Left 4 Dead Q&A with screens and trailer

[Captain Awesome]

Gamespot has a Q&A (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/left4dead/news.html?sid=6163983) with Turtle Rock Studios and their upcoming co-op zombie survival game Left 4 Dead. Gametrailers has an HD version of the trailer (http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=16134&type=mov) up.

GS: It seems safe to say that Left 4 Dead is a class-based game, considering Turtle Rock's previous work on Counter-Strike: Source, and judging from the early graphic showing the four heroes, each carrying a different type of weapon. What are the classes in the game, and how do they complement one another?

MB: From the survivor standpoint, Left 4 Dead is a cooperative game in which success is based upon the skills of each member and the team's ability to work together as a unit. As such, the four survivors have the same weaponry available to them and begin with the same skills.

On the infected side, however, the characters available to human players (the boomer, smoker, hunter, and tank) have very specific skills.

This looks and sounds very good.

[KingGorilla]

Isn't it great that after Hellgate rips my heart out, I get to remember how great Turtle Rock AI is and how awesome a solid Co-Op campaign will be? This and CrossPlayer may indeed revolutionize how we think of online gameplay and multiplayer.

[GrinR]

Uh, what I thought looked like co-op Dead Rising now looks like a shitty Counterstrike mod. What the?

"on the infected side"?? What? Is this just TFC with a zombie coating? Looks like it.

[Captain Awesome]

Uh, what I thought looked like co-op Dead Rising now looks like a shitty Counterstrike mod. What the?

"on the infected side"?? What? Is this just TFC with a zombie coating? Looks like it.


Uh, um, hrm, oh.

[Pretzel]

According to the article:

GS: Could you go into detail about the multiplayer modes? It sounds like there's going to be cooperative gameplay against the AI, but also competitive gameplay, with one team playing as the humans and the other team playing as the infected.

MB: The game is designed to allow human players to drop in and out without adversely affecting the experience or requiring the scenario to restart. We have also taken steps to maintain the survivor's game experience even with the presence of human-controlled infected. Although the infected can "win" by killing all of the survivors before they reach the finale and escape, it doesn't feel like a traditional competitive game--it still feels very cooperative from the survivor side.

They talk about AI and stuff, so it sounds like it's a co-op game with AI that you fight, but you can have humans jump in and play as zombies.

[saulob]

Man, really, I just downloaded the video file expecting something great... but only 40 seconds of nothing... man.. what a bad thing.

[J Arcane]

Frankly, the trailer and the interview make it sound even more like a ripped off BrainBread adapted to Source than I'd already pegged it as being.

Here's hoping the BB team gets their own Source version finished soon, and shows up these assholes for basically ripping off their game.

Plus it means I'll get to play basically the same game, but for free, instead of shelling out money to some jackoff who stole someone else's idea.

[MrE]

How far out from release is this game? The screens aren't that impressive, though the advent of drop in/out co-op multiplayer sounds pretty damn good.