In many ways, Left 4 Dead is exactly the multiplayer game I’ve been waiting for. I’ve got a lot to say on multiplayer games in general (especially competitive ones) but for the sake of brevity I’ll stick with the short version. Basically, the more like a sport a video game is, the less I like it. Repetitious motions and ridiculous emphasis on scores and trash-talking, all of that is just pointless nonsense to me. Since this is all the typical online shooter is, I rarely play them. When Left 4 Dead came around, and I saw that it’s explicitly designed for cooperative play and made to outright destroy those who won’t. This sounded perfect for me. Despite what it may sound like, I actually love playing games with other people. I just don’t want the point of the game to be centered on beating someone up.
This game’s first impression is second-to-none. The awesome concept by Turtle Rock delivers, and Valve’s signature polish is immediately clear. This game has a long history in the public eye — I remember hearing about the many challenges they faced in development on GFW Radio two years ago. The most difficult obstacle seemed to be how to make a story-based game persistently interesting in a multiplayer setting. Now that I’ve spent a dozen hours or so with everything the game has to offer, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I think went right, and also some concerns I have about the game’s longevity.
I started by going through all four campaigns on Advanced difficulty in single player. I felt it’d be the perfect way to learn all the game’s basic mechanics so I won’t come out looking like an idiot when I start playing online. My experience with this was very positive — I barely made it through each level but never actually died. It was tense, exciting, and a pitch-perfect blend of the atmosphere and setting that I love in shooters. It also took me about three and a half hours to finish. I knew the game was going to be brief, but I was still a bit surprised at just how brief. I’d heard all about how the AI director would change things up, and plus I would hardly want a typical multiplayer match to last several hours, so I wasn’t complaining. After listening to the commentary (which is excellent, as usual) I was ready to try it with other people.
My first online game (which was with complete strangers by the way) was incredible. The three other folks all had headsets and none of them had seen the entire game yet. One was actually in his very first game, and the other two had played other campaigns but not the one we were on. Therefore, I was the only person who had seen the whole game (and on the second-to-hardest difficulty setting) so I decided to become the leader. Coordinating was no problem since we all listened to eachother and I could tell they were determined to have the best experience possible. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to start off with.
Things were even more intense and fun than what single player had been for me. The experience was just as I hoped – barely making it to each checkpoint and working hard to keep everyone together and alive in the meantime. We cooperated very well; no one ever actually died, and by the end we really felt like a team. And then, we came to the finale. Now, since I was the only one who knew what was coming while we waited for rescue, I helped the team get set up for the insanity that would follow. This actually turned out to be a whole new aspect of gameplay that I didn’t get with the bots, since they don’t set up defenses or use grenades. “But hey,” I told myself, “I could get through this without much preparation before, so this should be even better.”
Instead, it was a complete disaster. The first time, two of my teammates got punted off the roof by the tank which made getting rid of the rest of us a cakewalk. The second time, my comrades defending me on the minigun got pulled off the roof by smokers and the third guy who went to rescue them got pounced by a hunter, leaving me defenseless and unable to rescue any of them. Each subsequent restart, we revised our strategy, and each time, we failed. By the time it was our sixth try, our tactics were better than ever, but we were too tired and frustrated to properly execute on them. We never once saw the rescue helicopter, which might have given us just a little taste of success. And so, spawning at the beginning for the seventh time after being ripped to shreds by zombies, we agreed it was time to go to bed. After saying goodnight, some smartass threw a molotov into the safe room, burning all of us alive, putting a resounding period on the end of the night’s sentence.
I quit the game, and went to go lay down for the evening. Before long, I started feeling really let down. Now, part of that was just that I really wanted to see everyone’s stats at the end. During that 90 minutes we spent together, I was really getting to know how my teammates were playing. Seeing the stats scroll by would have been the perfect, proverbial cherry-on-top conclusion that I wanted. It would have also been an opportunity to talk about the game a bit and unwind from all the tension. As it was, and this might sound lame, I actually had trouble sleeping that night because I didn’t have any downtime before bed. I guess that speaks to how intense it is, but it also speaks to how deeply unsatisifiying it felt without an ending.
Multiplayer games are built, intentionally or otherwise, to destroy suspension of disbelief. This is another reason why I have trouble enjoying them as much as other games. Left 4 Dead’s greatest achievement in my eyes is being able to keep me immersed in the linear narrative despite all the things that normally drag me out of it. Though specific encounters do change, as promised, the overall story remains the same. Even though I know how things end, I still need to get to the end to feel satisifed. The feeling I got from that night was like watching a movie I’d already seen and having it turned off 20 minutes before it ends. Yes, I already know how it ends, but by then, I’m ready (and indeed, expectant) to be carried all the way through to the credits. In Left 4 Dead’s case, I’m just surprised at how much this very same thing mattered to me.
So now, many more multiplayer and versus games later, I fear I’ve arrived at an even worse spot — total burnout. This has to be a new world record for me, having a game start out so rad and then get so unappealing so fast. I think the problem is that the things they do to freshen up the experience through multiple playthroughs ultimately amount to very little. As I become more accustomed to handling different types of situations, where they happen ends up mattering very little. Without something like having the levels change, I’m finding very little in the way of new experiences each time I play. This is perhaps the worst problem I have with other multiplayer games, though I usually see through the veil much faster. Playing an online multiplayer game for over a dozen hours must be another world record for me.
But you know what? I’m gonna keep playing, at least for a while. Who knows, maybe something with a narrative just can’t be good for me this many times through. And yet… maybe it can. In either case, Valve has an excellent record of post-release support and I want to be around to see it. I’m confident that it’ll just get better from here on out.
December 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Panda, can I have your babies?
December 7th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Absolutely. I’d love to raise a child with you.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
You’ll want to check out http://www.indiebirth.com for that. *shudder*
December 12th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Jesus, no! Also, dammit, now there’s a link to them directly on my site! =P
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Hehehe, baby pandas in purple sweaters…