Yes, versus mode is probably the most fun in Left 4 Dead, and if the game wasn’t so buggy (Let’s see… the game randomly goes into hyper speed, or even switches to a random map for no reason, you can hit people through walls with a tank… etc) then I’d have to say it’s probably one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences you can have.

Pouncing as Hunter, why I love versus

Seriously, there’s no greater feeling than doing a 25 damage pounce from a skyscraper that’s 2km away from the survivors as a hunter. The impact of the fall and having your opponent plastered against the ground as you consume his internal organs is very satisfying. A little too much actually…. Even better, light yourself on fire as a hunter and find yourself a lone target. Pounce on him and you’re doing double damage…. “OHM NOM NOM OMH OMH” as the Heavy would say.

So quickly, in case you’re a little new, let’s cover the basic ideas that will give you the edge in versus Left 4 Dead.

If you want to download the new Hunter Training map (Practice Pouncing & Climbing Buildings), then download it from the Training Section.

Survivor Tips –

1. Stay as close to your team as humanly possible… be IN THEM if possible. As dirty as that sounds, you’ll be safer if you can smell their breath.
2. You can hear EVERYTHING, listen and shoot through walls.
3. The tanks worse enemy is a molotov, always keep one handy.
4. If you don’t need to search an area, don’t. The objective is NOT to collect the most items, it’s to get to the exit with as much health as possible.
5. Be unpredictable, don’t go where the infected team will expect you to go.

Infected Tips –

1. You make noise, they will always hear you. The only exception to this is the hunter… if the hunter is standing up straight he will not make noise.
2. As a hunter, light yourself on fire to cause double damage. Before attacking, find fire, even if it’s far. It’s WORTH IT !
3. As a smoker, you can do more damage if you can pull a survivor off a ledge. That’s your job, pull people from high areas.
4. As a boomer, spawn at the absolute last second in a strategic place (you make a LOT of noise) and try to get all 4 infected with your spit.

The top mistakes people make as survivors is to simply linger around. Seriously, there is nothing in that closet…. and even if there was why would you want it ? It’s beyond me why people waste so much time at the beginning of levels looking for things like medipacks when you’re already at full health. Good teams move quickly together, skipping looking for items in favor for advancing through the map. Even when you don’t actively search the map for pipe bombs and molotovs, the map tends to give you some in very obvious locations along the way. Use those instead. The ONLY exception to this is to pick up upgraded guns. Don’t miss those.

Instead make your way through the map as fast as possible, utilizing the most direct line as possible.

Survivor Tips – Use Sound & Shoot through walls

The best thing survivors can do is to use their sound. You hear everything in Left 4 Dead, and if you use a set of high quality headphones, you’ll be able to know exactly where to shoot your survivors. If you want to take this even further and want to know how to you can make even better use of your sound, check out http://www.fragggingfundamentals.com for the answer to that one. Once you know exactly where the infected are, shoot through the walls at them! In Left 4 Dead, you CAN kill pretty much anything through a wall, as long as you shoot enough. It’s a great feeling to shoot a a boomer before they turn the corner… and even better to have them call you a cheater afterward!

If you want to truly own the boomer’s peanut, then figure out EXACTLY where you have to shoot in advance to get the kill. Let’s face it, after playing the same map over and over again, you KNOW around which walls the boomer is likely to spawn, so practice shooting through walls to hit him in single player and you’ll destroy everything and everyone in versus mode. Want to practice in single player?

Here’s how you do it quickly:
- First, start up a game in single player, choose whatever campaign you want.
- Second, bring down the console, type: sv_cheats 1
- Third, type “god”, followed by “noclip”
Now you’ll be able to float through walls and rapidly move around the map. This will allow you to rapidly figure out where to shoot through the wall.

Alright, now as infected.

Infected Tips – Coordinate & Use your Environment

THE GOLDEN RULE IS YOU HAVE TO ATTACK AT THE SAME TIME

That’s pretty much it. If you can coordinate 4 infected to attack at exactly the same time, you’ll do MUCH more damage than having a single hunter attack. How can you time this? Well, for starters make good use of voice communication. Warn your teammates 10 seconds in advance before you attack and pick effective places to attack.

There’s no point in attacking them when they are in a narrow corridor… they’ll just shoot you and a horde of zombies won’t do much damage either. Instead, the best time to get them is when they are in open areas.

For hunters, always take advantage of burning fire… it does SO MUCH more damage. And always find the highest possible point to jump off from. The further you travel in the air, the more damage you will deal on impact. Although difficult, it’s very lethal to land a 25 damage jump… which usually ends up being 30-35 damage points by the time someone helps your victim.

In versus mode, the infected are to take advantage of the environment, from hiding behind witches, to baiting survivors to shoot cars, it’s all about triggering the external forces in the game to do the work for you. My personal favorite is pulling a survivor towards the gas pumps on No Mercy… only to have the entire team come to rescue him and accidentally blowing up the pumps. If you haven’t tried that one yet… I highly recommend it.

A little note on the tank… Now the tank is both the most powerful force in Left 4 Dead and the worse played! I can’t believe how many players I see simply wasting a perfectly good tank. The first mistake people make with the tank is to assume that they are going to lose control immediately if they don’t attack. While it’s true that you eventually lose control if you don’t hit a survivor, the amount of time you have is more than sufficient! It allows you to carefully sneak around survivors, to tactically throw cars, wood logs, wheel barrels, whatever you find along the way to help you put down the survivors.

What a good tank will do is sneak up on ONE target, hit him until he’s down and then use him as bait. When the other survivors come to save him, hit them as well! Obviously, while the survivor is down, a hunter should immediately jump on him to try to kill him as fast as possible while the tank guards him. The worse thing to see is a tank running on fire, 1 vs 4 in the open while all the survivors shoot him. Don’t be that guy !

If you missed it, make sure you read my first article on Left 4 Dead, strategy and tips

Oh, and because I mentioned them in the first line, here are some videos of me speed running alone through the first levels of No Mercy on Expert. MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THEM IN HD!

No Mercy 2 – Done Fast

No Mercy 4 – Done Fast

If this guy could combine good timing with these attacks, he’d be unstoppable.

View in YouTube HD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN7PrqVxJys&fmt=22

Or view normal quality here:

*UPDATE* Don’t miss the new Left 4 Dead VERSUS strategy & tips article *
*UPDATE 2* Make sure you download the new Hunter Training map from the Training Section !

So if you’re more of a purist, and want to play this as a single player game, with the best graphics on and the most immersion, then you might want to skip this article.

If however, you’re ready to tweak the game, learn the little tricks and rip everything to shreds, then read on.

The Tricks you NEED to know

1. Server Browser

First, if you’re looking to play with other people, you can use the new more limited friend finder that’s included in the game. If you’d prefer the OLD FASHION server browser, simply

1. Enable the developer console (in the options),
2. Press ~
3. Type: “openserverbrowser” in the console.

2. Increase Responsiveness and Reduce Mouse Acceleration

With hundreds of zombies flying your way, you’re likely to need to do some quick firing. If you’re going to be doing “twitch shots”, then it’s better to make your mouse as responsive as possible and reduce all the mouse acceleration that you can.

To make your mouse movement more responsive in Left 4 Dead,
1. Go to your video options
2. Clicked on Advanced
3. Find the “Wait For Vertical Sync” option and set it to DISABLED.
4. Then go to options
5. Set the “Mouse Filter” option to ENABLED.

But wait, we’re not done! To reduce mouse acceleration even further (which will make it easier to aim!), you must add a few commands to the launch options in Steam.

To those who how to add launch options, simply add:

-noforcemaccel -noforcemparms -noforcemspd

in your Left 4 Dead launch options. If you’re wondering how to do this, I made a quick video for you.

3. Tweaking Your System for Left 4 Dead

The default settings that Valve picked for my system made everything look great, but I was averaging 50-60fps instead of my usual 120+. Not happy with that, I ran through the entire list of possible variables in Left 4 Dead to find ways to tweak the appearance.

Shockingly, I found that nearly EVERYTHING is cheat protected! That means that custom configs are SEVERELY limited and therefore, you won’t be seeing many “MAX FPS CONFIGS”.

However, simply going to the video options and putting EVERYTHING on “Low” gave me a tremendous boost in speed. Remember to disable Anti-Aliasing as well.

Surprisingly, the game still looks great even when everything is on low settings.

It just runs better, provides smoother mouse movement, and makes it much it a much more enjoyable experience.

But wait!

I did find ONE secret variable that allows you to see everything better. Start by going in the video settings and putting your brightness to the max.

Then, open the console and type:

mat_monitorgamma_tv_enabled 1

For even MORE brightness. If properly set up, you’ll be able to see in even the darkest areas without a flashlight.

4. Tweaking your Network Settings for Left 4 Dead

Unlike most first person shooters, Left 4 Dead does NOT require huge network requirements to run fast. This is probably because the computer controlled monsters are rushing you instead of real human players. Even if your teammates lag around a little, it won’t make such a huge impact.

In fact, playing around with the interp (usually critical in FPS games) seemed to have a more negative impact.

Therefore, for the time being, the only network settings I would recommend are:

rate 25000
cl_cmdrate 100
cl_updaterate 100

5. Strategies for Left 4 Dead

First, if you’re inexperienced, take the machine gun. If you have semi-decent aim, take the shotgun. The shotgun is much more effective at killing hordes of enemies as long as you take your time to aim. Every shot counts, so instead of shooting quickly, make sure you are accurate.

In Left 4 Dead, it’s strongly discouraged to rush out alone… and even though I enjoy doing anyways, if you want to stay alive on expert, it’s strongly recommended that you stay near your team.

Because most zombies simply rush towards you, it’s usually recommended to simply walk backwards towards your team when you’re being rushed.

Usually the process goes: “Spot a pack of zombies… they see me…. they ALL start running towards me, I walk backwards towards my friends, we all kill them, repeat.”

As a team, the ONE thing you want to concentrate on is always making sure that your back is covered. If you can get into a corner or even a tight corridor, that’s a good thing. That way, they won’t be able to sneak up behind you. Seems obvious, but that’s really the key to winning.

If you’re looking for more in-game specific strategies, check out extra tips at Left 4 Dead 411.

6. Trick for the first level of the demo – First level in 34 seconds

It’s possible to do the first level of the L4D demo in 34 seconds if you do it right. First, pick Howie, which is the closest character to the edge, then simply pause on the ledge for a split second before walking off onto the garbage can. If you do it correctly, your team won’t stop you from jumping off and you’ll make it with minimal damage.

Here’s my rough speed run through the first level of L4D in 34 seconds.

7. Full list of commands and variables for Left 4 Dead

If you’re ever looking for a command in Left 4 Dead, you can simply go into the console and type: cvarlist and it should give you a full list of commands.

Even easier, you can START by writing a letter and then press the up or down arrow to scroll through the commands.

Finally, I’d like to give a big thanks to Dave Parker for creating PDF of all the settings for L4D. Download the L4D Cvar List

Update – Bonus Demo Tricks

How to try Infected in the Demo

Taken from Scuzball in the Steam Forums, Thanks Scuzball!

This works for single and multiplayer as of now, and is of course an incomplete feature, so don’t even think about bugs or balance! This is purely for fun and curiosity!

There are scraps of Versus mode inside the demo. If this post is somehow against the rules, delete it at your leisure.

1. From the starting screen, click Options, then Mouse/Keyboard, and enable the developer console.

2. Start a single player game and open your console with the ~ key.

3. Type “sv_cheats 1″ This will enable cheat mode.

4. Type “ent_fire !self setteam 3″ to join the Infected team

You get to choose where to spawn as a baddie, but the AI controlled survivors will not leave their starting room and the game will not start on its own.

5. Type “director_force_versus_start 1″ in your console to begin the round.

The survivors will start hacking their way through the apartment building and you finally get to try your zombie character!

6. When you die (and you probably will), you will not respawn. Press space to cycle through different spectating modes till you are in in free flight mode. You must then use these commands in the console.

z_spawn tank
z_spawn boomer
z_spawn smoker
z_spawn hunter

These will spawn you as that infected at the spot you are currently “flying” as a spectator. (If you use these commands while you are alive, it will spawn a computer-controlled boss of that type where you are aiming. z_add will spawn a regular infected. z_spawn witch also works, but she is always computer controlled)

In Multiplayer, this will only work if you are the lobby leader and you choose to host the game locally; it will NOT work on other people’s dedicated servers!

Many people including me have been unable to get the AI survivors to leave the safe room in the subways. Unless someone gets a work around, this only works on the apartment level.

I was iffy about my pre-order to be honest, but now that I’ve gotten 3 of my friends to try the zombies, they’re all buying the game today!

Have fun

More resources

Some great resources,
http://www.left4dead411.com
http://left4dead411.com/left-4-dead-strategy
http://www.l4d.com/

Don’t scare the witch !

If you’ve been living under a rock (or a crate) for the past few years, then you might of not heard of this game. It’s the upcoming hit by Valve, and they have their entire team working on it so they can finish it by November 18th.

Why am I so excited?

Because the last time I played a decent cooperative game, I was still playing with a 33.6k modem and Duke Nukem 3D was king (wait, it’s not anymore?).

This MIGHT be a revolutionary game… I’m excited.

Go see the Left 4 Dead video trailer:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/left4dead/video/6200402/left-4-dead-official-movie-1?hd=1