Left 4 Dead, the fast-paced zombie smashing game recently released from Valve. You are one of four survivors who have to make their way through many different environments. Your obstacles? Hordes of zombies. Other obstacles? Hunters who can leap distances, Smokers who can ensnare and drag you with your tongue, Boomers who vomit zombie-attracting bile, massive hulking Tanks who can smash you in a single blow and bitchy period Witches. Yes this sounds like loads of fun, destroying large amounts of zombies. But how zombie are they really?
1 - No biting
This was a pretty easy one. The classic zombie is usually the result of some sort of infection, in that once an individual dies, the infection takes affect and they rise from the dead. Once a newly undead, the zombies infect other targets by biting them. If the target was not devoured by the zombies hunger, they will eventually die and convert. But now in L4D there is no biting what so ever, only clawing and smacking. When someone is downed, the zombies simply crowd that survivor and flail their arms. Where is the biting, tearing, ripping, dismembering and so on?
A short clip from the great comedy, Shaun of the Dead (bad quality, sorry), simply shows how the zombies should be ripping you apart.
2 - No gruesome walking corpses
Why do all the zombies in L4D have all their limbs? Why are there no guts hanging out of their stomach? All the zombies are fully clothed and have all their limbs, boring. The only similarity to classic zombies is the gray skin, the bloody mouth (but how, there's no biting!) and the frankenstein expression. It would be an awesome idea to have a wide variety of zombies. Some of them can be missing an arm, or maybe two! Others may have one leg or no legs and must crawl to you with their hands (ala Dead Space) to attack. Lastly it would be graphically pleasing if a select few zombies had their innards hanging out and around their body.
3 - No rising out of the ground
This mainly applies to the 3rd chapter of Death Toll (at the church) but could also apply to other areas in the other stories. When I first walked into the grave, I was expecting the zombies to rise out of their graves and surround us. But instead, I was sadly let down and faced another "typical horde". Still, this type of feature would be fun and show homage to the cult classics. It does though contradict the idea of an "infection", but Im going based on zombie ideals.
4 - Freak out from fire
This was another thing in the game that seemed out of place, but I understand its purpose for gameplay. Simply put, zombies have no real physical feeling and can sustain massive damage (excluding having the head destroyed) but keep on trotting forward. A mere molotov cocktail or wave of fire would not cause the zombies to freak out and run around confused. It just means you would have flaming, hungry zombies chasing your ass.
5 - Die without destroying the head
This is another thing that's "good" for gameplay but I'm still going to point it out there. In every classic zombie film, the only way to kill a zombie is to, and I quote, "remove the head or destroy the brain". But just imagine here for a second... an unexpected horde appears, your cower into a corner and let your auto-shottie sing. You mow down a wave of zombies but merely blast off some arms or legs but they keep crawling forward. In a list ditch effort you melee bash the oncoming zombies skulls in. End imagination.
Notice - I am in no way bashing L4D, I actually play this game way more then I should. I just got a bit curious on the ideology behind the L4D zombies against the classic zombies. Enjoy!