Forums > Submission Feedback > Suskie's Left 4 Dead review

This was a fantastic review. It reminded me a lot of what I remembered reading from Lewis when he reviewed it, but you did a great job here anyway and you added enough angles of your own that it made for an engaging and interesting read. Every time I read about this game, I think that I'm 50% sure I'd love it and 50% sure I'd hate it. This review had that same effect and gives me one more reason to wish I had the time and nerve to try it. I'm just not sure that I do.

Anyway, most of the review was flawless but I had a few nitpicks that I thought I'd point out in case you want to polish a smidge more. They follow...

You receive warning of an incoming Tank by the rumble in your controller – these enormous monstrosities represent what it would probably look like if the Incredible Hulk were zombified, and while you don’t want to engage them at close range, attacking from a distance only increases the likelihood that you’ll get nail by one of the cars or chunks of rubble it throws with startling accuracy.

This sentence should be broken up before 'while' so that you have two separate sentences instead of a comma followed by 'and' splicing two sentences together. Besides that, you meant 'nailed' instead of the 'nail' that you actually used.

Left 4 Dead forces a gamut of human emotions, from machismo to bravery to selfishness to downright cowardice, all often within the span of a few minutes and often coming from the same people.

I don't think you mean 'all often' here. I think you meant to use one or the other of those two words.

Great stuff, like I said. Keep 'em coming! :-D

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

On the long sentence, actually I'd say the work that needs to be done is to make sure the pronouns used seem to point to the right things, and to get the number issues clearer to help this. There's nothing wrong with the sentence length per se, but splitting into more clauses may also help solve the problems.

At the moment, you've got 'an incoming tank' - one tank, anchored to the rest of the sentence by a hyphen. It's the 'these' after the hyphen that starts to sound loose. There was one tank, and one controller, but 'these' is plural, or at least generalising. 'Them' follows 'these' in remaining plural and referring to the tanks, you hope, but if you're unlucky, people will read it wrong and have to read it again.

If nothing else, I think the best place for a full stop is after 'your controller', and then I'd change 'an incoming tank' to 'incoming tanks'. The length of what remains is then down to taste and style.

Not sure how to make a sig? While logged into your account, you can edit it and your other public and private information from the Settings page.

I have taken advice from both of you! Hopefully those sentences work now.

And thanks for the comments, Jason. I'll actually be entering this in the horror contest in a moment so you've given me a boost of confidence!

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

She chooses a victim, and what follows usually ends in a one-hit kill. And I don’t mean that you become incapacitated. I mean bitch kills you dead.

Best part of the review. Pretty much sums up the horror of encountering a Witch.

I head spaceshit noises.

I liked Left 4 Dead (hell, I was even on a competitive L4D team for 3 months or so) but seemed to like it for different reasons than everyone else here. The atmosphere/horror aspects didn't do much for the same reason atmosphere never does much for me in most games: after playing for a couple days everything becomes so predictable to the point where you don't notice it anymore! Even the witches and tanks became a joke and it turns from horror to a battle over who will cr0wn the witch first or who will throw the molotov to light the tank (and have it burn to death 30 seconds later).

Still a good review, though!

IF YOU WANT MORE BEATS FOR YOUR BUCK THERE'S NO LUCK.

Love this line... wish I'd thought of it first:

"Note that Resident Evil only managed to make zombies scary by having its protagonists control like forklifts. Left 4 Dead is a shooter – a damn polished one – that’s even scarier."

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

THAT DIDN'T STOP YOU FROM GIVING IT A 72

You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

You could have totally beat me had he liked the line so much back then!

For us. For them. For you.

Boy, someone's resentful tonight.

Anyway, I didn't say I liked the rest of the review. Just that line. The rest of the review sucks.



Nah, just kidding.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."