Review: Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice

7 Oct, 2010

This article is likely to contain spoilers for those who have yet to play ‘The Sacrifice’. I have tried to keep them to a minimum, but just a heads up for you all!

So it is finally upon us fellow Dead Heads! After all of the waiting, following teasing trailers and a weekly comic strip running parallel the impending story, The Sacrifice is finally available! Released on October 5th via Steam for PC and Mac, the Xbox 360 version stumbled in fashionably late early on October 6th, and I was quick to crawl out of bed, put the kettle on, scrape together my last pennies to purchase both sets of content- one for Left 4 Dead and the other for Left 4 Dead 2- and tuck into the action! ‘The Sacrifice’ is the next chapter in the canon of Valve’s cult zombie first-person shooter, Left 4 Dead- featuring the much loved Motley Crew of original survivors- Bill, Zoey, Francis and Louis as they fight their way through hoards of infected to escape the viral hot zone. The new DLC also serves as a prequel to the series’ second chapter Left 4 Dead 2, and its own downloadable episode ‘The Passing’ which featured a cameo from our original heroes and a shocking ending for one. Exactly how this character met such an unfortunate end is the focus piece of ‘The Sacrifice’.

As both a fan of the series and in the interest of providing a full and informative review I purchased both pieces of content, priced at 560 Microsoft Point per file for each game and relished in the fact that I actually had an excuse to stay indoors all day and play Left 4 Dead. So you may be wondering exactly what the difference is between the two pieces, or whether there are really any differences at all. Fear not dear readers, for the purposes of my review as well as to utilise the opportunity to write about one of my favourite series, will be evaluate each piece of content so that you might have the additional ammo to make an informed choice on which slice of pie you invest your hard earned cash on!

Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice –

What are you getting? ‘The Sacrifice’ campaign, new achievements, ‘The Sacrifice’ as a playable Versus map.

From the itinerary you might be thinking, ‘That’s not much for 560’, and sadly you would be right. Considering that the content is based on the original game, and for all intents and purposes was developed in order to keep fans of the original happy, after accusations that the first game wasn’t getting half as much content as was promised before the release of a sequel, this segment feel sadly skin and bones. ‘The Sacrifice’ is a three chapter campaign which like the previous add-on episode ‘Crash Course’ is significantly shorter than the main game campaigns, at 5 chapters long. Essentially our mission is to fight our way through an old ship and haulage yard in search for some kind of waterborne transport, which from what I could gather between the always hilarious bickering and banter (as well as Valve’s excellent weekly comic) spewing from the odd ball clan will take them to the safety of an island far from the infection hot zone. Exactly what they would do once they got there is anyone’s guess, and likely to be the subject of fan fiction of discernibly questionable taste as soon as the subject of repopulation comes to fruition, but that leads us off an entirely new tangent all together.

So the usual run and gun fun ensues, blasting your way through hoards of the undead and various grotesque special infected as you run from one Safe House to the next until you reach the finale. This version of ‘The Sacrifice’ is naturally running off of the original game’s engine and so graphics wise it retains the dark colour pallet and musty damp look of the original game. The weapons also remain the same to what any player of the first game would expect, with your standard sub-machine gun, shotgun and various thrown explosives like your Molotov (you’ll need them against all these tanks!) and Pipe bombs. To summarise, anyone familiar with playing the original Left 4 Dead will find nothing new here besides the map itself, so that must mean the map is spectacular yes? For that price!? Well the answer in this case is yes and no. ‘The Sacrifice’ is a fun map to play through especially when you factor in the witty banter of the characters and hooking up online with your friends, but this particular rendition of the content just feels very unfinished, almost broken in fact. I was also sadly unsurprised to notice that the AI of the unused characters in your team were about an usefull as a chocolate tea pot, blundering around aimlessly and failing to move towards objectives when they signaled. This essentially meant that a some crucial moments we were stood waiting for the AI to cotton onto the fact that were at the next safe room while he was still reloading and taking a bathroom break miles away. However, the bugs and generally clunky nature became especially apparent in the finale; when after activating the generators to get the bridge going and the natural ambush of all things unholy descended upon us, let’s say we ran into a few problems. I am still unsure as to whether this is a deliberate or a bug, but when playing on Normal difficulty it felt somewhat erroneous at best to be suddenly gang raped by a pack of 5 tanks while cowering screaming in the corner of the bar room- adding further insult to injury I managed by accident to trip the jukebox triggering some music that made it sound like the entire affair was taking place at hoe-down.

So it was back to the safe room for another try, and again we seemed to be being ambushed my an entire battalion of tanks, but perseverance prevailed and we made it to the bridge, where for no reason it seemed as though we were caught in the epicentre of the Kobe earthquake, with everything around us shaking and glitching out furiously it made it near impossible to navigate the short trip to the top of the bridge and onto ‘rock-paper-scissors’ so that we might choose our sacrificial lamb. Still again, we made it through and chose Bill to bite the bullet (for the sake achievement point’s sentimentality goes out of the window) and ended the level. This where we ran into our next problem, we got the standard achievement for finishing ‘The Sacrifice’, but none for any of the other little touches we had worked tirelessly to pull off, such as chosing Bill to sacrifice or have all generators running at once.

So it’s rather safe to say that the Left 4 Dead (1) rendition of ‘The Sacrifice’ is in dire need of some TLC via a patch, and pronto! For 560 MS Points this feels terribly shoddy and unfinished, and disappointing most of all when you considering that in theory this should have been perhaps the best version of this content since it is entirely orchestrated on its home soil. Sadly like ‘Crash Course’ before it on the 360, the DLC for the first game hasn’t exactly been a booming success in terms of how it plays or value. Still on the other hand the content does with 5 new achievements that rewards you a generous 50Gs a piece (assuming they’ll unlock of course…), but even this does little to sweeten the bitter taste of feeling somewhat cheated. Considering that the original Left 4 Dead remains my favourite of the two games this was ultimately a very disappointing experience initially, but hopefully it won’t take more than a well done, swift response patch to chase my blues away.

Left 4 Dead 2: The Sacrifice -

What are you getting? ‘The Sacrifice’ campaign, ‘No Mercy’ campaign (from L4D1), both additional campaigns as Versus maps, both campaigns running on L4D2’s engine with all the trimmings, new achievements and updated mutations!

‘That’s more like it!’ I hear you shout? And I can only agree, the version put together for Left 4 Dead 2 feels like much better value for money and from my experience of playing- runs a treat on Left 4 Dead 2’s engine. As I said before, given that the original game and its characters remain my firm favourites of the series, it really was a pleasure to be able to play them again in a new set up, with all the privileges and improvements of the sequel’s game engine. Right from the word go there is a massive improvement in the quality of the content, with the first thing I really noticed being the lighting effects. Left 4 Dead 2’s did away with the foggy murky looking sky visuals and replaced them more natural looking weather effects, which generally make the visuals looks much cleaner and sharper, even if it does sacrifice the tone of the game somewhat. The next and probably most obvious new touch was the inclusion of L4D2’s weapon range, adding AK47s, Combat Assault Rifles, improved sniper rifles and a great range of pistols to add to the characters back-pocket armoury, but also- Left 4 Dead 2’s special infected. The Spitter, Charger and Jockey have been added into the fray, and new dialogue has been recorded for the characters accordingly, though in some cases with the extra weapons there is a noticeable silence where dialogue would be, where it has obviously been missed. This version also benefits from having the sequel’s updated enemy textures such as with the Smokers, Boomers and zombies, going as far as to bring in the CEDA hazmat suit zombies that periodically drop Boomer bile for your throwing pleasure.

The experience of playing on the new engine was a world apart from how the content played on the original game. I didn’t find that I had any of the problems with over-spawning of Special Infected (including the tanks in the finale), poor AI (thought it still at times leaves a lot to be desired), environmental glitches or not receiving achievements when they are earned. It really does feel like this was developed for L4D2 first and foremost, and the version that exists for the original was entirely an afterthought to keep both sides of the fan base happy, which is especially curious when you consider the comments of the development team in regards to it originally being exclusive the first game.

Another neat feature which been packaged in for your gaming pleasure is the ‘No Mercy’ campaign, a fan favourite from the original game. Again this has been treated to a makeover in regards to it running off of the sequel’s engine, with the most significant changes being weapons and the inclusion of the special infected. The maps layout has been tweaked ever so slightly in places to accommodate the inclusion of the new Special Infected, but these changes are barely noticeable outside of playing the map through on Versus, and even then anyone other than those who know the map like the back of their hand aren’t going to notice. There were no huge noticeable bugs in this map either that I could see, other than the strange instance of not having any tanks attack either myself or the team until the finale, but this could have been a one off instance.

A sadly missed opportunity with the inclusion of this campaign is that there are no new achievements attainable for this new version, and what is achievable for ‘The Sacrifice’ is completely the same on both versions of the content, which easily attainable and worth big points, further eliminates the need to by both versions.

Verdict:

It’s a no brainer- Left 4 Dead 2’s version of ‘The Sacrifice’ represents both better value for your money, and a game that actually works correctly on the whole. As a big fan of the series the installment designed for the first game is a huge disappointment and frankly terribly overpriced for what little scraps you are getting for your money. For those of who own both games, or just L4D2 then it is my strongest suggestion that you invest in the sequel’s pack, as you are getting a lot of bang for your buck here. The definitive version of ‘The Sacrifice’ is definitely to be had on Left 4 Dead 2!

For those who only own the original game I would suggest holding out until a patch is announced to fix the mighty list of niggles, or perhaps even hold off until it is reduced in price- 560 MS Points is a hefty sum to pay for such a bare bones pack of content, and this is going to do little to impress the gamers who were unhappy about the neglect suffered by this title in favour of it’s little brother.

In terms of the actual content itself, it is certainly an enjoyable little episode and a must play for any fans of the series. My only real problem with how it plays out is that whoever should chose to go down for the team at the end, are not given the chance to go out in a blaze of glory like you would expect or hope. As soon as you have completed the task it’s game over, credits roll, thank you very much exit at the back of the room. There isn’t really any effort made to create any kind of emotional response, but then again I suppose Valve are assuming that anyone who was interested in ‘The Sacrifice’ followed the online comic which really played out the notion that this was a certain characters swan song. Overall this is worthy addition to the franchise and I will be watching with great interest as to where Valve take it from here!

So there we have it folks! I only hope that my inane rambling can be of some use to you our readers! Enjoy!