Left 4 Dead Review

You all knew I was buying this.

Now to the review-

I will start with a phone conversation between myself and a friend, Jonboy, who, along with being a diehard Prisoner fan, also shares my love for zombies. He is more diehard than me, meaning he saw Diary Of The Dead, and is the one who introduced me to Tombs Of The Blind Dead.
The first thing I asked him was,
"Do you think this may be the game we've waited our whole lives for?"
He replied "Yes. Yes I think it is."

And he is right. The game is simple, you pick up the controller, you kill hordes of zombies, you get to a safe house, you survive. I didn't need to read a manual, I didn't need to hop online and figure out what the hell was going on- I just got right in the game. I love the kind of game where you just intuitively know how to play it, and the audio cues in the game are so great that you instinctively know what's about to happen before it does. And that was before even playing online with friends.
Thats when the game got really fun.

We played the Blood Harvest scenario (my favorite) and made it to the final showdown at the farmhouse. We died so many times and in so many glorious ways that eventually, coordinating via headsets, we decided to hole ourselves in a bathroom upstairs, shutting every door along the way. Then we let it rip.
The room looked like Jesus Christ's meat-grinder took a shit all over the tiles by the time the rescue truck showed up. Jon then had the idea to climb out of the top floor window, walk along the roof, and make a b-line for the truck. We survived, most of us I think.
And that was some of the most fun I've had in a long time playing a game with my friends. Valve did a bang-up job.

Now how do I think this game could be better? Or a sequel be fantastic?

1. Character creator.
The characters in the game are great, and they all have personalities and distinct animations, but I felt that it didn't really matter who you picked, though I favored the Vietnam vet (I thought I would have liked the biker, Francis, best, but I feel that they cleaned him up a bit too much from his previous incarnation, where he looked overweight and definitely loaded up on cocaine). In a game where the point it fighting and surviving a zombie apocalypse with your friends, you should actually be able to see your friends while you do this. I'm not saying that people should be able to make ridiculous looking avatars, as they should be limited to the skins and tools provided by Valve hence fitting into the world, but they should be able to have the option for a custom Survivor.

2.Chainsaw

3. More maps, though this is obvious. I would also like to see more varied missions, more missions that effect the map itself or the overall scenario. Search and rescue, assault...and I mean this game is dying for a Monroeville Mall map.

4.Chainsaw

I love this game.

**EDIT**
I forgot to mention the mood and tone of this game are perfect. Sometimes that's the most important thing to get and they nailed it here. There are moments that feel they are pulled out of everything from Night to Dawn of The Dead.