L4D initial impressions

Was able to try out a little of Left 4 Dead last night with PSPmator. All I can say is this game is incredibly intense and addictive. After a little trouble figuring out the friends system on Steam, I found it really easy to create a game with just friends. Just add the Steam ID to friends list, then when you start the game, the options to play with friends is available. The other friends then can then either be invited or they can just click on a friend's name and select join game.

We played the first campaign (escape to some hospital). Initially, I had read the difficulty of this game on normal wasn't too challenging and that most people liked playing it on Expert for maximum enjoyment. Since this was our first time playing, I decided to tick it up to the 3rd difficulty setting, right below Expert. This turned out to be a good idea as I think this difficulty was just right for the level of experience we had with the game. Several observations of the game:

1. It's dark, very dark. While some areas are fairly lighted, most of the level was very dark and all you have to light the way is a little flashlight attached to the end of your gun. It's a bit disorienting at first, but soon adds to the creepiness of the experience.

2. The gameplay is intense. It's almost nonstop action from the get go. There are some safehouses where you can restock on ammo and such, but once you get out there it's just frenetic action. Infected hordes coming from all directions, random team members getting assaulted by the various special infected so you have to save them. It was just insane. It almost feels like Serious Sam with the number of enemies on the screen at one time.

3. Speaking of Special infected, There are 5 kinds of special infected: Boomer, Smoker, Hunter, Tank, and Witch. Boomers are slow, and explode when shot, but can vomit on you which causes additional hordes of infected to show up and rush you. Smokers can use their tongues to lash out and grab a player and drag them away to be killed. Hunters are super agile and can pounce on a player, immobilizing and doing continuous damage. Tanks seriously suck...they have massive life and do great amounts of damage per hit. The witches are non-hostile at first but if you hit them for whatever reason, it basically means instant death for you. They are faster than hunters and do absolutely zomgwtfbbqpizza damage.

4. The weapons all feel pretty good. Only had access to shotgun, SMG, assault rifle, and hunting rifle so far but the guns feel powerful without becoming unbalancing to the game. My favorite weapon has to be the pipe bomb though. It's basically a grenade, but when you throw it, it emits this beeping sound that actually attracts infected to it. One of the best moments was when I threw one of these into the middle of a horde assault and killed over 20 infected at once.

5. This game feels really polished and stable. Even with the humongous amounts of enemies on the screen at once, I never experienced any kind of FPS drop. There are so many ways to get through the same level that even after playing the third stage of the 1st campaign multiple times (kept dying...), it still felt fresh and new.