Half-Masked

At the tail-end of each of the four campaigns in Left 4 Dead, you and your allies have to wait for rescue from the zombie hordes. During this time, the game pulls out all of the stops. Hundreds of zombies all at once pouring in through every orifice of wherever you’re holed up in for defense. Every single special infected save for the Witch appear in greater frequency to make your life much more annoying. And once that’s settled, you have to fight a Tank.

Repeat steps one and two. I respect anyone who can manage to get all 4 survivors out of the campaign alive, especially on the harder difficulties.

When the rescue vehicle does arrive, it becomes a mad dash to victory as the zombies/special infected/Tank all make one last daring attempt to turn you into a fine red pulp. It is not uncommon for four healthy, fit Survivors to reach for the finish line, only to have three or more be consumed in the horde on the way.

The “Finale” segments are a serious test of skill and strategy. Much depends on the resources available, the timing of pipe bomb and molotov throws, and where you and your allies decide to stand off against the seemingly infinite tide of zombie scum. On the “Expert” difficulty, this can be an excruciating ordeal. But on three of the campaigns, it is very possible to get through it alive.

In the “No Mercy” campaign, however, I am prepared to call this an impossible task. No, you will not argue this to me. There is no conceivable way to accomplish this. None. Not without very liberal cheating, as displayed in some youtube videos that exploit glitches and sealed-off level design to avoid combat altogether. If you tell me you have done this legitimately, I am prepared to call you a liar. If you show me video evidence of it being done, I will call it a hoax, or cry foul of “teh hax”.

I have drained the batteries in my controller attempting to see this part of the game to completion, and I am not convinced any human being, possessing any skill at video games can do it. You can be doing everything right, and you will never see the credits. Using as many different strategies as I can think of, and a few I hadn’t thought of, none are any better or worse than simply setting yourself on fire or jumping off the roof of the hospital this scenario takes place in. I properly planned where we would hide out, choosing several different locations to test their merits as a “choke point”, carefully set up gas canisters and propane tanks, made sure everyone was healed, assigned myself one or two “entry points” to focus on, while periodically checking over my fellow Survivors to see if they need my help. I keep a careful eye and ear out for Smokers, Hunters, Boomers and Tanks. I have tried different “roles”, with different weapons. I stay away from the worthless minigun on the roof. I have a better chance when I am near a robust supply of molotov cocktails and pipe bombs. The zombies are taken care of as best as they can be, but no amount of effort and strategy is ever enough.

I have tried everything within my or anyone’s abilities to man a rationally defined defense. There is virtually no way to survive this scenario on the Expert difficulty. Greater skill in first-person shooters would not help here. There is no time to reload or heal your allies, and no way to survive past the second horde(and sometimes you die sooner, thanks to the Smoker, or the Tank). A better reaction time is meaningless. The game demands nothing less than god-like intervention on your behalf.

It would be feasible if it weren’t for the game-destroying layout of the top of Mercy Hospital. The finale is bad enough on every other stage, but the roof of the hospital is home to some genuinely barbaric video game design. It is a giant, sprawling maze of vents and pipes and jutting squares. In any other campaign, you can survive. Not here. It is designed to make it impossible to tell where a Special infected is, or even reach or defend yourself against them, while giving the enemy a million places to hide and attack from. For all of its size and complexity, there isn’t a single defendable spot. Indoors, outdoors, the highest vent to the lowest section of the roof, not one place seems designed in mind to allow the Survivors even a faint suggestion of survival.

It doesn’t help that, despite my computer-controlled allies being commendably reliable for most of the game, it is in the last 10 minutes which they lose all will to live. If you are trapped by a Smoker and they are free of enemy distractions, they will not help you for some reason. If you find and prepare a good spot to hold out the incoming horde, they will refuse to follow, instead opting to stay still in the place with 5 different entry points, all the better for zombies to flood through. And when you lose, you don’t restart at the beginning of the Finale; you go all the way back to the start of this part of the stage and have to work your way back to the second half. I think this is the closest a game has ever come to giving me a heart-attack.

There is a level in Portal, possibly Valve’s finest game, where Glados tells you that the puzzle was improperly designed and apologizes for it being impossible. I would have appreciated that here. Instead I’m forced to assume either Valve believes it is in fact within any living human being’s abilities to complete “No Mercy” on Expert(which is delusional), or that it is a cruel joke sorely lacking in anything resembling a punchline.

I have never before so actively desired the existence of hell. After cursing at my television in languages unknown even to myself, I am prepared to believe that is the place for the creatures responsible. Those who forged this scenario know what they have wrought. They are no drooling neanderthols. This is the work of man-beasts who derive nourishment from the suffering of their paying customers.

No Mercy indeed.

END OF LINE

~A.H.