Lately I have been playing Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360 console and one thing that really impresses me is how smoothly multi-player gaming works. From a game design perspective, I think the following features are really nice:
- Players can join or leave games at anytime (even during a campaign)
- Players who are inactive (idle) for too long are seamlessly controlled by the computer until they return and press a button (which means people can take breaks without significantly impacting the other players)
- Left 4 Dead is heavily focused on cooperative play, to the extent that your team must "rescue" players in many situations; this greatly enhances the overall experience and raises the intensity level as players strive to reach teammates before they are killed
- Voice chat works really well and is almost mandatory to survive on the more challenging difficulty settings
- Players can see silhouettes of their teammate through walls and other obstacles, which greatly reduces people asking "Where are you?" and makes it much easier to rejoin the group if players get separated
- Players can see their teammates health bars at all times, as well as a partial inventory of what they are carrying
- Players can heal their teammates
Many of these techniques have been implemented in other games, but Left 4 Dead does a great job of blending them all together in a cohesive and fun experience.
