At what point does homage become a rip off? Fans of the multiplayer zombie shooter Left 4 Dead might see more than a few resemblances in Everplay Interactive's Left2Die, from the name itself, to the ideas behind the special zombies. Aside from that though it plays a lot more like Alive 4 Ever, yet in copying the design of that game, has failed to latch on to what makes a fun twin-stick shooter zombie survival experience (hmm, that might just be another genre name in the making here).

There is a campaign mode, and survival mode in single player, and deathmatch and co-operative survival in multiplayer. In campaign mode, you play short levels where you have to defeat a set amount of zombies before the level ends, and in survival mode, they come in waves, and you see how long you can last. There are three areas to play in, and while they are locked in campaign mode till you progress through all the content, they are all available from the get-go in survival mode. You have a load out of a main weapon, a secondary weapon, and a special weapon that activates once you fill a meter through zombie slaughter. More options of weapons, upgrades, and characters are available for purchase in the store with the money you get for killing zombies and completing objectives, but the prices are astronomical, requiring a lot of grinding or spending of money to get to the good stuff.

And while the game might be more fun playing with buddies in the multplayer mode, the experience is still pretty underwhelming. Games like Alive 4 Ever has a certain visceral feel to their run and gun gameplay that Left2Die has failed to capture. The guns lack oomph, and clearing a path of zombies isn't tense or satisfying, even when you get to the missions or waves that start to overwhelm your character. Perhaps it's due to the level layouts, the simplistic visuals, or the lack of atmosphere in the lighting, but walking around and blowing zombie heads off very quickly becomes a chore, and that should never be the case.

Left2Die is probably still going to be successful due to the multiplayer implementation, as running around and shooting with or against friends will always improve even the most tawdry gaming experiences. We just hope that in future updates they can refine the impact of the gameplay and perhaps lower the barriers to the plethora of better weapons and characters available.