Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)

As previously stated, L4D can be enjoyed on your own with 3 AI replacements against every campaign or with up to 3 other human friends over Xbox Live. You can even play System Link or 2-player split-screen (coop only) on the same Xbox360 with a friend.

Where L4D really shines (though only two campaigns are active for it at the moment) is when you have a round-robin style 4-v-4 versus game. 4 survivors and 4 infected players. This is why the game is such a blast. Whilst the campaign plays out just like in single player with full AI Director control over the core infected, the human players on the enemy side are in charge of the Boomer, Smoker, Hunter and Tank as they attempt to stop the survivors from escaping.

Then teams switch and the infected are now against the survivors with their roles reversed.

There's a great deal of cooperative teamplay on both sides of the fence, the infected can work together to navigate the various maps and lay ambushes for the players using the right time to strike, especially during a particularly nasty panic event or siege event. Pulling a survivor from a mounted mini-gun as a Smoker whilst the Hunter rips them to shreds is a great feeling, then to see a Tank come crashing into the game to mop up the rest gives you the satisfaction of a job well done as an infected player.

Or a Boomer that manages to vomit on a couple of survivors, rushes the rest and explodes mid-group covering everyone in bile is great especially when there are a couple of Hunters on the loose who can leap in during the green-tinted vomit-confusion and rushing zombie madness. This can really wound or nearly cripple a group of survivors and cause mass mayhem and panic in the group.

If I were to pick faults with L4D it would be that the game has a few little online niggles, most of which Valve have picked up on with hotfixes and patches recently. There were some balance issues with the infected and several exploits allowed hackers to use the console on Xbox 360 matches to screw with people's games, summoning in hordes of Tanks or so on.

The faults though:

1. The weapons - they're all very much 'same old same old' school of guns.
2. 4 campaigns even with 5 missions doesn't seem a lot.
3. Only 2 campaigns in versus mode at the moment.
4. 4 main characters are not different in terms of statistics, only a very minor niggle
5. A few lag issues in multiplayer, mostly on local host servers.
6. Need more levels where it's possible to snipe from, since the hunting rifle seems redundant mostly.
You really can't even call them faults. All in all Valve and Turtle Rock have made the kind of game that is going to stay on my 360 HDD for ages and I know with Valve's rep, there will be some pretty slick DLC coming from them in the near future - the PC side of things will get that for free but I highly doubt that they can offer the same content for the 360 without charging for it.

Microsoft isn't fond of that.

Left4Dead is a step in the right direction for so many shooters, the AI Director is the best thing since self-slicing ninjabread and versus mode is immense fun. Allowing you to take a break by letting the AI control your character until you come back is another nice touch, since the AI tends to be pretty damn good most of the time. This game can only go from strength to strength.

If you don't own it, you need to get it.