Left 4 Dead also features a fantastic sound design that will have you singing to the shotgun boogie all night long. The weapons sound great, the characters’ limited dialogue is actually quite humorous, and the zombies manage to emit some sounds that are eerier than most of the levels themselves. The game also does a great job of creating one of the best ambiences I can remember since Advent Rising. You can certainly feel whatever mood the game may be throwing at you largely in part to the terrific sound design.

Left 4 Dead’s real appeal, however, comes straight from its ferocious gameplay. Usually starting off at a very quick level, the four acts quickly grow in length as each chapter goes by, and the game is literally fun from the beginning moments until the final credits. The entire storyline doesn’t take any more than eight hours to complete, but luckily the game builds a climatic end to each of the four acts with a defensive stand that would have made even the mightiest of Spartans tremble in fear.

Several different weapons decorate the environments, but the weapons in Left 4 Dead usually fall into four different categories: rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, or pistols. Each of the weapons are good for specific types of scenarios, but even the dual pistols can find balance in an automatic shotgun dominated world. For those of you unlucky enough to play without up to four people, the game’s AI is usually great, especially in the versus mode which I found odd, but I had to redo more than one defensive stand because of their carelessness. The biggest disappointment about the campaign, however, was the fact that there was no story whatsoever. No joke. No introduction, no answers to why there are zombies, no reason why this group of people managed to get themselves stranded a whopping four times, and there’s really no conclusion as to what happens to them. As long as you go in expecting a game the way you would in an arcade then you should be fine.