AnthonyDamasco

After playing the half life 2 engine for endless hours I decided to try out valves newest addition to their creations, Left 4 Dead. I started out playing the single player campaigns with mindless, yet, helpful bots, then moved on to spending 40 hours online with real players. I find that most people that play this game are clueless and need a little guide to help them survive in the harsh environment that Valve has put us in.

1. This is the half life engine
Have you played counter strike? You buy the M16 and couch down, let off some burst fire at some terrorist? Well this game allows for the same tactics that worked well in counter strike. The zombies wonder around slow and stupid, from a distance carefully aim an m16 or your pistols at a zombie’s head and let off a burst. You will notice that the zombie’s head is easily turned into jello and splattered on the ground. You can easily kill 20-30 zombies with one clip of the m16 if you attack this way.

2. Zombies are Stupid
Zombies will attack anything, including, pipe bombs, when you hurl a pipe bomb out a window and into a crowd of zombies, they will run at it as fast as they can, in a few short seconds all zombies in the area will be turned into zombie paste.

Zombies also run in a straight line, most weapons (especially the m16) will tare through zombies with ease, 3 bullets can kill over 7 zombies if they stand in a line while running at you.

3. Don’t Get Surrounded
There are times when hundreds of zombies will be running at you from all directions. If you trigger an alarm, or if a Boomer pukes on you. It can be overwhelming and cause you to panic quiet easily.

Zombies can only attack melee, which means the most damage they can do to you is when they have you surrounded, by backing up into a corner or putting your back to a wall you can cut down the beating by 50% and cause these morons to line up so you can take them down in sections.

4. Milk The Ammo Piles
It becomes clear quickly in the game that the pistols extremely ineffective and you’ll be relying on your primary weapon most of the time. Ammo also goes very fast when fighting the horde

When you exit a safe house and you have to waste some zombies, before you move on be sure to go back into the safe house and max out your ammo again.

When running around with an upgraded weapon like the m16, you might find other spots in the campaign with more weapons, even though you already have one, grab a new one, it will conveinantly have full ammo, and it might help you make it to that next safe house.

5. Friendly Fire is ALWAYS on.
That is right, friendly fire is always on, so that means if your friend is aiming his shotgun at a zombie, and you jump in front of him, your getting an ass full of lead.

a. Don’t Stand in door ways,
b. Don’t Jump in front of your team mates,
c. Stay to the side in hall ways and tunnels.
d. If your buddy is covered with zombies, shoot them, not him, if your not a steady shot, then melee the zombies instead, they will be knocked off of him and hopefully in a better position for you to shoot them.

6. Keep Moving
For most of the campaign, zombies will not stop coming, if you try to camp, you will just keep running into smokers, boomers, and hunters, they will not stop spawning, Get to the safe house, don’t mess around.

7. The Super Infected and you
There are 5 different types of super infected that you will run into.

One. Hunters - hunters are these jumpy bastards that you can identifty easily. They screech, and crawl, they will also jump long distances. These things will jump at you and pin you to the ground, your team mates will have to shoot him off of you. You can dodge hunters by side stepping thier jumps.

Two. Smokers - Smokers have a huge tongue and will try to strangle you with it. Smokers make coughing sounds when they are near by and have a green mist surrounding them. When you kill them a cloud of toxic smoke it appear over the body, don’t stand in this. If they get you will their tongue, your team mate can shoot the tongue and break the hold, you they can kill the smoker himself.

Three. Boomers - these fat pieces of shit will try and puke on you, their  puke will attract every zombie in the area to you, it also blinds you. Boomers make burping sounds when they are in the area and look like a fat guy in a little coat. When shot, they will explode and cause damage to anyone around it.

Four. The Witch - the witch is found on her knees, crying. She also gets her own music, some scary shit too.

If you can avoid her, you are better off, if she knocks you down, your buddies will pick you back up, but you’ll have 30hp left, and it will slowly drop. Don’t shine a flash light on her. She will only appear once per section.

Five. - The Tank - This Huge zombie will take a lot of punishment before going down, I think his health is something like 3500, so it will take the whole team to take him down most of the time. When he hits you, you will go flying through the air and a huge chunk of life will be missing from your health bar. If attacked up close, run, be the bait and let your team mates attack him. If they are the bait, then just shoot with every bit of ammo you have.

8. The game is never the same.
So you beat a campaign, and you want to play it again. You think, “I got this, I know where everything is, I can avoid the witch this time, and I have a perfect strategy for that tank in the long hallway”. Well guess what. The zombies are always placed in different spots. You will most likely never have a same play through. Sometimes the witch is right in front of the safe house, while other times, she is tucked away in the woods, this goes for every campaign, so always stay on your toes.

9. Stay together
I know you might think you are l33t, and you can handle zombies on your own, no problem, however, if a hunter has you pinned and you are 2 minutes further along then your friends, then your as good as dead.

10. GET IN THE CHOPPER, GET IN THE TANK, GET ON THE BOAT
At the end of every campaign you will have to make a last stand against the horde while help is on its way. During this time you will be attacked by multiple tanks, boomers, smokers, hunters, and endless zombies.

When rescue gets there, run to it. At that point zombies will not stop coming until you are dead, or you escape. I can’t tell you how many times i die right in front of the helicopter. Just run run run.

END
That’s it, keep this 10 tips in mind when fighting the horde, keep your ammo full and your ass out of the line of fire, happy hunting.