Double Barreled Review – Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice (The Comic)

Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice

Available on Comixology Reader

Video games should never leave the consoles they were designed for. They don’t translate to movies well at all, and they don’t make good comics. Well, at least that’s what I have experienced over the years, and even roasted the latest comic from Marvel about Halo. And with a heavy heart filled with cynicism, I downloaded the Left 4 Dead comic, and prepared myself for an eye-rolling experience.

This book then kicked my ass like the games does on Expert difficulty. Where did this come from? How did this happen? I was enjoying the comic! I know exactly how this happened, and it is what most video games lack. The original game Left 4 Dead is a fun zombie killing first person shooter. Its 4-player party allows for you and 3 buddies to wander through zombie infested landscapes to get to safety. All the while the 4 characters that have been thrown in together have witty banter, and realistic dialogue without injecting a dopey plot or crybaby back-stories. Just survive from point A to point B.

The simplicity of the game and its smartly constructed relationships of these survivors allows for this comic to live. The comic book tells the back-stories, and shares the stories of each survivor as they live through the infection day and survive to present day. What also works in the comic is the faithful dialogue between the characters. Through 180 pages we are treated to long video game within the comic and we get to hear the banter back and forth between them. It was all of the best parts of the game illustrated, and the story illuminated the original motivations of the characters. Where Halo diverges from the game and gives us a peek at the back-story we really wouldn’t have cared about, Left4Dead gives us the character motivations and makes this video game into a more intimate character study and survivor tale.

The book also wins points on at entry-level scale. When our survivors are picked up by uninitiated military, they are able to give new readers an orientation on the world the video game built without boring the experienced players to death. The artwork could have used a bit more polish to it, but 180 free pages of good comics out weights a few jarring moments in the book.

you can listen to my review of the Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice (DLC) on the Giggaheim Podcast #34.