The Complete Guide to Left 4 Dead

Playing as special infected

Playing as the infected requires takes a completely different skill set than run-of-the-mill FPS games. Instead of concentrating on a single overall objective such as a flag in a Capture the Flag mode, you have to play in a way that can be best thought of as concentrating on a series of 'sub-objectives': essentially, making best use of your skills and working as a team to cover up weak areas.

As an infected you can move about the map in spawn-mode, and then choose the best place to spawn. If you’re a boomer this is incredibly useful, because you move significantly faster than you do after you’ve spawned, which helps you run ahead of the survivors and lay in wait. If you spawn too far away from the survivors you can automatically re-enter spawn-mode closer to the action by pressing ‘E.’

The Horde

As infected, the key to your game is the horde, the AI minions who play alongside you and your three henchmen. On its own the horde isn’t much cop, but when used with human-powered special infected, they are your rifles, your pistols and your grenades.

The horde is your most effective weapon, but you don’t control it. Instead, like a querellous A-list actor, you need to work with the horde. One of the horde’s most useful features is that they slow survivors down and stop them running to the safe-room. If you find a group of survivors are fleeing out of the safe-room and legging it to the next one, and are moving too fast for you to catch them, then you’re doing something wrong.

Get your human-driven boomer to spawn just ahead of the survivors and create a horde to slow them down, then keep the pressure on to slow them down.

Another way to use the horde is to use alarmed cars to your advantage. Stand in front of them and try to get the survivors to shoot you. If they do shoot they’ll trigger the alarm and summon a large horde. Most alarm cars are near safe-rooms, so you can use them to catch the survivors before they escape. Grabbing someone with a smoker tongue and dragging them into the car works well, as does pouncing on them next to it as a hunter.

This means that as a survivor it’s sometimes in your interest to trigger the car alarm from a safe location, and treat the section as a mini crescendo event. You will likely lose some health, but it’s better than losing half your team to a silly car alarm. If you have a great team who won’t mess up then you don’t need to do this, but if there’s any doubt in your mind as to their skill then at least triggering it will sort the men from the boys.

Boomer

The key to successful infected play is the boomer. He has two main strengths: he can blind the survivors and summon the horde. Once a boomer has blinded a survivor, other infected should go for the players who can still see, as the blinded players will not be able to identify the correct target to shoot. They lose all silhouette and colour information, which makes random shooting dangerous.

The boomer’s main weakness is his extremely low health – a paltry 50HP – which means he can be killed extremely easily. He’s also very easy to pinpoint by sound, as he waddles along with a constant chorus of groans, farts and grumbles as if he’s just had a rancid fried chicken dinner. To top it off, he’s also got a very slow waddle, which makes it nearly impossible to duck into cover.

This means the boomer must wait in ambush for the survivors. Decide where you’re going to spawn, and lay there in spawn mode while the survivors approach, then just before they get to you, spawn, move out, and cover them in bile. Don’t choose a spot half way across the map – the boomer is best used as often as possible. If you’re just hanging about in spawn mode constantly your team may well get aggrieved and kick you.


Yet another downside to being a boomer is that he’s not quick on the draw. Hit left mouse and the bile doesn’t fire straight away - you need to get your timing just right if you want to blind the players before they have a chance to shove you back and pop a cap in your capacious ass.

As you shoot a solid stream of bile you can quickly spin while vomiting, and cover all the survivors with goo at the same time. You can’t spew through glass, so make sure to break any that’s in your way (with right mouse) when setting your ambush. If you force the survivors to plug you at close range you’ll explode, stunning and blinding them at the same time as summoning the horde. As it takes so long for your bile to recharge sometimes this is a valid tactic, especially if the survivors are trying to leg it to the exit.

The key to getting damage with the horde is to strike when the survivors are out in the open, so they cannot easily melee away the infected attackers. Because the boomer is so weak, you can’t just waddle up to the survivors in the middle of a field – you need to find other places that provide concealment for you, but no cover for survivors. Intersections between corridors are good for this.

The other problem with using bile is the horde cap. On standard servers the horde is capped to 30 infected. This means if you spew during an already existing horde rush you’re not adding extra zombies to the fray, merely directing them. Wait until the survivors have thinned the horde’s ranks and then hit the survivors with some vomit to maximise the number of infected they have to deal with.