Why Left 4 Dead has the best tutorial ever... and why you never noticed it had one to begin with

A few weeks before Valve released Left 4 Dead on Steam and the Xbox 360, they quietly pushed the opening movie online. I watched it, and honestly, didn't think much of it at the time: it just seemed like standard zombie apocalypse stuff, and not very creative at that. Four survivors navigating dark streets, shooting wildly at zombie hordes while occasionally uttering a catch phrase. Yawn. I expected more from Valve. It was well done for what it was: the cinematography, sound and pacing were excellent. But it all seemed so discordant somehow. So utterly unlike Valve.

I didn't put my finger on it at the time, but what was so discordant about the opening cinematic was really the fact that it existed at all. Valve simply does not explain a game world to you: they drop you into it without the slightest exposition, allowing the environment and characters you meet explain what's going on along the way, but incidentally, as if you — a character in the game world — knew it all along, which you presumably would. This sometimes backfires on Valve: in Half-Life 2, there's something really strange about that mute Lambda maniac never once tapping Barney violently on the sternum to punctuate each word of "What. The. Fuck." But Portal shows just how effective a storytelling technique Valve's method can be. It's not narrative genius. Every creative writing frosh learns Valve's narrative secret: show, don't tell. But in a sea of storytelling amateurs, Valve's method seems positively sophisticated. Which is what is so weird about Left 4 Dead's opening movie. It seemed to tell... and then the story it tells is one of seemingly superfluous consequence.

It wasn't until I actually started playing Left 4 Dead about a week ago that it all clicked for me. I popped the disc into my 360, decided to watch the opening cinematic again, and found myself just as unimpressed as I had been the first time. But when I actually started to play the game, I discovered that I somehow already knew how to play the game. I knew what abilities the zombies I had. I knew what strategies were effective. I knew that a pipe bomb was good for getting the horde away from your group; I knew that when I heard crying, I should shut off my flashlight; I knew that I had to help up fallen team mates, and that I wasn't surprised that I could should my guns when disabled. These are all things that should be surprising "gotchas" during an initial playthrough, but weren't, even though I had shielded myself of any Left 4 Dead previews going into the game. It was only a few days later, watching the opening movie for the third time as I lit myself a smoke, that I realized that weeks before I'd even played the game, I had sat through its tutorial, and that I had passively absorbed all of its lessons. Without once having booted up the game, I knew how to play it.

Here's a brief overview of some of the things Left 4 Dead teaches the player before you even hit the 'Start' button:

Infection and Mutation: It's the least of what Left 4 Dead's opening cinematic does, but two narrative facts are quickly established: the game takes place two weeks after a plague has largely wiped out almost everyone, and that the zombies are only now mutating into more advanced forms, which explains why you'll encounter so few of them as the game progresses. The game world has been established within five seconds of the opening movie starting... there's nothing else you need to know except how to survive.

Crouching and team clustering: As the movie starts, Bill takes point, and crouches before the rest of the survivors so they can shoot over his head, while Zoe covers their back. This is the best way to travel between destinations in Left 4 Dead, maximizing firepower, minimizing friendly fire, and making sure nothing takes the group by surprise.

How to handle a Witch: Investigating crying emanating from a nearby room, Zoe and Bill discover a distraught young woman huddled in a corner, weeping plaintively to herself. When Louis accidentally shines her flashlight on her, though (Bill: "Turn that light out!") she immediately goes on the attack.

The player now knows a number of things about the Witch, one of the most challenging special zombies in the game: she can be heard before she can be seen, she's avoidable and will leave you alone if you don't disturb her, you should turn your flashlight off if you hear her crying and, when spooked, she's incredibly fast and tough to kill.

Doors: As the Witch attacks, Louis slams the door in her face. She breaks through with her arm, and Louis fires through the door at her. How doors work in Left 4 Dead has now been established: zombies don't know how to open them, but can break through them. Likewise, the player can fire through a door at zombies on the other side, but this weakens them, allowing zombies to more easily break into the room.

Stick together: Louis — definitely the idiot of the opening cinematic — sees a helicopter fly overhead, and goes running after it. He's loudly berated by his team: "Stick together!" Sure enough, he immediately runs into trouble. It's a warning to the player: the only way to get through the game is to move as one unit. Idiots who run off on their own will quickly get themselves in trouble they can't handle.

How to handle a Smoker: As the survivors try to disentangle Louis from the zombie horde, Bill is lassoed by the tongue of a Smoker and is incapacitated. Francis shoots the smoker's tongue, causing it to drop Bill. Just like the Witch, the player now knows a number of things about how the Smoker works: it attacks with its tongue from a distance, it can be identified by a cloud of green fog belching from its body, and it incapacitates players until a teammate can rescue them.

Helping incapacitated players to their feet: After Bill is dropped by the smoker, Francis helps him up. This is a small touch, but a nice one: a major gameplay element is that incapacitated players are not immediately ready for combat after the special zombie attacking them has been killed. Another team mate must help the incapacitated player to his feet, during which time both players are vulnerable to attacking zombies.

Pipe bombs: When the Horde gets too much for the survivors to handle, Zoe tosses a pipe bomb. We then cut to a shot of a beeping, flashing pipe bomb landing behind the attacking Horde, at such a distance that the zombies are completely safe from its explosion... yet, curiously, they immediately reverse directions and converge on the bomb, just in time for it to detonate.

When i first saw this part of the opening movie. I arched a quizzical eyebrow: what I'd seen made no sense. Had the zombies run at the bomb to try and defuse it? But it's a perfect description of how pipe bombs in Left 4 Dead work, and because the way pipe bombs work is so counter-intutive, Valve makes a special point of showing them off: pipe bombs attract zombies, and are therefore most useful when thrown as far away from the player as possible. The pipe bomb scene also establishes that zombies are attracted to flashing lights and sirens.

How to handle Hunters: Louis (idiot) again gets himself in trouble, this time being pounced upon by a Hunter zombie, which incapacitates him and claws furiously at his chest until another player pushes it off and shoots it. We now know that Hunters are fast, agile, and, like Smokers, incapacitate players until a team mate can help them.

Shooting prone: After the Hunter is shot off Louis, but before another character can help him up, he is beset by a horde of zombies. While he's being attacked, Louis is able to shoot at them from the ground with his pistols. This is exactly how being incapacitated by a special zombie works in-game, after that zombie has been killed but before a team mate can get you to your feet: you are vulnerable, but not entirely helpless, and can shoot attacking zombies with your pistols but not your main weapon.

Car alarms: In the middle of the street, one of the survivors accidentally shoots a car with a glowing interior, which sets off its car alarm. As a result, the Horde descends on the Survivors. This makes the role of blinking lights and sirens in the game abundantly clear: they always draw the Horde.

It's a lesson that is useful later (for example, during the airport level, a player should know not to go through the metal detector without actually having accidentally triggered it in a previous playthrough) and also establishes how to visually identify alarmed cars.

How to deal with Tanks: Along with the attacking Horde, a Tank is drawn to the Survivors position. "Run or shoot?" Louis asks. "Both," Bill responds. While the Survivors wildly backpedal and fire their weapons at the Tank, it quickly closes in on them, hurling cars and concrete at Survivors that are out-of-reach for melee gelatinization. Before being brought down, the Tank also smashes through some solid brick walls.

Just like the Witch, Smoker and Hunter, the Tank's abilities have now been defined, and the strategy for dealing with them explicitly given to the player. Tanks are strong, melee characters that can only be brought down by coordinated gunfire between all Survivors. You can't simply snipe at them: they will hurl concrete and cars at a player who is out of reach. You also can't put a wall between your team and a Tank, because it will break the wall down. The only way to take down a tank is to run and shoot at the same time: an immobile player will quickly be killed.

Clutching to ledges: After the Tank has been dispatched, Zoe almost falls off the fire escape (in a nice touch, she loses one of her pistols, explaining why she only has one at the beginning of the game). She clutches to the edge of the fire escape until Bill helps her up. It's a small detail, but it does spell out that falling off a ledge is another way in which a player can be incapacitated, and like all forms of incapacitation in Left 4 Dead, only another player can help you up.

Win scenario: As the Survivors take a breather on the roof, a helicopter flies over head, telling all Survivors to head to Mercy Hospital for pick-up. The exact details of this escape will differ between campaigns, but the game's win scenario is always the same: you beat a campaign not by killing a boss, but by making your way to a set location for extraction.

There's a few holes in the tutorial, of course. Boomers are entirely absent from the opening movie, and the player will only discover their abilities and how to deal with them in-game. Molotov cocktails are never used by the players, and shootable gas cans and propane tanks also don't make an appearance, even though they are all important gameplay elements. Additionally, the mechanics of healing and pain pills aren't touched upon. Rescuing dead players is also never mentioned.

Still, overall, Left 4 Dead's opening cinematic is a shockingly complete primer to the rest of the game. With only a few exceptions, almost any player going into Left 4 Dead for the first time will know exactly how to play the game: they already know the gameplay, the weapons, the enemies, the win scenario and the strategies they need to get through the game alive... the only thing not covered in the opening movie is the specifics of the interface.

It is one of the most useful tutorials ever put together: both broad in scope and minute in detail, with no strategy or major gameplay element overlooked. And as much as I love Left 4 Dead, I think the opening movie is probably the most brilliant thing about the game. While other developers put together opening cinematics that ignore the elements of the gameplay to tell a story, Valve made theirs a tutorial... one so subliminal that almost no one realizes they've sat through one.

It is, in my mind, Valve's smoothest elbow.