Left 4 Dead™ Info and FAQ
By: A for Amnesty
Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- FAQ
- Game Modes
- Campaigns and Chapters
- The Survivors
- The Infected
- Weapons
- Achievements
- Reception
- Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Hello and welcome to my Left 4 Dead™ Info
and FAQ thread. I hope this thread is useful and helps answer general
questions you may have regarding the game. If you have any other
questions that were not answered in this thread, please post your
question in this forum or feel free to PM me. Thanks and enjoy!
2. FAQ
Q: What is Left 4 Dead?
A: Left 4 Dead
is a multiplayer cooperative survival horror shooter developed by Valve
Corporation based on the Source engine released for the PC and Xbox 360
on November 18, 2008 in the U.S. and November 21, 2008 in Europe.
Q: Cooperative survival horror shooter?
A: You play as
one of four Survivors that must work together to survive. Most levels
have your team of 4 trying to go from point A to B, during which you
will be attacked by an onslaught of the Infected (zombies). The pacing
has been described as like Counter-Strike Source. Teammates will need
to work together by not only just shooting enemies, but by having the
ability to heal each other, help each other climb up ledges, pick each
other up when one gets knocked down, etc.
Q: Zombies?
A: The
Infected. They are not undead or reanimated corpses.. they are human
victims of a new rabies virus which makes them extremely aggressive and
mindless. They are not slow hulking movie-type zombies, but fast (think
28 Days Later), vicious and smart. In addition to the hordes of AI
controlled infected (reports say up to 40 can be seen at once), there
will also be four "boss infected" characters that will either be
controlled by AI or by real players, depending on the number of people
on the server. These four are the Boomer, Hunter, Smoker and Tank.
Q: What is the setting/story?
A: From Valve's Michael Booth in an interview with Gamespot:
"Imagine that
you live in a major city during a time when a new and highly virulent
strain of the rabies virus emerges and begins spreading rapidly among
the human population. Those infected become dangerously psychotic and
attack all noninfected on sight. You are one of the lucky few who seem
to be immune to the virus, but are trapped in a city teeming with
thousands of extremely violent infected. Banding together with a few
other survivors, you try to escape.
Left 4 Dead is
set contemporary America. Although we've pushed the fiction a bit for
the sake of gameplay (such as including the "boss infected"), the basic
idea of a catastrophic pandemic and the collapse of civilization makes
for great survival horror because it is quite plausible. We wanted our
environments to remind you of home--but a horribly changed and tortured
version of home.
The initial
four campaigns of Left 4 Dead include both urban areas and rural areas,
with lots of dense architecture and challenging landscapes. Each
campaign also ends with an elaborate "finale" where the survivors must
make a stand while waiting for a rescue vehicle to arrive and take them
to apparent safety."
Q: How many players can play?
A: The game is
designed for 1 to 8 players. You can play solo and have everybody else
be controlled by the AI. During the course of a map players will be
able to drop in and out without having a profound impact on gameplay.
Q: How long will maps last, and how many campaigns?
A: In co-op mode there will be four campaigns with five maps each. Each of these four campaigns lasts one to two hours.
Q: Are there any noticeable signs of injury?
A: When a player gets low on health his/her movement slows down.
Q: How will you keep track of your teammates?
A: Survivors will always be able to see teammates by a green aura, even through walls.
Q: What sort of health items are available?
A: Each
survivor can carry one health pack that you can get at the start of a
map and at checkpoints. This can be used on both yourself or your
teammates. There are also bottles of pills that can be found in certain
spots that offer a temporary boost to your health. This boost
degenerates until you return to your original health.
Q: What happens if you die?
A: As a
survivor, if you get to 0 HP you fall down and there is a "bleed-out
timer" where fellow teammates can revive you with their health pack.
When you become incapacitated you are still able to shoot. You can only
be revived by teammates 3 times before dying. If they do not reach you
in time, you will go into spectator mode. If you are near the end of
the map, you'll have to wait for your teammates to get to the end in
order to respawn. If you're near the beginning, you'll respawn in a
random closet that your teammates can let you out of, but you will
start with basic equipment. As for the Infected, currently there is a
wait period that can be around 30 seconds. The respawn timer on the
Tank boss Infected is significantly longer than any other due to its
power.
Q: How long does it take to bleed out?
A: Once you
get hit on the ground, your health boosts to 300 but starts draining
away at 3 health per second. If you are not rescued within a minute and
forty seconds (assuming no zombies are stomping you), you will die.
Q: How many times can you be revived in one map?
A: Three
times, and on the last one your health boost is only temporary. You get
to a point where you become a one-hit kill target. (bad)
Q: How are infected AI spawns handled?
A: Spawns will
vary each time you play. They are random and you can expect to be
mobbed and attacked at different points each time through. Infected
will come from behind. From Valve's Michael Booth in an interview with
Firingsquad.com:
“At the core
of Left 4 Dead's gameplay is a set of technologies we refer to as "The
Director." Whether you're playing a game with 8 humans filling out the
available roles or playing in "single player" mode, The Director is in
charge of monitoring the pacing of the game. So, for example, if your
team has been bombarded with Infected hordes and bosses, The Director
will schedule a break in the action. If your team is chewing through
Infected like bubble gum, The Director will send a few Boss Infected
your way, and so on. And all of this is done procedurally to insure no
play sessions are alike -- there are no triggers, generators, special
flags, or other human-placed information in the environment that
specify where to place the Infected. As a result, the Survivor team can
never predict when or where they will encounter anything.”
Q: What are the Difficulty modes?
A: Survivors
may choose from 4 varying levels of difficulty, Easy, Normal, Advanced,
and Expert, which affect two things - the attack power of the enemy
infected and bosses, and the amount of friendly fire the Survivors
take. This means that the infected always die from the same amount of
bullets, but the Survivors must be much more careful when being hit.
For an idea of the difference in difficulty, on Normal mode, an
infected punch hits the Survivor for 3 damage, whereas in Expert, a
single punch does 20 damage (1/5 of the Survivors total health!).
3. Game Modes
Campaign - There
are 3 options for Campaign Mode: Quick Mode, Xbox Live Custom Match and
Play with Friends. Quick Mode allows you to jump into a public party
over Xbox Live. Custom Match allows you to set your preferred
difficulty and then searches for a lobby or game in progress based on
your difficulty level. Play with Friends allows you to join a current
game or lobby with 1-3 of your friends.
Single Player
- Single Player allows you to set your difficulty level, choose your
campaign, choose the chapter (or map) you want to start on, and finally
choose your character. You can choose from one of the four survivors or
have a random character chosen for you. You will then play alongside 3
AI-controlled bots.
Survival – Taken from Syncstorm’s Survival Mode FAQ.
You start Survival mode in a zombie-free map that’s been stocked with
heaps of weapons, explosives and items. As in all crescendos and
finales, the horde won’t descend until you alert it. This gives you a
chance to stock up on supplies, strew explosives around the place and
strategize with your teammates. Minor modifications have been made to
suit the flow of carnage in survival play. For example, in the No Mercy
elevator crescendo, many of the rooms around the elevator doors are
off-limits until the mob breaks through the walls to open them up. Like
in versus maps, areas that are overly favorable to the survivors have
been altered or removed, so teams won’t be able to rack up easy time by
closet camping. By eliminating exploits, the team’s score becomes a
measure of actual skill. In practice it gave the maps a frantic,
nowhere is safe feeling and forced our team to stay on the move as the
mob ebbed and flowed.
Versus
- Versus Mode allows you to either play as the survivors, or the
infected. The boss infected players spawn 20 seconds after they are
killed in combat, being able to choose their spawn location by walking
around as a ghost until they find the perfect ambush spot. This quick
spawn time makes Versus mode absolutely brutal to the Survivor team. On
top of that, the only place where Survivors are able to respawn is at
the next map. Just like campaign mode, you choose a specific campaign
to play through. The first team plays as the Survivors through the
first map until they reach the end or until they all die off. The two
teams switch spots, so the former Survivors are now acting as the boss
infected and the former boss infected are now playing as the Survivors.
After the map is completed, scores are tallied based on various factors
and the cycle repeats on the next map in the campaign. This continues
all the way until the finale map is completed for both sides, at which
point the final score is shown and a victor declared.
4. Campaigns and Chapters
List of campaigns with their corresponding chapters:
No Mercy
* The Apartments
* The Subway
* The Sewer
* The Hospital
* Rooftop Finale
Death Toll
* The Turnpike
* The Drains
* The Church
* The Town
* Boathouse Finale
Dead Air
* The Greenhouse
* The Crane
* The Construction Site
* The Terminal
* Runway Finale
Blood Harvest
* The Woods
* The Tunnel
* The Bridge
* The Train Station
* Farmhouse Finale
Grabbin' a shawt!
last.fm
