Location Location: Mercy Hospital

Time to go somewhere spooky! Where we going first?

No Mercy in Left 4 Dead is the first campaign that you play in the 1st L4D game. It’s the campaign that helps you get your feet wet so you get a good feel of the rest of the game. And what do you do for the rest of the game? Don’t fuggin die. And that objective is set in your mind as you make your way to Mercy Hospital to escape the town you’re in.

Firstly, you don’t actually start at the hospital itself; you start out at the top of a building, and you gotta make your way down to the subway...which is now permanently closed. Once you navigate the subway, then you have to make it through the sewers., then you will find yourself in Mercy Hospital, which looks abandoned at the start...but is so much worse when you start climbing the hospital proper.

How do the streets and the sewers feel when you’re going through them? As quoted by a friend, “Dank, cramped and claustrophobic.” As you’re going through the streets and sewers, you’ll be hounded by zombies up, down, left, AND right. Hordes will swarm you, Hunters will pounce you, and Tanks will punch cars and debris in your general direction. All while trying to stay alive all the way over to the hospital.

And what happens when you get to the hospital? You find it’s been stripped of most of its medical supplies, its patients are deader than dead, and you have to maneuver through an unfinished portion of the hospital more than thirty floors upward. Sound rough? It’s even worse when you play it in Left 4 Dead 2...where a zombie called a Charger is in play. Nevermind the fact that hospitals are probably one of the WORST places to be in a zombie apocalypse, especially one that’s infection based.

The roof is where you’re supposed to escape from, but even it looks like it’s taken a pounding. Given the supplies on the far end of the roof, it seems as if other survivors held out trying to escape as well. Emphasis on tried. The moment that you call the circling helicopter for an escape, every zombie and their mama comes up to want to kill you.

As far as horror locales, outside of the fallen hospital equipment, holes in walls, and falls to your death, it’s pretty easy to navigate. Unlike other games which require a keyring to get through, the only worries you have to deal with are slow elevators...long drops to your doom, and a horde of ungodly zombies. I bet it must’ve been a wonderful place...you know...prior to the apocalypse.

images from left4dead.wikia.com