You'll be dying to team up with some friends and play.

Once in a great while there comes along a game that is so fun to play with others that you will re-work your schedules and daily plans around it just to make the time. Valve had this success with another title called Counter Strike a few years back, and now they have created another game that takes all the addicting qualities of grouping and planning and tosses in a mixture of zombies and terror as icing on the cake. The game is called Left 4 Dead and if you have a PC or Xbox 360 you are in for one of the most enjoyable online multiplayer games to date.

It seems that most online games are too heavy on leaderboard attention rather than just enjoying blasting some baddies with a group of friends. Left 4 Dead brings back this traditional idea, and while you do accumulate stats throughout the game, you won't have the headache of dealing with gamers who die on purpose or do things their way just to earn achievements or leaderboard spots.

Left 4 Dead takes one part survival horror and one part Counter Strike to create an exciting new world for you and your friends. You play the part of one of four members of a team who are literally left for dead in a city. You will struggle through hordes of zombies, mutants, and terrifying boss battles in order to survive from one stage to the next. The main part of the game, whether you are playing single player with bots or with up to 3 other friends as your mates, is set up into four "movie" style scenarios, with each movie being broken up into 5 parts. Not only does your first stage loading screen consist of a "mock" movie poster about the chapter you are about in embark upon, but there are actual ending credits after each 5 part chapter. Adding to the experience is an AI director who will randomly generate experiences throughout the game including pacing and zombie placement tailored to the people playing. This leads to the game feeling fresh all the way through even if you play the campaign multiple times.

If that wasn't enough to get your mouth salivating there is even a VS. Mode that will allow gamers to play as either one of the four Survivor characters or even cooler as one of the "Boss Infected" characters. So the choice is really yours how you want to play, do you want to kill the walking dead or do you want to feast as one?

The game's presentation, graphically and audio-wise, is pure Valve. With the visuals, the team uses the fantastic Source engine that includes all the physics and unpredictability that goes with it and leads to situations changing from game to game. Each character model for the 4 survivors is detailed and has a unique personality. It is a shame that each character doesn't have a particular plus or weakness when it comes to weapons, but I guess that would knock out some of the game's balance out of proportion. The zombies aren't your Romero-like slow moving kind either. Sure they scurry around the city wandering the earth at a slow pace, but once they can smell your living flesh it is a totally different story as they come at you like rabid dogs just trying to take a bite out of you or rip you apart. We are also not just talking about a few stragglers here and there, especially if you do something like trip an alarm that draws their attention to you, they can come at you dozens at a time. All your zombies are not just your typical brain eaters either, as you'll encounter ones called a "Smoker" who has a 50 ft tongue that grabs you, a big fat zombie who'd belly is full of explosive methane called a "Boomer", a agile wall climbing fast zombie called a "Hunter" and many more unique specialty characters and bosses that will draw the line between survival and being left for (4) dead.

The audio is also amazing with loud and boisterous sound effects from your guns and blazing explosions of pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. You can hear certain creatures coming around corners or even recognize certain enemies by the sounds they make. Nothing is scarier knowing that a witch is somewhere in the room as you hear her cry, but trying not to disturb her. Even the voice acting, while repetitive with certain catch phrases throughout has a certain charm that keeps it from grinding your nerves.

The gameplay is top notch from the controls to the button mapping for weapons, objects, and maneuvers. It's always great to see when you put a group of four players together how they can overcome what seem to be impossible obstacles. The A.I. can be set for your standard difficulty, but the game will still take into effect how well you are playing and keep the game interesting by playing fair at your level. What's more, if you are playing single player or even multiplayer with bots, you can be happy to know that they aren't completely useless. They of course will still run into friendly fire, go down a wrong flight of stairs, or get trapped behind a door and not know it, but for the most part you will have very little issues with the A.I. of your partners. Not only are they good at the trigger, but they will even help in times of need such as healing and helping you out when you may be pinned down by zombies and about to meet certain doom.

With a game that is so much fun to play single player or even better in multiplayer, Valve has a huge hit on its hands. Toss in the possibility of DLC and you got yourself some replay value that goes through the roof! Left 4 Dead is a sleeper hit that not only should you play if you are a fan of online gaming, but should own if you are at all interested in squad based games. An easy candidate for multiplayer game of the year indeed.