Left 4 Dead Average Review: 88/100

I don't think (s)he meant it as Borderlands 1/2. I think (s)he meant it as a game to play while waiting for Borderlands to come out.

Are you still interested in this game?

I've got the game, basically, here's how I see it.

The honest fact of the matter is, that Left 4 Dead doesn't have $50 worth of game content in my opinion.  What L4D DOES have is probably the most polished and perfected lineup of content any game has ever produced.  There are only 7 weapons, 8 if you count the stationary miniguns (10 if you consider grenades, oh, and you can hit things with the butt of your gun, not really a seperate weapon though)... 6 variations of enemies, 5 of which you will always see with the same model, and the 6th has different models, but they all act the same.  Just running through the levels ignoring enemies (it's practically impossible but in theory) you can get through all the level content in about an hour and a half, not counting loading times.  To complete all the content one run through you're probably looking at 4 hours.  The 4 player characters have different models, but their abilities are the same, although they do have different voice cues and lines.  Graphically the game is really good, but there are definately better titles out there, expecially some of the locations in the levels are less than extrordinary, there's a fair few empty warehouses and square rooms with ugly furniture.

Now that I've covered the bad.  The game is honestly so polished that it's still an absolutely amazing experiance.  Every weapon feels just SOOO perfect, as if the game was crafted to perfectly suit it, the creature AI, while sometimes simple, is in other ways increadibly impressive.  Monsters will try to flank you, they will attempt to pick off straglers, they will drag you away from the group, and vice versa with your allies.  The game is FULL of "OH SHI-" moments... times when you feel like the world is collapsing in on you, and a general sense of true survival horror.  Expecially your first few times through the game it will make you feel things you'll be suprized a game can make you feel.

L4D defines what a game should do for coop play, and coop games will be studying the formula they used in this game for a LONG time to come.  You honestly feel like part of a team with your group, you rarely feel in competition with them, they will make you angry more often when they do stupid rambo crap than when they outright shoot you in the face.  If you can appreicate the value of teamwork you could probably write books on the lessons this game teaches on that subject.  Playing the game with friends this game transends anying I've ever done in gaming before.  It's just so well tailored, you really feel like you are experiancing the universe WITH the other players, not just vaugly along side them.

Finally, you have to mention the AI director when you talk about this game.  Simply put, ya, you can get through the game content in 4 hours, but you're going to do it many many many more times.  Every time you play the game it's completely different, enemies spawn in completely different locations, with different frequencies, and with different hiding places.  Then, even when you're used to the way the game works and the trends, you can always jump up one difficulty level and it's all like learning from the ground up again.  The AI director is brilliant in terms of how it manages pacing, and how it creates an amazing feel for the game, how it evaluates the skill of the players and creates appropriate challenges.  Rarely will go through a section of the game and not have at least one legitimate challenging section.  It's the perfect template for how a well crafted AI can completely change the way a game feels.

Summary: Basically, it's a game that takes just a small offering of set peices, and polishes it to the point where it's just a shade below real life in the depth of experiance.  $50 is alot for a game in my opinion, and it makes it so much harder to recommend this game based on how little acctual content there is in the game to play with... but ultimately, on this one you are paying for the brilliance of the design and the sheer absorbing depth of the universe that has been created with no annoying text boxes and no abstract plot devices, just shooting and surviving.  You could very easily teach classes on game design using this game as a archetype.  Every structure in the title is just SOOO perfectly executed, it really defines a subgenre of the shooter genre like nothing else before it.  Based only on the fact that this game is one that game developers will be studying for ideas for the next 20 years, I feel if you're a gamer you owe it to yourself to check this game out.

[edit] Sorry for the wordy post, I have a habit of taking game reviews seriously.