OK, so I bought Left 4 Dead this week and installed it. Due to time constraints, I merely installed it and gave the singleplayer a cursory glance. It seemed okay, which was to be expected since L4D is not in any shape or form a singleplayer experience. This much should be obvious to anyone with a marginally functioning brain (yet, from the looks of some internet forums, a small batch of people continue to contaminate the gene pool).

I figured I'd get to the actual experience later. And so, there the game sat, on my shelf until yesterday. After playing the multiplayer portion for the better part of two days, I can state the following with unequivocal, unwavering and unbiased resolution:

Left 4 Dead is not only THE GREATEST multiplayer game of the year, it is the MOST FUN game I have played in a good long while. Just to hammer home the previous statement, consider this; we have seen the likes of Fallout 3, Dead Space, Crysis Warhead, World at War, Gears of War 2, Resistance 2, LittleBigPlanet, Fable 2 and many, many more equally earth-shattering games in the last few months alone. Now, I'm not saying that L4D has all these games beat or is superior to them. But when it comes to sheer unadulterated fun, Valve and Turtle Rock have got the market cornered.

Those of you who know me better will also be familiar with the fact that I tend to avoid multiplayer-only games, deriving much greater satisfaction from a gripping singleplayer experience. In light of this, my support for Left 4 Dead is given monolithic weight. The reason Left 4 Dead manages to be so much fun even for us loners is evident in the design and overall philosophy of the game itself. Even though it's been repeated to the point of becoming a cliche, one cannot escape the fact that L4D not only coerces, but downright beats you into a teamplay mentality the very moment you boot it up. This could pose major problems for us hermits (not in the platform sense) if it weren't for the smooth yet unrelenting way the game forces you to play nice with others. A single context sensitive button means you're never overwhelmed with what to do. The radio chatter is automated to the point that you don't even really need a microphone. And the gameplay doesn't rely on fancy tactics that take hours of pre-play planning to execute in order to succeed. All it takes is for four people to be thrown smack dab in the middle of a ravenous zombie horde and they'll find a way to survive... together. This is evident in the many impromptu sessions I particpated in. I was able to team up with three complete strangers and without so much as a word spoken or typed, we supported each other through the nail-biting experience.

Never before have I seen a videogame capable of that. And so we finally get to the point I'm trying to make. Even if you're an anti-social loner with no redeeming social skills whatsoever, you WILL be able to play L4D. And not only that, you WILL have fun.

So join the zombie apocalypse and have some fun.