The Baby Sitting Zombie Killer

No this is not the title of an upcoming zombie film.. although if it was I would probably go see it. The title of this post refers to my early morning experience with some Left 4 Dead gaming.

Being newly unemployed, I now have my mornings free to do whatever I want, and this morning seemed like a good time to kill zombies. I don't know why, maybe I thought it was like fishing and that perhaps zombies were also more bitey in the early hours.

I hopped into an advanced difficulty game. I like advanced difficulty because it's not too easy, but it's easy enough to get by if you have a straggler, or two... or three in my case. Awesome, I got teamed up with three teenage boys. Go figure, anyone of a reasonable maturity level is working so I get stuck with the only teenage guys who are awake at 8am, and naturally they all suffer from A.D.D.

Whatever, some of the best gamers are prepubescent boys. They may have the attention span of a common house fly but they also have the reflexes of a mongoose on crack. Having thrown out the notion of getting any rewarding conversation from this gaming session, I proceeded to try and keep my teammates focused.

This was a huge failure. Within the first 2 minutes of gameplay, "KidRock" was miles ahead of the pack getting eaten by zombies and yelling over the mic to come save him. "Medic" was still in the start location, apparently trying to decide between taking the shotgun or the uzi, and "HealMe" was hiding in a closet..

Professional zombie killers, I think not. Let the baby sitting begin.. After completing the first stage I had actually become quite adept at running around the map like a maniac saving my teammates, who, for the life of them, couldn't understand the concept of teamwork. On the rare occasion that we were able to regroup, I was constantly getting shot by friendly fire.

Left 4 Dead is one of the few first person shooters where you cannot turn off friendly fire. So basically, you just have to hope that your teammates are not stupid enough to shoot you. Obviously this was not the case. I began counting how much damage the zombies were inflicting upon me and comparing it to the damage inflicted by friendly fire incidents. My teammates were clearly winning this contest..

As we struggled through each level, the complete lack of common sense in my teammates became more and more evident. You know that rule "look both ways before crossing the street". Well it's dually important when it's a Zombie filled street! The zombies didn't even need to follow the sound of gun shots. My teammates backed right into them, time after time. It was like they were incapable of acknowledging that the world on either side of their screen even existed, but only what lay straight ahead them. The flanking maneuver was invented for these kind of people..

After watching my teammates pull off some of the dumbest tactical decisions of all time (This includes Keanu Reaves jumping out of an airplane without a parachute in Point Break), it really got me thinking about the legitimacy of stupid movies. You know those horror movies were the bimbo blond decides to solo investigate the noise coming from the dark basement that's suspiciously familiar to the sound of a zombie chewing flesh... Well these are the guys who would do that. No longer can I argue that people are not that stupid. Thank you early morning gaming for you have lessened my faith in humanity even further.