Standing in front of the table I thought: “Well, a shotgun, or an UZI? Hmmmmm, okay, lets go with the shotty.” I picked up some ammo and headed out the door……

BAM! Twenty zombies crashed into the room. Looking around, I stuck the barrel of my shotty in the first zombie’s face and BLAM! Zombie cream pie. The only problem was that there were 19 left and I had only 5 bullets left…

That was my first experience with the PC version of Left 4 Dead, by Turtle Rock Studios. It was fantastic.  I’ve been playing first person shooters since Doom and just like Bon Jovi, I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all, but I have never felt the unbridled exhilaration that I felt playing Left 4 Dead.

The good news is that you have three others backing you up when facing down a horde of rampaging, bloodthirsty zombies. The bad news is that you only have three buddies to help you out. The name of the game in Left 4 Dead is survival. Your only job is to get from point A to point B… alive. To that end, if you run off and leave your friends, good luck sucker, cause you ain’t makin’ it. Period. You must work together. That means sharing guns, ammo, health packs and whatever you can find in your travels.

The scenario that we played was an urban hospital setting, where we were traversing streets, sewers, offices and hospitals. The last part of the level that we played was a race to get up a skyscraper to a helipad where we could radio for help. We made it, but we were quickly overwhelmed on the helipad and met an untimely demise. By the way, the game was set to easy.

The bottom line: This game was great. It was the highlight of QuakeCon for this gamer. There were more “wow” moments in my brief period with the game than almost any fps that I’ve played in quite some time. I can’t say enough about this game. It was intense, the graphics were great, and shooting zombies was really fun. Look for this on the pc and Xbox 360 in 2008.

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