On-line gaming has rarely interested me.  Ok, I’m not too shabby at Halo 3 or Call Of Duty 4, but often come away dissatisfied compared to single player gaming.  I feel mainly like there’s no real point to it all.

That has now all changed with the arrival of latest shooter Left 4 Dead.  Now before you say ‘its just an on-line shooter with a tacked on single player mode’, I will firstly agree with you, and then say one word: VALVE.  The celebrated developer behind my favourite game of all time; Half Life 2.  Now this uses the same Source graphics engine, which still looks the biz today, but the reason this game just nails it on-line is this:  you have to work together.  You wont be any good at this game if you go it alone, and neither will you survive very long if your team mates do the same.  Yet as  each of the four players all learn this quite quickly too, soon you are working together to battle the zombie apocalypse, and unless you protect and heal and lookout for each other – its going to be Game Over very quickly.

There is so much this game gets right.  If you die, its not the end, as you are then transported to a safe location, and your team mates are made aware of your location and can come and let you out.  If you take a break from the slaughter, then you can get the computer to take over without your team mates being any the wiser – and above all else, it feels like you’re in a movie like 28 Days Later or Land of the Dead – and that is both frightening and f****** brilliant!

Make way online gamers – I’m baaaaaack!