The Complete Guide to Left 4 Dead

Closeting

Closeting is a very specific tactic used by the survivor team. It takes its name from the way it was initially developed by all four survivors jumping into a closet and closing the door, but it can refer to any strategy that involves the survivors standing in a small area and thus narrowing the infected’s options to only one avenue of attack. It’s boring for survivors and frustrating for infected, but it’s not a game-beaker.

Get two players to crouch at the door and constantly melee attack, and have two players behind shooting over their heads. This renders smokers useless as their tongue lash is instantly broken every time it lands.

Boomers are also rendered ineffective because they can only blind the players and they don’t really need to aim. It also makes it very difficult for hunters, as they need to be able to jump over the meleers and pounce the people at the back.

The only real skill involved is for the guys at the back not to shoot the meleeing players at the front. Certain attacks, such as the boomer’s, will cause the crouched players to stand for a moment and you can easily shoot them. Still, if someone does go down the guys at the back can easily revive or heal them while one of the front guard just mashes away at melee. There’s another version of the closet where four survivors all back up against a wall and melee furiously. This is also a cheap defence, and difficult to break.

Closeting survivors are frustrating for the infected in Versus mode, but that’s no reason to go off in a hissy fit if you’re playing as infected. The battle against the survivors is a war of attrition. You need to slowly chip away at their health, force them to use their medpacks and finish them with extreme prejudice whenever you are afforded the opportunity.

Closeting might work for the survivors for a while, but while they’re holed up, seemingly invincible, they’re not moving. If they aren’t moving you get more chances to spawn, and as they sit still they’ll be gradually losing small amounts of health from the regular infected.

There are two ways to go about the closeting problem. The normal way is to just get in there and try to knock down health. As any infected this is a viable option, as you can hit them for 6HP each time you strike with your secondary claw attack. smokers and boomers can spend their time much better if they start to devise an ambush at a later chokepoint.

Encourage your team to stay in spawn mode, move further up the map, and prepare yourselves to hit the enemy hard. If you can get an attack involving a smoker, a boomer and two hunters you can often get at least two incapacitations, sometimes even three.

That concludes our guide to Left 4 Dead - if you've got any more suggestions of your own, why not share them with your fellow readers in the forums?