is that Left 4 Dead can be run at absurdly high resolutions with virtually any mid-range, inexpensive video card. Combine the resolution and technology with Valve's usual fantastic character and scenery artwork and your eyes are greeted with a wonderfully crisp experience that blends the industrial and organic to good effect.

In a design decision that would almost seem to have come from the Indie game development scene, Valve has implemented a dynamic multi-track music system, which dynamically changes, for each player independently, depending on what is happening in the game. Compositionally the individual tracks are a purposeful blend of stereotypical zombie thriller movie orchestral work complimented with light ambient rock, a formula that works eerily well, especially since the tracks so frequently meld together in unpredictable and satisfying ways. Enemy types are easily identifiable by sound, and the voice acting, gun sound effects, and enemy noises all work together to form a melodious cacophony of zombie-killing madness.

Left 4 Dead's maps, which feature varied layouts that smoothly oscillate between narrow spaces, like offices and forest paths, and wide-open rooms, like airport terminals and cornfields, provide a perfect back-drop to the frenetic action, which sees the player and his three co-op buddies (which may be human, bots, or a combination) attacked from all sides by a zombie horde. The more you play the game the more the item and enemy placement, which is mostly dynamic depending on how well the team is doing, has a way of cluing you in as to what's to come next.

I had thought that corridor shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein 3d, and Shogo, which married run 'n' gun gameplay with fantastic pacing and formulaic gameplay that required practice to master, was a dead genre. Yet Left 4 Dead is an entry into that exact sub-genre, but with its own twists. Like many games prior to, let's say, 1995, Left 4 Dead's scenarios are a blast to play over and over, and Valve's touted "Director" system works fabulously at dynamically pacing each playthrough, forcing the player to learn general strategies and then use those strategies in a variety of unpredictable and, often, unconventional ways. If there is a knock it is that the gameplay is perhaps a little too hectic, unlike the aforementioned classic titles.