Left 4 Dead – My First Game on Steam

I still vaguely remember buying Left 4 Dead. It was a long time ago. I was on holiday in the UK visiting my family. We were in the town where we used to live when I lived in the UK too, in the town centre, going through a gaming shop of some sort. I picked Left 4 Dead up for £15 and happily took it back to my grandma’s. I wouldn’t be able to replay until I returned home, a week or so later.

That was also when I made my Steam account, which is now, what, 8 years old? Fucking ancient.

I do remember not being able to play much though. PC gaming was a very new concept for me. Aiming with a mouse and using WASD to move around. It made sense, but all my life I’d been a Playstation person. Or rather, I’d played on the Playstation 1 and 2, never got a PS3 and plans to get a PS4 lately were kinda scuppered by the need to get sister a new car. But on top of that I had a mightily shitty computer that barely ran CorelDraw, let alone Steam.

Steam was really the thing that confused me. In my early internet days, any games I played were either Flash-based ones or ones that you just ran from the CD. My collection back then consisted of Worms 2, Worms Armageddon and Bionicle Heroes (the latter of which I should really write an article about when I find it). So having to install Steam and having to install Left 4 Dead via Steam was really weird for me. Especially with my shitty internet.

I do remember my very first game in Left 4 Dead though, to the point that it’s already an article here. But I never really spoke more about my brief time playing Left 4 Dead.

You see, that game kinda inspired me to look for more. To the point that my first purchase on Steam was the original Half-Life, for €0.79. And my second purchase, the Team Fortress 2 and Garry’s Mod pack, with me only picking TF2 over Counter-Strike: Source because it looked funnier.

But I never really got into playing Left 4 Dead properly. I don’t think I’ve even successfully completed every campaign. I’ve played most of them, generally going from the first level up until the pre-finale mission, then getting overrun and killed. I never enjoyed playing Versus Mode because I’d always get Hunter when I always wanted to play Smoker or even Boomer and frankly, playing as a flimsy melee-only critter in a game where even the AI will tear you to shreds just isn’t fun. If anything, I spent most of my time playing the first missions of each campaign.

Somehow though, I’ve managed to spend 25 hours playing Left 4 Dead. For the original £15 I spent on the game, that’s honestly not that bad of a deal.

The strangest thing though is that I have no idea why I picked up Left 4 Dead in the first place. I knew that brother had played it a little bit, but I never actually played L4D with him at first. In fact I didn’t play with him until we got Left 4 Dead 2 later, and I’d play with him, his friends Bite Me and Cheeky and a guy called aD_ who later ended up being my friend. But we never really played much Left 4 Dead at all. There were loads of other games that could have grabbed my attention. Heck, at the time, my Playstation games of choice were things like Ratchet and Clank and Gran Tourismo (of all things). So it’s a mystery why I jumped into first person shooters.

Sadly, Left 4 Dead 2’s porting of all the L4D1 campaigns means that playing the original game is somewhat pointless now. There are only small tweaks and changes that make the original game stand out. But Left 4 Dead, what I remember it, will always have its own little spot in my heart.