Never Too Old To Play™

The IGN family of gaming websites is my general “go to” source for game reviews and game-related news, information and editorials. I’ve been an avid fan since the early 2000’s and visit their various websites on an almost daily basis.

Lately, IGN has been giving me a different reason to love them, though. Earlier this week, Rus McLaughlin told us readers why he doesn’t think Halo 3: ODST is Game of the Year material, citing issues he apparently doesn’t believe apply to the equally unimpressive but far less hyped Halo 3, which prompted me to point out how Halo 3 fails in the same ways. I’m thankful for this as there are only so many reviews one can write in a week.

A couple of days ago, Ryan Geddes opined that Epic Games needs to rip certain pages from Bungie’s Halo playbook in order for their blockbuster Gears of War franchise to thrive in the future. In addition to the rather unbelievable supposition that there’s any chance that future Gears of War games won’t be even more successful than the first two, Mr. Geddes both suggests things that are simply smart game development choices attributable to any number of studios and games and criticizes what he sees as faults with Gears of War that are every bit as applicable to Halo.

One of the most critical issues with both Gears of War and its sequel is the rather lackluster multiplayer experience that is at best a tepid, toned down version of classic PC multiplayer deathmatches with the exception of the second game’s compelling Horde mode (in which up to five players must work together to face increasingly difficult waves of Locust forces with the goal of surviving as long as possible).

One compelling multiplayer mode is not good enough, though. Multiplayer is a very important aspect of games, especially shooters, these days, and gamers need more than just standard deathmatches if a game is to have any longevity. However, improving the flaws in the multiplayer experience is not emulating Halo 3 - there are plenty of action games with great multiplayer components such as the Call of Duty and Left4Dead series – but just following common sense.

In fact, I hope that Epic doesn’t try to make Gears of War’s multiplayer mode a mirror image of Halo 3’s (and, yes, I recognize that Mr. Geddes also stated they shouldn’t) because with Halo 3, the Halo franchise’s multiplayer experience has degenerated into a bunch of ten-year-old kids running out of the gate for the most powerful weapon and then jumping up and down all over the map while spewing vulgarities that would make Eminem cringe. And, yes, I’m hyperbolizing.

It really just seems as if Epic Games has lost some of its identity with its transition to the console world. They really redefined the PC multiplayer gaming experience with their Unreal Tournament series of competitive multiplayer games whose single player campaigns were just the multiplayer mode with bots yet chose to focus on the single-player experience with Gears of War.

They, along with other PC-centric developers like Valve Corporation, also made extraordinary efforts to work with the fan communities for their games with design director Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski often interacting with gamers on the company’s online forums and the company including hardcore fans in public beta tests of upcoming games and modes. Mr. Geddes seems to have forgotten this (or maybe never knew it in the first place) in speaking about Bungie’s multiplayer beta of Halo 3 as if they were the only company that did this.

On the other hand, I don’t think “community building” is really all that central to the success of mainstream blockbuster games these days. The hardcore fans might spend their time posting comments in Bungie, Epic and Valve’s forums, but the more mainstream gamers don’t visit gaming websites or post on message boards.

I assure you those mainstream gamers didn’t contribute to Halo 3’s eight million+ in sales because of what Bungie was doing at some gaming convention or because of cryptic websites, both of which really only matter to the devoted hardcore Halo loyalists. Everyone else? They were just brainwashed by the insane marketing machine Microsoft pushed out there, with images of the Master Chief everywhere from movie screens to bus stops to soda cans.

If Epic can really take anything away from this, it’s that you need to spend over $40 million if you want to sell eight million units of your game. I imagine, though, that they were happy with selling five million based on the strength of the previous game alone.

Mr. Geddes goes on to talk about how deep and expansive the Halo universe, how much more complex and provoking Bungie’s games are, when in reality the Halo and Gears of War worlds really aren’t that different when compared at face value. He states that Bungie is obsessed with expanding the universe “because they love it,” a sentiment that is contradicted by the rather lazy job they did with Halo 3. The rehashed story, recycled set pieces and stagnant gameplay tells the story of a development house that was sick of doing the same thing for a decade and rushed the game out so they could finally announce their split from Microsoft a week or two later. Hardly the behavior of a loving parent, is it?

Especially hilarious, though, are the criticisms Mr. Geddes levels towards Gears of War’s world without realizing that they apply as much, or even more so, to the Halo games. For example, he states that Halo is “about people struggling to survive against overwhelming odds” when a rather prosperous human race living on safe and sound Earth have a genetically engineered super soldier in tank armor who can skydive from one starship to another in orbit around a freakin’ planet to lay waste to the Covenant for them. That’s not to mention the entire army of soldiers with a fleet of spaceships and a seemingly endless amount of combat vehicles backing him up. But I guess the fear that the isolated pockets of emaciated stragglers exhibit anytime a pothole opens up in the ground or the lights go out at night on the planet that they had to bomb with nuclear warheads just to have a chance is all just an act.

He asks why Sera, that devastated planet on which Gears of War takes place, is worth saving. Why is Earth worth saving? It seems pretty obvious that Sera is the equivalent of Earth in the Gears universe considering the game notes at several points that the events unfolding before them are humanity’s last stand. Do we really need to know which specific people built the “towering buildings of lattice and spire,” which I might add look a helluva lot better than anything in Halo 3? Much like the barren wastelands of Fallout 3, the “destroyed beauty” of what remains of those magnificent structures tells a much more powerful story than some recited history lesson soliloquy from a floating metal sphere or blue holographic supermodel.

And while he’s right that we don’t know much about the Locust even after two games, how much did we really know about the Convenant and the Flood at the end of Halo 2? We don’t know where the Covenant or Flood came from whereas we know that the Locust call the subterranean bowels of Sera their home. We don’t really learn much more about the Covenant society than we do about the Locust society: both are actually collections of various species with the same “religious beliefs” – the Covenant believe in the “oracles” (the artificial intelligence maintaining the halo installations) and the Locust worship the riftworms.

We have no idea why the Covenant hate humanity so much whereas we learn through the course of the two Gears games that humanity’s ever-growing need for energy sources led them to dig into the Locusts’ territory, an intrusion the Locust chose to take as an act of war. The ensuing conflict even served a dual purpose for the Locust, who were in the midst of a civil war with Locusts who had been powerfully mutated by overexposure to the same energy source humans tried to harvest.

And the Flood? They don’t even have any real motivation we can gather aside from the – say it with me – cliché desire to assimilate all living creatures in the galaxy. They’re really nothing more than a virus – how many times have we witnessed that metaphor in science fiction works?

Ultimately, though, the real difference between the Gears of War and Halo franchises is the humanity of the former. Despite everything Mr. Geddes claims, Gears is a far more personal, far more emotional experience from the heart-racing, visceral, in-your-face nature of the combat with its focus on teamwork and strategy to the more believable and accessible purpose all the way to the actual characters themselves.

He describes Marcus and Dom as meat puppets which I suppose would make Master Chief a meat puppet in a can since he has virtually no personality and is one of the most underdeveloped characters in gaming history. Master Chief displays nary an emotion through the course of three games – the fate of the galaxy rests in his hands and friends and comrades fall left and right, yet you’d never know it with his calm demeanor and monotone murmurs. He fears no one and nothing, is never relieved at having just made it through a treacherous fight, has no sense of humor, and is never elated or even just happy for his victories.

Marcus Fenix, on the other hand, actually has a personality (even if it’s tough to make out through his gravelly voice). He’s sarcastic; he gets pumped up; he mourns the dead; he fears for his friend Dominic’s stability. Dominic himself is probably the most “real” character in either franchise: he pines for his missing wife, is quick with a witty comment or wry jab at a comrade and understands far more than most people about the cruelty of the world and the necessity for military strength.

And let’s not forget about one of the most colorful characters in video games in a while: Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, who makes even the most grueling combat situations enjoyable with his enthusiastic banter and overconfident trash talk towards the enemy. He loves the thrill and the adrenaline, which is probably the reason why he was a star defensive lineman for the national “thrashball” league before all hell broke loose on Sera, a celebrity status that is reflected in non-player character reaction to and interaction with him (even your squad mates gush when first meeting him in the first game).

All these little details and nuances help make Gears of War feel so much more alive than the rather disconnected and neutered experience of Halo 3. This isn’t to say, however, that Gears of War did everything perfectly. The reason anyone can even claim that the franchise needs some degree of “saving” is because the single-player campaign mode of the second game simply fell flat, ironically because they listened too much to the fans.

To appease gamers who didn’t like the single-minded focus on generally close quarters squad-based tactical ground combat, the team diluted Gears of War 2 with new scenarios that felt tacked on – freeform vehicular sections where the player pilots an armored vehicle with clunky controls through icy caverns and fights giant spiders, tedious battles on top of giant armored transports, a Panzer Dragoon-inspired aerial on-rails level, and an excruciatingly boring and contrived end game where the player rides on the back of a plodding Brumak (a several-stories-tall monstrosity covered in armor and armed with missile launchers and guns).

I agree with Mr. Geddes when he says that Epic needs to bring the Gears of War franchise “back to basics.” It was a mistake to try to “go big” and expand the scale to be a little more like Halo 3. Gears shouldn’t be about Michael Bay-esque set pieces but about dark and gritty combat where the already wasted landscape is left a lot bloodier. It should be about saving the species and the planet, a more realistic, attainable goal that people can better wrap their heads around, rather than trying to stop some intergalactic force from destroying the galaxy with just an assault rifle and a couple of energy grenades – Gears works best as Saving Private Ryan, not the latest James Bond flick, and is a better game for it.

In fact, the Halo series could do well to emulate some aspects of Gears, and actually has already started to do so. Even after the disappointment of Halo 3, I was excited about Halo 3: ODST and later Halo: Reach. The scale of both games is cut back quite a bit.

In ODST, you’re just another soldier in the military rather than John McClane on steroids. You can’t go all gung ho on the Convenant and expect to last long – some degree of rudimentary stealth is inherent in the game.

In Reach, you even know right off the bat, if you paid any attention at all during the three proper Halo games, that you’re not going to save anything: Reach falls no matter what you do. There’s a more prevalent sense of danger in that even though you’re still playing a Spartan like Master Chief, the forces must be threatening indeed as they were able to wipe out an entire platoon of Master Chiefs. No more laughing in the face of danger, hopefully.

However, the thing that needs to change the most is the technology. Halo 3’s game engine, which is a moderately enhanced version of the Halo 2 game engine, itself a moderately enhanced version of the Halo game engine created way back at the turn of the millennium, is showing its age with subpar modeling lacking in intricate detail. Put side-by-side with Gears of War or Sony’s Uncharted, Halo 3 looks like a decidedly last generation effort.

I had hoped when Bungie announced their split from Microsoft that this would open up the possibility of another developer such as Epic to step in and create a truly innovative new game engine that could help usher the franchise into the top echelon of current-generation video games.

It remains to be seen whether Microsoft and Bungie will do the right thing and take a page out of everyone else’s playbook this time.

Experience this for yourself!

• Halo 3 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Halo 3: ODST (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Gears of War Platinum Hits Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Gears of War 2 Game of the Year Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)

There was quite a bit of controversy in the video game world right after Valve Corporation announced Left4Dead 2, the sequel to their award-winning, critically acclaimed blockbuster Left4Dead, at the 2009 E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) convention in June when a large group of gamers called for a boycott of the game due to concerns that the sequel was coming out too soon such that Valve would no longer support the first game, which was still played a lot online.

Some of the members of the boycott group felt that the additions and changes to the game as described in Valve’s announcement did not appear to be significant enough to warrant a brand new $60 game and thus inferred that Valve was simply trying to milk the young, less than one year old (at the time) franchise. Further, the fact that the release of a sequel inevitably leads to a decline in support for the earlier game(s) distressed Left4Dead fans who lamented that Valve was one of the last reputable game companies that still invested a lot of effort and resources into supporting their games.

As it turns out, the boycott was much ado about nothing as Valve released more downloadable content at the end of September, released a Left4Dead Authoring Toolset to allow gamers to create their own Left4Dead content (which would also be compatible with the sequel) earlier in the summer and proved even in the demo that they made a game worthy of being a standalone sequel instead of a downloadable expansion to the first game.

Left4Dead 2 improves on the amazing first game in almost every way with better visuals, new features and functionality, a new gameplay mode, and of course a slew of new Infected – both common and Special (plus the new uncommon Infected) – to lay waste to.

The most obvious new feature, in my mind, is the addition of melee weapons. This to me is a game changer as the ability to wield hand-to-hand combat utensils completely changes the way you approach the experience. There are a total of ten melee weapons although one, the baseball bat, is an exclusive pre-order bonus. The other nine are, in order of my least to most favorite to use on swarming zombies, the nightstick, the crowbar, the frying pan, the electric guitar, the cricket bat, the fireman’s axe, the machete, the katana, and my personal favorite the chainsaw, which has a limited amount of usage (it is gas-powered after all) but tears through crowds of Infected like a shark gnashing on a baby seal.

You can only carry one melee weapon at a time, of course, and it takes the place of your handgun(s). While I find the ability to rapidly pump an Infected full of bullets from a distance with dual-wielded pistols an asset at times (I tend to stick with a close-range shotgun as my main weapon), I much prefer to take out my enemies up close with a nice, shiny blade. It is, for some reason, more satisfying to slice through any army of enemies than it is to simply mow them down with a sub-machine gun or assault rifle. There’s also something strangely funny about hearing the clang of a cast iron skillet against the skull of an Infected – it helps to lighten the mood quite a bit. Plus, some of the melee weapons are surprisingly effective against the Special Infected.

In addition to melee weapons, Left4Dead 2 introduces a new set of firearms with which to trim the population of Infected humans. The same general classes of weapons are there but now there are more varieties of handguns, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles. True, many of them are just visual variations of the same weapon (I constantly switch between two automatic, rapid-fire shotguns that hold 10 shells at a time) but it’s still nice to see some variety. A whole new weapon, the grenade launcher, also makes its debut in this sequel, and it does just what you expect it to. I always grab it when the Director (the game’s artificial intelligence) decides to drop one in my way, but it’s not always the best weapon to use as it’s exceptionally easy to inflict friendly fire damage upon your allies and yourself. It’s still fun to make the Infected go boom, though.

There’s now a Magnum that can take the place of the standard handgun. It cannot be dual-wielded but it does considerably more damage – one-shot kills on common Infected. It only holds 8 rounds but if you’re accurate with your attacks, that’s more than enough. There’s even a new throwable weapon to join the Molotov cocktail and pipe bomb: the bile bomb, a tube of Boomer bile that contaminates an area and/or the Infected within it and causes other Infected to attack like when a Boomer vomits all over you. An especially useful tactic is to toss it at a Tank or Witch and let your enemies do your work for you.

Speaking of Special Infected, several new specimens join the Smoker, Hunter, Boomer, Tank, and Witch, all of which return in slightly varied (from a visual standpoint) form. The Spitter is a particularly nasty enemy that hurls acidic loogies at you. If you’re fast enough, you can get away from the area before the toxic spittle drains your health, but many times you’re in areas with little room for movement. The Charger is a larger-than-average Infected with one giant arm and one miniature arm that rams into players and repeatedly pummels the one it manages to grab a hold of. It’s essentially a “mini” version of the Tank. And last but not least, the Jockey is an extremely annoying Special Infected whose sole attack is to leap on your head and essentially ride you in directions you likely don’t want to go (for example, around in circles in a pool of the Spitter’s acid).

While the Smoker, Hunter, Tank and Boomer are largely unchanged from the first game’s versions as far as behavior and abilities go, the Witch is a little different in this game. Instead of just sitting around moping about whatever has it all worked up, the Left4Dead 2 Witch shuffles around slowly in a general area, making it somewhat more difficult to avoid. This is especially true in the “Hard Rain” campaign in which one level has about a dozen Witches wandering around throughout the level, some within close proximity of each other.

In addition to the new Special Infected, Left4Dead 2 introduces a new class of enemy known as uncommon Infected. These are essentially common Infected – they deal and take the same amount of damage as their more frequently seen counterparts – with specific attributes that make them a little tougher to deal with. For example, the Infected CEDA Worker wears a hazmat suit that protects it from the flames of a Molotov cocktail or ignited fuel canister (and makes an interesting hissing sound when punctured) while the Riot Infected’s riot armor protects it from bullets and melee attacks (it’s only vulnerable to melee attacks from behind).

Fighting all these new enemies are four brand new Survivor characters who are more developed than the Survivors from the first game. You never learn much about Francis, Bill, Zoey and Louis, who appear more flustered and panicked about their situation. This is perhaps appropriate considering the first game seems to take place at a time much closer to the outbreak of the infection.

In contrast, the second game seems to take place further along the timeline since the new Survivors show they know a lot more about what’s going on through their in-game and cutscene dialogue. Ellis, the youthful weapon-obsessed mechanic who loves telling tall tales about misadventures with his buddy Keith, especially seems a little too comfortable with the scenario, never coming across as scared or distressed about the fact that he’s being attacked by mobs of crazed humans (never mind being disturbed that he’s slaughtering fellow people).

He’s joined by Rochelle, a fiery young journalist with a proper Southern upbringing but no qualms about getting feisty when necessary; Nick, a vain and self-centered womanizer who isn’t cheap with sarcasm, complaints or insults; and Coach, a stocky football coach who looks kind of like Judge Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and is the de facto leader of the group, dispensing common sense and pep talks like candy out of a rotund purple Pez container.

The game is divided into five campaigns (compared to the original’s four) that take place across various parts of Louisiana. You start off in a burning hotel in the middle of a city and make your way across swamps and plantations to reach a final rendez-vous point with the military, who are bombing the entire area as a last resort preventative measure against the infection. As in the original game, progressing through these campaigns with three other players online is the way the game was intended to be played, but the developers included a few other fun modes to change things up.

Returning are the Versus mode, in which a second team of four players take control of random Special Infected in an attempt to wipe out the Survivors before they can reach the level’s safe house, and the Survival mode, in which four players fight as long as they can against a never-ending army of Infected. New to the series is the Scavenge mode, in which a team of four Survivors tries to collect fuel tanks scattered around a map and return them to a power generator to extend the time in the round while a team of four Special Infected tries to stop them or destroy the tanks.

As far as the graphics are concerned, Left4Dead 2 looks pretty good considering it uses the five-year-old Source game engine that powered Half-Life 2 in 2004. The graphics don’t hold a candle next to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, also released in November 2009, but appear better than Left4Dead’s thanks to more chapters taking place in the daylight where players can get a good look at the attention to detail in the environments and an improvement in the animation of the enemies as they advance, attack and react to damage.

Better yet, Valve improved the modeling of the Infected so that when they are hit by gunfire, not only do the appropriate pieces of their bodies fly off like in the first game but flesh tears open to reveal bone and guts underneath. Good times.

All in all, Left4Dead 2 is a marked improvement over its predecessor and an evolution in almost every aspect of the game. The rogues gallery has expanded with some nasty new additions to the Infected army, the new player characters are more fleshed out and entertaining to listen to, the environments are more beautifully rendered and creative in their design, the new functionality fits perfectly and makes it difficult to go back to the first game without feeling handcuffed by limitations, and the overall experience is significantly more immersive.

Valve Corporation should be applauded for their effort and lauded for the results, which are about as good as you can get without a whole new game engine (which I hope Valve will develop by the time the fourth Left4Dead game arrives on shelves in a couple of years as a truly next generation version of this series would be awesome).

If you’re a first-person shooter or action fan, there really is no reason why you shouldn’t have Left4Dead 2 in your game library.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

I didn’t recommend Left4Dead for young children and I won’t recommend Left4Dead 2, either. The sequel isn’t anymore kid-friendly than the first game and is, in fact, less appropriate for children as the gruesomeness of certain aspects of the experience is greater than before. Valve even had to create a less gory version of the game for the Australian market as the original version couldn’t get proper classification (and thus couldn’t be sold in Australia).

Experience this for yourself!

• Left 4 Dead 2 (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Left 4 Dead 2 (PC) (Amazon)

The “zombie” sub-genre has been a popular one in entertainment, dating back to such classic horror films as George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (and the sequels he directed) and the loosely related The Return of the Living Dead.

These movies influenced video games like LucasArt’s campy and fun Zombies Ate My Neighbors for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, the House of the Dead series that ruled the arcades of the mid to late 90s and Capcom’s ever popular Resident Evil series of games with the latest entry available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles.

There’s even a pair of books by Max Brooks covering an alternate universe in which our planet is overrun by a sort of zombie apocalypse and details how humans were able to survive it. World War Z, which is being adapted for the big screen, is written as if it were a collection of historic accounts from survivors of this disaster whereas its decidedly more light hearted companion, The Zombie Survival Guide, is like a “how to” manual for defending yourself against the creatures of the night.

There’s even a popular version of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that’s being adapted into a motion picture. You know something’s big when people are creating literary mash-ups with works by revered authors.

Considering almost all zombie-themed entertainment focuses on humans trying to survive a seemingly endless horde of the flesh-eating undead, it seems rather odd that until 2008, no publisher had released an immersive first-person shooter that pitted the player against waves of zombie attackers. Yet in November 2008, both Activision and Valve Corporation released zombie-themed first-person experiences, much to the delight of video gamers everywhere.

From what little I’ve played of Activision’s Call of Duty: World at War multiplayer mode Nacht der Untoten (German for “Night of the Undead”) which puts 1-4 players in a house that they have to cooperatively defend against an unlimited number of Nazi zombies by shooting them and boarding up windows, it seems to be the more “authentic” zombie game (even though it’s just one of a few modes in the actual core Call of Duty game).

However, Valve’s Left4Dead is undoubtedly the more fun gaming experience by leaps and bounds. While the game doesn’t involve true zombies in the traditional sense (i.e. the flesh-eating reanimated corpses introduced to pop culture by Romero’s handiwork), it certainly delivers intense doses of action and the adrenaline-pumping thrills one would hope for from a “zombie apocalypse” scenario.

You play the role of one of four Survivor characters – Francis the tattoo-covered biker, Louis the systems analyst, Zoey the college student and Bill the former Green Beret – who are trying to make their way out of the city to find some sort of safe haven from the hordes of people who have been infected by the intentionally unidentified contagion that turns its victims into mindless, bestial creatures with rage issues.

The enemies you attack aren’t your typical undead zombies with a craving for human brains but are in fact regular people who have succumbed to this mystery disease in much the same way that the citizens of London were affected by the “Rage” virus in the Danny Boyle film 28 Days Later.

You never once see any of the enemies, referred to for the most part not as “zombies” but as “The Infected,” try to eat or even bite you – they seem content just trying to tear you from limb to limb for the fun of it. And when you shoot them, that’s regular old crimson blood spewing from their bodies, not the swampy green bile that you see in cartoony, fun-filled games like Plants vs. Zombies.

Further, the Infected are like the extras in 28 Days Later with regards to their speed and voracity. While you’ll certainly encounter a fair share of enemies just moping about on their own, any who take notice of you and aren’t put down by a bullet from your rifle will come charging at you like a parent who just spotted the last Zhu Zhu Pet at Toys R Us on Christmas Eve.

And that’s just the individuals or small groups you actually see. Every so often, the game will send a raging horde of Infected at you, swarming in from every which way (including behind you). They’ll climb up the sides of buildings and smash their way through doors to get to you – the only thing that will stop them is a fiery surprise from your pistol, shotgun or rifle. If you’ve ever played the classic PC game series Serious Sam, you’ll recognize the frenetic style of combat.

To make things interesting, the developers included a handful of boss-type enemies referred to as “the Special Infected.” These are admittedly less realistic enemies who require a little bit more suspension of disbelief and somewhat bridge the gap between the definitely possible concept of a biological experiment gone wrong and the more fantastic, imaginary realm of scary undead monsters you see in the movies.

The least unbelievable of the bunch is the Hunter, who is not much more durable than a standard Infected but is fast and can leap impressive distances (such as when it pounces on you and starts ripping your torso apart). It basically looks like a person in a gray hooded sweatshirt.

Then there’s the Boomer, a disgustingly bloated individual whose only goal is to vomit green bile all over you which triggers an onslaught of Infected focused solely on devastating anyone soaked in Boomer puke. The Boomer is also not much more durable than the common Infected but explodes in a mess of blood and guts that damages anyone within proximity.

Probably the most annoying Special Infected is the Smoker, a lithe creature typically prowling roofs and upper levels (out of sight and out of reach), waiting for unsuspecting Survivors to target. It attacks by shooting out a ridiculously long tongue and dragging its victim back (and often up) towards itself to be strangled. If you manage to take it out, its demise creates a cloud of dense and gagging vapor which partially obscures your vision.

More dangerous is the Tank, a damage-eating behemoth that charges at the Survivors like a rhinoceros on steroids and tosses anyone who gets caught in its grip like a rag doll. The Tank can absorb a massive amount of damage and moves with a surprising speed. It generally targets one particular Survivor and follows them around until it can pummel them or get put down by the others.

Perhaps the most dangerous Special Infected, however, is the Witch, a rather small and spindly female creature whose sobs can be heard from quite a distance (acting as a warning to everyone to tread carefully). The Witch is always found kneeling on the floor and crying, seemingly oblivious to everything around it. You can avoid it entirely by shutting off your flashlight and keeping your distance, but anyone who startles it with their flashlight or gets too close will regret it as the Witch zeroes in on that Survivor only. The Witch moves very fast and will incapacitate a Survivor with one hit at which point it rends flesh until the others can defeat it. It’s generally not wise to take on a Witch.

What makes the game really fun, though, is the artificial intelligence behind the game. Known as “the Director,” this A.I. will gauge how well you or your group of players is doing and adjust the density of the enemies, availability of weapons and items and frequency of Special Infected attacks accordingly. These things are all randomized such that no two run-throughs of any level will be exactly the same.

Left4Dead offers a few multiplayer modes and is in fact designed as an online multiplayer game. When you first load the game, the default game mode is actually the online cooperative multiplayer campaign – the single-player campaign is just the offline version of the same exact game with the other three Survivor characters controlled by the game’s A.I.

The Versus mode uses the same level maps as the campaign games but pits two teams of four players against each other with one team controlling the Survivors and the other controlling the Special Infected (the one a particular player uses is randomly assigned by the Director). The Special Infected are more limited than the Survivor characters in that they have no true ranged attacks (the Smoker’s tongue straddles the fence) but have more freedom in where they can go (they have the ability to climb buildings to maneuver into better hunting positions) and can see the Survivors through walls to plan their attacks. They also have the Infected on their side, of course, and can use a swarm attack to their advantage.

A Survival mode was added after the fact as a free downloadable update (and included in later versions of the game). This mode is fairly straightforward with a team of up to four players trying to survive as long as possible against an infinite horde of Infected.

I personally never got into Survival mode and I’m not a big fan of online competitive gaming anymore so I didn’t play the Versus mode much. I do, however, enjoy cooperative and single-player campaign games even now (when isn’t it a good time to kill some “zombies?”), over a year after the game was released, which speaks to the longevity of the game and its gameplay.

The game uses a fairly streamlined interface and control scheme. You can only “use” one item – be it a sidearm, a firearm, a throwable weapon (the two types are the Molotov cocktail which lights an area on fire and the pipe bomb which attracts Infected with its beeping before blowing them up) or a health boost – at a time, and you can only even carry one of each type of item with the exception of the standard pistols that you can dual wield. No firing and tossing dozens of grenades at the same time in this game.

To make things a little more challenging, you also don’t just magically heal when you use the first aid kit. You actually have to stop where you are and spend a few seconds patching yourself up (applying bandages and rubbing ointment on your body, I suppose), and hope that the Infected don’t decide to bum rush you (or that if they do your teammates can adequately protect you from the attack). Valve managed to strike a nice balance between fast-paced run-and-gun gameplay and a more methodic, deliberate style of gameplay.

Where Left4Dead shines dimmest is in the area of graphics. The game uses the latest version of Valve’s Source game engine, which debuted in 2004 behind Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2, both impressive games for their time but somewhat dated now. The lighting, the details in the environments and the ability for the engine to handle dozens of Infected onscreen at the same time is quite impressive but the character models themselves are decidedly less impressive than the ones found in games such as Gears of War, which uses Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, which uses Naughty Dog’s latest proprietary game engine. However, you probably won’t notice this much considering how fast you’ll be running or spinning around dealing with swarms of enemies.

Despite its less-than-perfect graphics, Left4Dead manages to evoke a true sense of anxiety and be an immersive first-person shooter experience thanks to the intelligence of the game design and the creativity of the team at Valve. It’s not only one of the best shooters this generation but also one of the most fun games on any of the three platforms – and a bargain at just $29.99 retail.

If you’re in the mood for an exhilarating rush of action-packed thrills, do yourself a favor and pick Left4Dead up right now.

Final score: 5 out of 5

Parent to parent

This is definitely not a game for young kids. Gameplay consists of firing handguns, assault rifles and shotguns at enemies, setting your opponents on fire and blowing things up with pipe bombs.

I would even go so far as to say that some parents may want to avoid buying this game for kids younger than high school age due to the fact that players are not killing zombies but rather killing diseased people. None of the enemies have rotting flesh or missing body parts – in fact, they look like nothing more than grimy people hopped up on a little too much caffeine.

Of course, your mileage may vary – my nephews have long understood the difference between the fantasy in video games and the reality of the world in which they actually live, and assume that they’re simply making the undead dead again, anyway.

You know your kids best so just consider my warning and base your decision on your own comfort level.

Experience this for yourself!

• Left 4 Dead: Game of the Year Edition (Xbox 360) (Amazon)
• Left 4 Dead: Game of the Year Edition (PC) (Amazon)

So you’ve finally decided to take the plunge and buy a new video game console.

Maybe your stack of unfinished PlayStation 2 games has finally dried up. Maybe you’ve discovered the joy of playing games while sitting on your living room couch instead of at your computer desk or decided you don’t want to upgrade your 5-year-old video card to play the latest and greatest PC games.

Or maybe you just want to find out if there’s more to video games than sliding your finger around on your iPhone.

However you came to the decision to join the over 125 million people worldwide who enjoy video games on their Wii, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, you really couldn’t have picked a better time to do so. All three console manufacturers – Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony – cut their prices in the last few months and, for the first time this generation, the PlayStation 3 is at an accessible price point.

My goal here is to try to help you make the choice of which console to purchase according to your interests and concerns. It can sometimes be a daunting task to look for advice on the web because for every unbiased website there’s a slew of immature, irrational forum posts by raging fanboys who are fiercely and unmovingly loyal to what’s essentially a hunk of plastic that spews pretty lights and sounds at them.

Indeed video game console fanboys (and fangirls) can be some of the craziest, most rabid fans in the world, singing praises at their console of choice and hurling insults at people who disagree with them. Often there’s no rhyme or reason to their rhetoric, which tends to be formed out of ignorance to reality.

Why bother weeding through that jungle of idiocy when it’s so much easier to just look at the facts and make your decision based on which console is more suited to your needs? Hopefully, I’ll help you at least a little bit with that today.

The first thing to consider is the kind of games you like to play. The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 are aimed at generally older gamers who have a lot of video gaming experience and more sophisticated tastes whereas the Wii is aimed at young kids and the more casual gamer who maybe hasn’t played a video game since the Super Nintendo days or dabbles only in lighter fare like Bejeweled or Diner Dash.

While there are certainly children’s and casual games available to play on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as more mature and complex games on the Wii, you can get a general sense of the style of gaming on the systems based on their marketing. If you like blasting away enemies, going on epic quests with lots of interaction with characters or playing realistic sports or driving simulations, your best bet is to go with the the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

In fact, the software libraries for these two systems are quite similar with the exception of a handful of exclusive games. The Xbox 360 has the better overall library of games with both acclaimed and popular titles like Halo 3, Gears of War and Left 4 Dead (and its sequel), but there are some killer PlayStation 3 exclusives like Final Fantasy XIII and Gran Turismo 5 (both entries in hugely popular series) coming out in the next year.

If you’d rather take a more laid back approach with games that have simpler and more straightforward goals and don’t require you to remember what two control sticks and eight different buttons do, the Wii is probably more up your alley. Another aspect to consider with regards to Wii gaming is that the games available on Nintendo’s system tend to be more geared towards “party play” – they’re not very complex so friends and family of all ages can quickly join in on the fun, no gaming expertise needed.

If you want to play games online with other people, you can do it with all three consoles. The Wii has the most restrictive online gaming functionality in that you can only play with people with whom you’ve exchanged “friend codes.” It’s a relief, in a sense, to parents who don’t necessarily want their children interacting with complete strangers on the Internet. On the other hand, it also means that you have to personally know a decent number of people who own Wiis in order to have some variety and flexibility in your gaming sessions.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 allow you to send invites to people you already know (by typing in their IDs) or people you’ve played with right from within the gaming session. Even if you don’t have a lot of “real life” friends who own your system, you can still compile a sizeable list of people with whom you enjoy playing.

The Xbox 360’s online network, known as Xbox Live, is the only one that requires a monthly or annual fee (generally $50 per year) in order to play games. This seems like a lot to ask of gamers until you consider that Xbox Live is more mature (Microsoft introduced it in 2002 and has been improving it since then), more robust (there is a lot more content and functionality on Xbox Live than on the PlayStation Network) and more reliable (Microsoft has a lot more servers in a lot more locations for higher performance, greater reliability and more up-time). The online experience is also more consistent on Xbox Live due to Microsoft themselves handling most of the core networking code – developers of PlayStation 3 games need to program this themselves and can do it pretty much any way they want (to sometimes unfavorable results).

Of course, if none of that matters to you and all you want to do is play with some buddies, the PlayStation Network is a fine service indeed and won’t cost you a dime. Just hope that those buddies all have PlayStation 3’s (less likely in North America where there are almost twice as many Xbox 360’s).

On the other hand, the PlayStation 3 has a related advantage over the Xbox 360 in that it includes built-in WiFi, useful for people whose Internet service providers have given them a wireless router (or who have purchased one themselves). You can, of course, use an ethernet cable to connect an Xbox 360 to your network (that’s the same cable you would use to connect your computer if you didn’t have wireless networking), but if you want to get a wireless adapter be prepared to shell out $80 or more.

If you’re interested in doing things other than playing games on your gaming console then you can all but rule out the Wii as there isn’t a whole lot more to do on that little white box. If you have a wireless router at home, you can easily configure the Wii to use that to connect to the Internet in order to read news, check the weather and see what Miis (the little characters that represent you within the Wii’s game “world”) other people have put together. If you leave the Wii in standby mode (i.e. if you don’t unplug it when you turn it off), it will even automatically update itself on a regular basis to get you the latest content.

Disappointingly for some fans, Nintendo once again decided that theirs would be the only console to not play movies in any way, shape or form, despite utilizing discs that are the same physical size as DVDs and Blu-rays. Nintendo wanted to focus on games and target consumers looking for nothing more than a fun gaming system. Their logic was that most everyone has a DVD player these days and that the hardware is so cheap that there was no real advantage to including movie playback functionality. I can understand their viewpoint as easily as I can understand some fans’ frustration.

If you absolutely need to be able to watch movies on your console, you have to choose between the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 has the obvious edge here in that it can play movies stored on the relatively new Blu-ray disc format (pioneered, unsurprisingly, by Sony). Blu-ray is a technologically superior format that stores high definition video and audio (perfect for all those HDTVs that are dropping in price by the year) and includes evolved versions of many of the extra features found on DVDs.

Whether you would benefit from that superior quality or care about it is an entirely different matter. I don’t want to get into a meaty Blu-ray discussion here but I will suggest you take a quick glance at this chart circulating around the Internet that shows whether you’d even see a difference between Blu-ray and DVD based on the size of your television and how far you sit from it.

If Blu-ray isn’t a priority for you, then you can still watch all of your DVDs on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. They’ll even upscale the image quality to pseudo-HD which looks quite good (comparable to the quality of the HD television broadcasts from most of the national service providers like DirecTV and Comcast).

You don’t even have to use DVDs, either. Both devices are capable of accepting streaming movies, television and music from your home computer. You can even view all of your photos on your nice, big television set. This is a little easier with the Xbox 360 if you own a Windows-based computer since it utilizes the Windows Media Center that’s part of most Windows installations. There are plenty of free software online that will allow you to do the same things on the PlayStation 3. In fact, I use TVersity (compatible with both systems) instead of the Windows Media Center functionality.

Beyond that, you can rent or buy movie and television episode downloads from Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Many of these downloads are high definition with impressive quality despite not being as sharp as a Blu-ray movie. The pricing is skewed a little high, though, at the moment. If that’s a problem for you, join Netflix and you can stream thousands of movies and television episodes free to the system of your choice as part of your membership! The functionality is part of the Xbox 360’s operating system, but you’ll need to request a special disc for the PlayStation 3 which Netflix will send to you for free.

The final, and perhaps most important, thing to consider is the price you’re willing to pay to enter this generation of video game consoles. The Xbox 360 and Wii have the cheapest entry costs with models priced at $200 whereas you need to spend at least $300 for a PlayStation 3.

You technically get a lot more value out of the PlayStation 3 than you do out of the Xbox 360 and the Wii if you want and/or need the added functionality in Sony’s console (significantly, the Blu-ray capabilities). However, if all you want to do is play games, it’s tough to go wrong with any of the three consoles.

In short:

• If you’re a casual gamer who is looking for simple yet entertaining games that you can play with friends and family of all ages, your best bet is the Nintendo Wii.
• If you’re a more experienced gamer who wants a more robust gaming experience without breaking the bank, the Xbox 360 is a fine choice with the best overall video game library.
• If, on the other hand, you want all the bells and whistles and are willing to pay for them, you won’t regret purchasing the PlayStation 3, which will provide you with a solid library of games from which to choose and one of the best Blu-ray players on the market.

Experience it for yourself!

• Nintendo Wii Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Arcade Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite Console (Amazon)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 Limited Edition Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Bundle (Amazon)
• Sony PlayStation 3 120GB Console (Amazon)
• Sony PlayStation 3 250GB Console (Amazon)