JDHarper.com

Left 4 Dead is a game about surviving the zombie apocalypse. You and three other people are immune to the virus that is converting humanity into undead monsters; the rest of the city is not so fortunate. You have to run, using a variety of weapons and fighting a variety of special monsters, from your starting point to an escape vehicle. It can be a lot of fun.

Can be. With the right people it’s fun most of the time. But sometimes, even having the most fun people in the world isn’t enough to save it.

Tonight, I played with pretty much my favorite group of internet gamers. But it was still frustrating. I lay the blame for this almost entirely on the game: I would pounce on people’s backs as Hunter and just bounce off of them. My teammates would vomit on three of our opponents as Boomer, and would only get credit for one of them. A full clip of autoshotgun ammo wouldn’t take out the Hunter I was shooting at as survivor.

To be fair, the other team was really good, and I felt like I was dragging our team down a bit. I got taken down literally three steps outside of the initial spawn. I did almost no damage as the tank. Etc, etc.

The point is that, between the game’s technical deficiencies and my own lack of skill, the game frustrates me at least one game in four, even with my favorite teammates/opponents. So I say: Goodbye and thanks for all the pills! I’ll see my friends in chat and in TF2.