A Tale of Two (Zombie-Infested) Cities

by Dr. John B. Williston

Posted: 08-06-2009

Our resident PH.D is starting to wonder whether game reviewers are the zombies, marching to the tune of the Valve Left 4 Dead virus for dismissing Killing Floor.

No matter how carefully I word this essay I’m painting a target on my forehead, but sometimes I’m a gamer, at other times a writer, and right now I’m both with a bone to pick. I was pretty excited about Valve’s Left 4 Dead (L4D) before it came out yet found the retail product quite underwhelming. It seems I’m roughly the only gamer to feel that way, insofar as most reviews gushed about it, and I can’t think of a single gaming buddy who hasn’t found the game engrossing.

Of late I’ve been playing Killing Floor (KF) since its release on Valve’s Steam, and I seem to be part of the small minority who doesn’t think it’s a largely uninteresting bug-fest. Even the most positive reviews dock it for network issues, lack of story, etc., while the more negative reviews complain that it’s tired, derivative, and far too simplistic. But I’ve had more fun with KF in a handful of hours than I’ve had with my multiple attempts to appreciate L4D in the months since it was released.

That got me wondering about the different receptions the two games have received.

Some brief comparisons…

Graphics

Both of the games look good, though they exemplify very different graphic design sensibilities. L4D is the hands-down winner when it comes to character models and animation. The characters move fluidly and have believable and context-appropriate facial expressions. You’re not going to mistake them for real people, but Valve’s offering is absolutely state of the art in this and other respects. The artistic style isn’t focused solely on being realistic or cartoony but rather on being spooky, at which it surely succeeds.

KF aims for the macabre instead and succeeds at least as well in terms of artistic style. Its environments aren’t as well thought out as L4D, but they look good. Its special effects aren’t quite as good as L4D, but they’re good enough. Its character models and animation are… well… it looks to me like they took Counterstrike as an “inspiration” and crafted underwhelming but serviceable avatars. The enemies are actually more interesting in their modeling and animation than the players.

Audio

The audio in L4D is fantastic. The music completely supports the atmosphere of the environments, the voice-over work is outstanding, and the sound effects are appropriately spooky and/or menacing. Everything about the audio is simply top notch. And thank goodness, I think Valve finally fixed the long-standing audio-stuttering bug that has plagued their games since the original Half-Life!

The audio in KF does the job, but it doesn’t do it nearly as well. I prefer some of the weapon sound effects in KF, but the voice work quickly becomes irritating. Yes, it’s useful to know when somebody is reloading or trying to heal you, but the same snippets grow very tired. The music (sadly) is a very generic metal track, which conveys the right mood but fails to inspire and leaves much room for improvement.

Game Mechanics

Here the titles diverge quite significantly. L4D is largely about moving from point A to point B whereas KF is solely concerned with staying alive in the face of increasingly difficult waves of attackers. Yes, this completely overlooks the infected side of L4D’s competitive multiplayer, but bear with me. When comparing their cooperative modes, KF is merely about working together to stay alive while L4D adds the additional goal of escape, which makes for a very different feel.

Far more important, however, are the differences in depth between the two titles. L4D is extremely simplistic in its mechanics; every character plays like every other character, and they remain the same from one game to the next. The only character depth you’ll find is in the elusive back story.



KF adds role-playing elements in the form of leveled perks, which buff the player in some respects. It limits the player to equipping a single perk, but it’s flexible in allowing the player to change it at the beginning of each game and end of each round. Each game has its own flavor in light of the different skills the various players bring to the table, and the ability to adapt as needed is great.

Another notable aspect of KF is that it allows players to rearrange the battle space by welding some doors shut. This makes it possible to limit the paths through which the enemy can attack, though they will break through even the toughest weld before too long. More than once I’ve found myself pouring fire in one arc with my teammates while the horde pounds away at a door behind us. Such moments are incredibly tense. The welder can’t be used as a weapon, but it can be a powerful tool.

Speaking of weapons, KF borrows the shopping mechanics from Counterstrike; i.e., the player earns money based on his performance and must use that money to improve his gear. This forces you to make interesting and difficult choices: do I spend that $300 on body armor now, or do I save it because I really want that chainsaw next round? I’m not fond of the mad dash to the weapon trader’s various locations, but it’s usually a minor annoyance.

Networking

L4D’s networking, or at least its matchmaking, was badly broken at launch. The forums were stuffed with complaints from players who couldn’t connect or stay connected. I experienced this myself. I couldn’t get into multiplayer games more often than not, and on those rare occasions I did I usually got dropped shortly thereafter. It was literally impossible for me to play the multiplayer aspect until Valve patched it.

In contrast, I could play KF the second it finished installing on my hard drive. I jumped into several servers on my first night without any connection problems. I noticed a few of the in-game issues mentioned by others (e.g., a player avatars remaining after disconnection, lag spikes, etc.), but none of them rose to the level of the L4D show-stoppers.

Content

L4D includes four highly polished and playable campaigns, only two of which were enabled for competitive multiplayer at launch. The game sports a decent menagerie of enemies, a few good weapon types, some extras (e.g., health packs, pipe bombs, etc.), and four characters to play. The most surprising thing, to me at least, is the degree to which the various characters say things to each other at just the right moments. I think L4D marks the first time I’ve heard dialogue in a computer game that actually seems natural and topical.



Though KF includes only one more map than L4D, its arsenal of weapons is noticeably more diverse, including alternate pistols and shotguns, a rocket launcher, a flame thrower, grenades, a knife, a machete, an axe, a chainsaw, and so forth. I find the melee weapons to be particularly satisfying, especially when used (as intended) with the berserker perk. It’s disappointing that the options for melee combat in L4D are so very limited by comparison.

Conclusion

Having said all that, here is the central question: why has L4D been heralded as the second coming of multiplayer gaming while KF has largely been written off as mediocre and derivative? I readily admit L4D beats KF in terms of visuals and audio, but KF arguably beats L4D in terms of game mechanics, networking, and content; it’s also the indisputable winner in pricing (I bought both at launch, paying $49.99 for L4D and $19.99 for KF).

I ask such questions because I see a pattern with Valve games. The original Half-Life was a great game, no question about it, and Valve deserves loads of credit for advancing the state of the art. Had Half-Life 2 been released a year or two earlier than it was, I think it also would have deserved all the laurels it received. But as it was, Far Cry, DOOM 3, and a few other games were in the same league, if not as good or better, yet Half-Life 2 was hailed as the uncontested king of first-person shooter (FPS) games.

To be clear, I don’t intend to slight Valve because I really like their games -- even though a non-trivial chunk of “their” games are acquisitions (e.g., Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, and Portal). It just seems to me that being made by Valve is enough to send tingles of bias shooting up the legs of game reviewers. I don’t find L4D nearly as entertaining as many do, and I find KF a clearly superior value, but I’m obviously in the minority (if not outright alone) in saying so.

It’s certainly true that L4D offers competitive multiplayer, a marketing bullet-point to which KF offers no response, but I found that to be the least enjoyable, most frustrating aspect of the game. In the dozens of hours I’ve spent with L4D, I’ve found a very consistent pattern: (1) tank shows up, (2) hunters and smokers pounce/lick, and (3) zombies win. The only time the infected lose is when their team has absolutely zero clue or the survivors are downright godlike.

I’m honest enough to admit that I’m a terrible infected player. I rarely get close enough to score with boomer vomit, I miss jumps all the time as a hunter, and I don’t think I use the smoker’s tongue very well. Conversely I’m a good survivor; I’ve been playing FPS games for years, so I frequently rack up lots of kills while maintaining good survivability and little friendly fire. Yet despite these factors, the ratio I’ve lost as the survivors is roughly the same as the ratio I’ve won as infected: roughly eight out of every ten games. I don’t find that kind of “balance” to be entertaining at all.

So what am I missing? Are game reviewers all a bunch of Valve fanboys? If not, how do we explain the over-the-top praise for L4D in contrast to the lukewarm reception for KF? How is it reasonable to ignore the show-stopping networking bugs with L4D but complain about minor networking glitches with KF? How is it reasonable to ignore the lack of story in L4D but fault KF for it? How can L4D be fresh and new and KF be derivative when the latter both pre-dates and clearly inspires the former?

Have I simply been blinded to the greatness of L4D or the flaws of KF? There’s a tale of two (zombie-infected) cities in here somewhere, folks, and I’m starting to wonder whether game reviewers are the zombies, marching to the tune of the Valve virus.