The Complete Guide to Left 4 Dead

Dual Pistols

Magazine size: 30
Ammo reserve: Unlimited
Run speed: 250
Infected penetration: Two kills per bullet
Wall penetration: Low

What’s better than one pistol? Two pistols of course. A pair of pistols is a huge step up from the single pistol. They deal the same damage per shot, but fire significantly faster. You also get two magazine’s worth of pistol ammo, giving you 30 shots before you have to reload. They have unlimited ammo just like the single pistol.

A good player can take down a rushing horde using dual pistols and melee, by hammering shots into the mob at head height, then pushing them back if they get too close. As if you need any more encouragement to hone your pistol skills, there’s also an achievement available if you can complete a whole campaign using only pistols.

Uzi

Magazine size: 50
Ammo reserve: 480
Run speed: 250
Infected penetration: Two kills per bullet
Wall penetration: Low

The Uzi is one of two weapons you can choose at the start of the game. It’s effectively a pistol with a much higher rate of fire but limited ammo. It’s not a bad weapon but it chews through ammo at an alarming rate. It’s not uncommon to run out of Uzi ammo halfway through the level, forcing you to resort to pistols until you reach the safe-room or find an ammo stash.

To make the most out of the Uzi use it crouched as this drastically increases its mid-range accuracy. Don’t bother trying to snipe lone, long-range targets with it as you’ll just waste ammo. Switch to pistols for this job instead.

If you’re not interested in ammo conservation, or you know there’s going to be an ammo pile soon, then you can make the most of the Uzi’s real strength. It doesn’t slow you down and its decent close-to-mid-range accuracy means you can rush about spraying a constant stream of headshots. Remember every headshot on a regular infected is a kill. Squeezing off short bursts at head height should always result in dropping a target.

Unfortunately, the Uzi doesn’t throw bullets with much force. It can penetrate one infected and hit the one behind but that’s it, so if you blast away at a horde, only your first hits will count - after that you’ll be wasting ammo waiting for corpses to drop. Let the bodies fall before you put more shots into the crowd.

Pump-action Shotgun

Magazine size: 8
Ammo reserve: 128
Run speed: 220
Infected penetration: Unlimited at close range, two infected per pellet at long range
Wall penetration: Low

At the start of the game the pump-action shotgun is king. It’s high power and fires and reloads so slowly that it’s rare for you to use all of your ammo. This means you never have to worry about being frugal. Unlike the Uzi it doesn’t have a power problem at close range. Drill a single shotgun shell into a crowd of zombies and it’ll pass through every one of them until the pellets fade into medium-range or hit a wall.

Each pump-action shotgun shell carries ten pellets, each of which can do serious damage. Fire into a crowd and you’ll see blood everywhere and the floor filling with corpses. Unfortunately, this also applies to your three friends. At expert level one stray shot on a team-mate will incapacitate them. If you play a lot of expert and your target identification sucks, use the Uzi. Downed teammates in the middle of a horde rush can quickly become a downed team.

Learn to use melee with the pump shotgun. Push back a wall of infected and put a shell into it, they’ll all drop. As with the Uzi, don’t bother trying to use the shotgun on ranged targets. Switch to pistols, crouch and put a couple of clips into them.