July 10, 2007 - Left 4 Dead one of the many games being shown at E3 this year looks down right amazing. Being a co-operative multiplayer game played with up to 4 people makes the game hell. The game takes you into a world where everyone has been infected with a form of rabies and there are only 4 people who have survived the infestation. The characters Francis Barrels (Tattoo-Covered Biker), Zoey Coen (Teenage Daughter of a Wealthy family), Bill Calhoun (Vietnam Veteran) and Louis Parker (Assistant Manager at a Retail Electronics Store) must traverse the insane battlegrounds through buildings and across city streets.

When you join a server you will be randomly placed with one of the 4 survivors. Where as when apart of the infected team 4 players may also join up and no matter how you die you instantly get a respawn within 3 seconds of death.

The developers have taken the time to make the almost overwhelming in both quantity of enemies and the number of encounters you will need to work your way through. The AI has a new system being implemented so that if you happen to be doing well the enemies will be directly mainly towards you to keep you busy and when you near death the concentration will be centered on your teammate who happens to be doing the best. To top it off the Director or so they named it will make the game experience different every time you play so you will NEVER have the same experience twice. The so called zombies aren't of the slow make like in games such as Resident Evil, they are extremely fast paced and will randomly take to the air making the havoc all the more apparent.

More importantly if you happen to become under heavy attack instead of instant death you may be knocked down left only with your pistols you may shoot at enemies and help the rest of the survivors, unfortunately your team will literally need to carry you to safety otherwise face your death. Faith in team mates is absolutely necessary to finish the level.

The next item of interest is the checkpoint system which is marked by red doors. The initial release of the game will feature 5 maps with 4 scenarios. The moment that checkpoint has been reached by any of the survivors the area will be blocked off and impossible to return to.

Everyone will need to reach the checkpoint before the next area will load. 1 lonely survivor will need to enter a checkpoint in order to revive all the downed survivors. A problem right there shows itself, the director. No matter the case you will be given the exact same amount of enemies whether it is just you or all 4 survivors. Just to annoy you to no end, when you reach that checkpoint not only can all survivors enter the infected can follow so if one of the heavier units passes through... Good Luck. As a result that player will get a Security Breach Demerit.

When the final section of the level has been reached all hell will break loose, you will reach the end where the director ceases to send out enemies after you. One of the survivors will radio for help, a countdown timer will pop up and then the enemies will start flowing.

Two levels of weapons are available to all players, the first being the starting weapons and the second being stuff you can find out in "jungle". The first tier consists of a pump shotgun and an Uzi SMG; Where as the second tier consists of the M16 Assault Rifle, Hunting Rifle and Auto Shotgun. There is also a group of secondary weapons including Pistols and Grenades. All the weapons are definitely needed and play well into gameplay.

So you are probably wondering how to communicate with other players online seeing as this can be played on either Xbox Live or Windows Live. Well there are well over 1000 unique phrases recorded and implemented for EACH survivor that can be accessed via a quick menu. It will bring up a wheel where you can select a section of it opening up another section of phrases that can be easily accessed.

Now that the amount of voice commands have been clarified they will they will become of imminent use and most will auto trigger. If in the need of a reload while doing your character will shout out, "Reloading!" If you happen to see some infected your character will also inform your team that you are about to engage. Keep in mind this is well needed and blends well into gameplay so you know what is happening at all times.

Just to keep things interesting friendly fire is impossible to disable so you will actually have to pay attention to what you are doing and take careful aim when helping out another survivor under attack. Grenades become useless in this scenario, but increase the intensity to a point you cannot even begin to imagine. Realism is what they aim for.

Since this is such a major annoyance when under heavy assault, a grenade is lobbed into the horde and you get blown to bits, a reputation has been created. In such at any point in time you may pull up a voting system and you can either kick the so called player or just change the scenario altogether and ban that player from using the grenades.

Do not worry about it so much though there is a deeper award system. There are three kinds of awards: Achievements, which include difficult goals like surviving a map without dying; Awards, which are good things you do, such as reviving a teammate, giving away a health kit to someone in need, and saving someone from a zombie about to attack them from behind; and Demerits/Faults, which are bad things which include blowing up a Boomer near teammates, friendly fire, angering the Witch, and jumping in front of someone else's bullets (reckless).

While you are playing when you do happen to something either bad or good beside your name it will say what you may have done. So instead of asking who did it you can just as easily blame said person and if continual problems occur give them the boot. These will also stick with you so when you join another game on the server if you are a headache you may just get booted yet again. Although from what I understand this system is being worked on continually so it may be completely different when it does reach stores.

The game continues to amaze.