When I saw the name of this mission in Left 4 Dead, my thoughts turned to a last stand at an abandoned small town radio station, where the four Survivors must send out a distress call to anyone who would answer, while static rang through the building in defiance. With the onslaught of Infected raging outside the building, the Survivors slowly start to make peace with the fact that they might not get rescued this time after all. As the ammunition is consumed and the walls start to crumble behind the massive weight of encroaching Tanks, the Survivors take stock of the situation. They are about to die.
Except that’s not what happened. Apparently Valve was thinking about an airline staffed entirely by Infected. So we get an airport. A big, sprawling airport with an incredible scene involving a plane crash just in time for the final standoff. Which, as it turns out, is nowhere near as exciting as my little scenario. But that doesn’t mean that the rest of the mission wasn’t as exhilarating as those that preceded it.
This past weekend’s session of “Dead Air” was was with a full foursome. Having the AI at your side may be like having the ideal teammates, but they need to be watched. They will pull off unnecessary heroics and choose to heal you over themselves. Martyrs, all. Four humans on a team exposes the true dynamics of this game as they were intended. The balancing of health packs, managing friendly fire and sticking together while under attack are the essential tenets of the game’s mechanics that must be learned. While the difficulty seemed to ony marginally increase, when there are four free-thinking individuals on a team it’s harder to manage a group that starts to unravel during an Infected invasion. Choose yourself over the group and you will die.
In “Dead Air” there are once again plenty of rooftop battles through a city overrun by Infected. Eventually we arrived at the airport, where we were treated to a very interesting setpiece that takes place in the main foyer and departures waiting area inside. The set-up of this scene was a little disturbing: we were surrounded by piles of luggage placed by people who likely never made it out of the city. Pressing on, we had to drive a van into a pile of luggage and debris to clear the path forward. Naturally that alerted the horde. All four of us were waiting in the foyer as the Infected swarm enclosed us on all sides. At first things seemed to go pretty well: two of us on shotgun duty and two with assault rifles. But those reload times on the shotguns began to take their toll as the Infected steadily increased in number. One of us fell, then two. The group wiped in short order.
The second attempt was a little more organized. After moving the van, we all went to the mezzanine that overlooked the foyer, hoping to take pot shots at the Horde before moving on. But we underestimated the AI Director. This time, the Horde was both upstairs and downstairs, coming from shadowy corridors behind us and rushing up the escalators in front of us. And suddenly we were in the same predicament as before.
I wouldn’t call the response to events like these in Left 4 Dead “problem solving”, but it requires a great deal of thinking on your feet and cooperation without second guessing. Planning a raid in MMORPGs is a lot easier than figuring out how to simply survive an enemy that fears nothing and completely surrounds you. Voice chat makes these snap decisions easy to communicate, and eventually we made it through into the final stretch.
Left 4 Dead isn’t satisfied to simply set up a small staging area to make the last stand in. It needs to inject a feeling of desperation and urgency, of fear that you won’t make it. Nothing could have prepared us for the shocking display of a passenger plane crash right in front of the group. It was symbolic; it made us think for a second that maybe that was the last ride out of here. Maybe we were simply going out onto the tarmac to die, like that theoretical scene in the abandoned radio station.
The finale’s centerpiece is a gas truck used to refuel a cargo plane. As the hapless survivors stumbling onto the scene, the anonymous pilot of the plane asks us to refuel it. Of course, the noise will alert the Horde and it’s a matter of waiting out that fill cycle before we can leave.
Since the landing strip was an open area, the firefight seemed a lot more manageable than the one from “Death Toll” by allowing us to see the entire battlefield. Though the number of Horde was about the same, and the AI Director made itself known by dealing out Specials with frustrating frequency. The last thing on our minds was worrying about the gas truck behind us blowing up in a storm of flying bullets. Instead, I couldn’t help wondering why that lazy fucker in the plane didn’t get out to help us.
Some of us were incapacitated, or dragged off by Smokers, but someone always managed to be there. Then the health packs suddenly ran out. Two of us jumped on to the top of the truck, which proved to be a strategic advantage in the final moments of the battle as the AI Director decided to deliver one last swarm for good measure. This is when the game makes you want to shoot a gun until there is no ammo left, until you are down to a pistol and keep shooting long after the last Infected has fallen. It is a feeling that is simultanously disheartening and exhilarating.
Once we were given the go-ahead to jump onto the plane, only three of us did: one of us stayed outside for a few more seconds to fend off the horde with his automatic shotgun for a safe boarding. At this point I think we all held our breath, wondering if he’d make it out of his last-stand heroics alive. He quickly realized that bothering to reload at this point was a stupid idea, so he hopped onto the plane and joined the rest of us. The plane took off, and we let out a cheer. Another happy ending.
The biggest criticism against this game is that there are only four missions. And while the FPS obsessed might fly through these missions just to get to the end, this type of approach misses out on the game’s biggest strength. It’s not about the kill count or pointing out who startled the Witch or finishing the missions on the highest difficulty. Left 4 Dead encourages a co-operative effort to survive. “No One Left Behind” is not just an Achievement; it is the philosophy behind the entire game.
