The Complete Guide to Left 4 Dead

Working as a team

If you want to win in Left 4 Dead – which means surviving, frankly - you’re going to have to become an effective team player. Surprisingly this is not difficult to do. Unlike other multiplayer games (such as Counter-Strike: Source) you don’t need a plethora of tactics to work with your team, you just need awareness and the ability to effectively communicate.

Remember running off on your own gets you killed, and then it gets the guy who has to come and save you killed, then the two guys who didn’t come are on their own and then they get killed. It’s true in horror movies, and it’s true in Left 4 Dead.

If you must explore rooms looking for Molotovs and pipe bombs then get the team, or at least one player, to come cover you while you’re doing it. If no one wants to come wander about aimlessly looking for stuff to burn or blow up, then stop being a ninny and follow the pack. Additionally if you’re with the kind of team who won’t come searching with you they’ll probably leave you to die when you get pounced, so deal with it and get close to them.

Close doors behind you. They slow the infected and give you extra sound and visual cues when incoming boss infected break them down. If you want to be the guy out in front then stay crouched, so your team can fire over your head, and move slowly. This isn’t a standard FPS: circle strafing and other techniques that are useful in all other FPS games don’t confuse infected, and they make it very difficult for your team-mates to shoot the infected gnawing on your face.

Stay calm, and don’t shoot everything that moves. Your main interest should be not shooting your team-mates, especially if you’re playing co-op on expert. On expert a swipe from an infected does about 20 damage, whereas one shot from your shotgun will take over 100. Learn to melee.

Meleeing is also the fastest way to save a survivor that’s been pounced or grabbed. One hit with a melee attack will save them instantly – if you shoot you have to shoot until the attacker dies, and this can be the difference between your team-mate getting up again without taking any damage, or you spending time having to revive them. Sometimes you have no option but to shoot, and in those cases put as much ammo into the attacker and your team-mate as possible. Players who have been grabbed by a smoker, or pinned by a hunter can’t take friendly fire damage until the infected’s grip has been broken.

There are certain situations you can’t be saved from, and you need to be sure you don’t put yourself into them. The main one is being the last survivor to jump down into an impassable area. There are a few places in the game survivors can’t return through. The first one is the hole in the kitchen floor in No Mercy Apartments, another is the grates to the sewers later in the campaign, and there’s yet another at the entrance to the cornfield in Blood Harvest. If you are incapacitated or caught on your own in those areas you’re dead.

Sound Cues

Each event in the game has its own dedicated musical chord and sound. If there’s going to be a horde rush you’ll hear a drumbeat and lots of screaming, if there’s a tank nearby you’ll hear its ragged breathing if you’re close, or a deep bass line if he’s approaching from a distance. The audio cues are all quite simple, but if you aren’t too good at playing what’s that tune, then you can turn on full captioning in the sound options. This will tell you exactly what each sound is as it plays.

Play with headphones on and you’ll get lots of extra positional information. Turn until the sound of the infected is equal in both ears and start shooting. This is a particularly useful technique against boomers, who tend to hide around corners.