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I have to admit that, when I started playing Left 4 Dead, I thought I was going to be offended by its very existence.  I snarled at that game box for what must have been ten minutes before finally grabbing it up and hauling it up to the counter like a small child forced to take medicine. And medicine without the flavor shots added to it–man, we never had THAT kind of thing back when I was a kid unless it was the over-the-counter cough syrup.  Kids today.

Geriatric mutterings aside, I sat down to take my Left 4 Dead medicine, slapped it in my Xbox, and was surprised by the way it actually went down.  Surprisingly smooth, as a matter of fact.

Left 4 Dead basically puts you in a group of four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and gives you five separate scenarios to try and get out of Dodge in as rapid a fashion as possible.  You’ll fight your way through freeway underpasses, through churches, through hospitals and various other scenic locales in a desperate bid for survival.  Along the way, you’ll take on zombies that explode in a cloud of bile when you shoot them (boomers), zombies with enormous tongues that burst into smoke when you shoot them (smokers) and gigantic roid-raged zombies that can throw cars (tanks) along with female zombies that break down sobbing when they’re alone, but if you disturb their mourning they will burst into a homicidal rage and rip you apart with their bare hands.  These are called Witches.

I have been killed by Witches several times now.

I hate Witches with a fury formerly reserved only for child molesters.

But I was surprised at how much fun I had blasting my way through zombie hordes.  Sure, the gameplay is a bit monotonous–go here, shoot that, repeat until your thumbs fall off–but it just felt better overall.  I think it has something to do with the relatively open floor plans of the levels in which I was blasting all those zombies.

I had fun, yes…and I wasn’t enraged by the game itself, but that’s not to say that I’m letting Left 4 Dead off the hook just yet–no sir.  In fact, I’m pretty upset with it, and here’s why.

1. Track Star Zombies.  When the game actually has the characters say, in canon, that “zombies aren’t supposed to be this fast”, they’re RIGHT.  The walking dead are not supposed to be able to sprint without tiring and climb chain-link fences in a couple of bounds.

2. Shoot It In The…Um…Anywhere’s Good, I Guess.  Zombies are not supposed to go down after a couple of rounds to the center of mass.  You’ve got to shoot it in the head, Cooper…not anywhere you please.  Okay, sure, if you shoot the legs you’ll knock them down.  Shoot them in the chest for ballstic impact and some stunning.  But if you want to kill a zombie, you have to destroy the brain or separate the brain from the rest of the body.  Anything else is just a crock perpetrated by people who don’t understand the work of zombie master George Romero.

3. Where The Hell Did They Get All The Steroids?  I’m not sure I even want to know who thought it’d be a good idea to have bloated zombies that throw up on you as a battle tactic, or smoking zombies with tongues that make Gene Simmons’ curl up in the fetal position and whimper.  Don’t even get me started on the tanks.

But if you’re willing to ignore, or at least forgive, still MORE Romero blasphemy, then you’ll probably get along pretty well with Left 4 Dead.  I did, essentially.

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