Left 4 Dead Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 67 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 1214 Ratings

  • Summary: Fight together...or die alone. A new and highly virulent strain of the rabies virus emerges and spreads through the human population with frightening speed. The pandemic's victims become grotesquely disfigured, wildly violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight. One of the "lucky" few apparently immune to the sickness, you, unfortunately, are also trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infacted. Together with a handful of fellow Survivors, you must fight your way to safety or die alone. A co-operative multiplayer action game from the makers of "Counter-Strike," Left 4 Dead is built atop the most advanced version of the Source Engine and introduces version 2 of Turtle Rock's artificial intelligence (A.I.) technology. [Turtle Rock Studios] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 66 out of 67
  2. Negative: 0 out of 67
  1. 100
    The most innovative multiplayer videogame since pioneers "Quake" and "Doom." Thanks to a brilliant marriage of gameplay mechanics with cinematic genre, Left 4 Dead creates genuine fright while not only enabling, but forcing cooperation between four players fighting for their survival. Endlessly engaging and virtually flawless, it's destined to be one of the most successful original vidgames of 2008, and set a new standard for cooperative gameplay.
  2. While playing offline or split-screen isn't as fun as playing with a two or three friends online -- Left 4 Dead thrives on camaraderie -- so that's probably your only consideration when purchasing the game, because everything else is too awesome to miss.
  3. It comes down to this: Left 4 Dead is a hell of a lot of fun to play.
  4. Yes, shooting hordes of zombies is fun, even more so with three other friends. But the game doesn't have anything to offer beyond that simple activity, and it most likely stop being relevant the moment someone makes a zombie FPS with a little more depth.

See all 67 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 29 out of 202
  1. Anything that Valve's touch becomes platinum, Left 4 Dead has a lot of similarities with Counter Strike in every aspect. Non stop action,over the top violence will be found in here, laugh out loud coop , and nice campaign. Tho, this is not a game for everyone,as i said this campaign is hell of a fun experience but is very short, and especially for offline users, they will not get more content on it. Also L4D lacks in weapons, there's not many variety. Those minor flaws doesn't deteriorate the excitement , and you can get good use for it. So pick it , ( get L4D2 it has more stuff ) but, get in mind that less dont get everything right , even if it has zombies. Expand
  2. A Valve FPS with zombies. This is a wonderful game that I enjoyed very much, but to get the full experience for this game, you need to have 3 other people, but when you do get 3 other friends, it makes for one helluva good time. And, because you need other people to enjoy it so much, that's why I also have to criticize for. That and its somewhat short gameplay time. It's nice to see games encourage you to play with people, but I shouldn't have to be hindered from enjoying the full game experience because I don't have friends who wanna play this game with me, but that's a minor point. Overall, Valve a lovely FPS with zombies. Expand
  3. RowanF
    6
    An amazing game - In theory. It has great graphics, great multiplayer, great gameplay ect, all of which make it a realy fun game to play, but it's completely flawed by one single factor: Its length. Four hours. That's how long it took me to complete it. Four freakin' hours. There are EXPANSION PACKS longer than that! Four hours! I mean, that might be ok if it was realy full and thought out, but not only are half the objects seen in game literaly ripped straight from Half Life 2, it doesn't even have a story line! What were valve doing all of those years? Sitting there picking their noses? Valve's feeble excuse for this pitiful gameplay time was the games massive replayablity, due to the 'AI director' which would change the positioning and quantity of the zombies each playthrough depending on how well players were doing. But as I played it, the zombies would either come from dark alley to my right, or a dark alley to my left, regardless of whether I was limping along with two temamates down and a single shell in my shotgun, or if i was tearing through the horde like an almighty god with full health and an almost unlimited supply of ammo. At any rate, they were the still just the same zombies in the same place to be disposed of in the same way. In short, the games excuse for not being pitifuly short - replayability - is... well a complete fabrication. This game had the potential to be great, but Valves inability to make a game of any length pretty much ruined it. Expand
  4. JoelT
    3
    Are you people serious? It is a fun game, don't get me wrong. Online, offline, it's still fun... For about 15 minutes. Then it just gets tedious and repetitive and stops being fun. It quickly becomes going through the motions and it isn't exactly that rewarding. There's no real point to the missions besides escape. There's nothing that makes it like the titles that are big today. No actual variety in weapons (GoW2) no moral dilemmas (Fallout 3) no deep storyline (bioshock) this game is only 1 thing. shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot, reload, shoot shoot shoot, get evacuated. Boring... oh, and do the characters need to say "reloading!" every 10 seconds? it really is annoying. Tell me I'm not the only one bothered by that. Expand

See all 202 User Reviews

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