Left 4 Dead was released over two months ago for the PC and Xbox 360, and it was quickly labeled a success and attracted a large base of players which still thrives to this day. That shouldn't be all that surprising since the game combines two of gamers' favorites things: zombies and things that kill zombies. Of course the game then goes that extra mile by allowing four people to take on an entire town of the Infected hordes. The whole game is structured so that you must rely on your teammates in order to survive; there are even special zombies that render you useless until an ally comes to rescue you.

This all works well enough when you're playing with some people you actually know already. It's when you can't find three other people to join you in your zombie-killing fun, and you're forced to play with random people on the internet that things really get interesting. That's when you discover that some people online may have a different goal other than to just play a game and have some fun.

Here's a handy guide to some of the people you can expect to encounter while you're traipsing through Zombieville. 

The Tactician

There's only one way to play the game right, and the Tactician exists solely to tell you that you're doing it wrong. If you picked up a shotgun, then you should've gotten an assault rifle. If you set a gas canister in one spot, it's the wrong one. If you allow the Tactician to get killed, then you just suck. This is the player you'll hear constantly giving a string of orders on what each person should be doing, as if he were manipulating pieces in a game of zombie chess. Doing something for "fun" is not what this game is about. This person values winning enough to figure out the best way to move through the game, but not enough to find three other people who feel the same. True, he's usually right about what the best way to beat the game is, but that doesn't make him any less of a dick.

The Sorceror

Before Left 4 Dead, you probably played some online shooters before. And like most of us, you began to accept the fact that you might encounter the occasional player using wall hacks or aimbots to give them a grossly unfair advantage over the competition. None of this however prepared you for zombies literally raining down from the sky around you. Or for a twelve-story tall giant emerging out of nowhere with a shotgun that could take down an army of zombie Godzillas. You'll never be able to pin down exactly who is conjuring up these nightmares, but you can rest assured that they are watching you and plotting their next magical horror. Most of these particular hacks don't show up quite as often now that a patch has made them more difficult, but you can still stumble upon the occasional server where someone has found a way around that. There's really nothing you can do about this. Still, now you know what's going on when a couple hundred zombie are suddenly dropped in a neat little pile on top of your head.

The Elite Squad

Mostly encountered in Versus Mode, The Elite Squad will always win as thoroughly as the game will allow. If you're playing as Infected, they will dodge all your attempts to harm them and will reach the end of the level so fast you'd think there were a wet t-shirt contest and free beer being offered there. If you're playing as Survivors, you can consider it a good run if you even make it ten feet from the safe room at the beginning of the level. This group of players operates like a finely tuned machine, dispatching hordes of zombies with ease and causing their opponents to quit out of frustration. If you could alter the game so that all the zombies carried rocket launchers and all they got were their bare hands, they'd still win somehow. But you'll never think that they're cheating; you'll think they're some sort of secret military AI that found it's way into the game. 

The Lone Wolf

This player has a thing against teamwork, specifically the "team" aspect of it. The Lone Wolf operates as if the other players aren't even there. He will never give you health, will never help you if you're downed, and will most likely set you on fire with a molotov to save his own skin. He may think he is a one-man army, but he's more like that guy in Jurassic Park who gets eaten while on the toilet. You can usually identify The Lone Wolf immediately when he runs far ahead of the rest of your team and eventually gets snared by a Hunter or a Smoker, leaving the rest of you to bail his worthless ass out. Luckily, in a nice twist of karma, this is usually the first member of your party to die. Unfortunately, this experience sems to teach him nothing, as he'll quite happily wander off from the group and get killed again. This will usually be followed by "YOU GUYS SUCK!!!!" typed in all caps in the chat window before he leaves the game altogether.

The Guy Who Blares Music for 30 Seconds Before Being Kicked

This person has been present since before microphones were invented that could plug into a computer. He has been patient for years, biding his time with only a stack of Chamillionaire albums and a stereo with a broken bass knob for comfort. When games like Halo and Counterstrike came onto the market, he was ecstatic, since he could now share his musical tastes with the world through his state-of-the-art $5 microphone. It took over a decade, but someone finally realized that having the ability to vote a person out of a game should probably be built into the game itself and be accessible by anyone playing. Whereas past shooters would require some special server commands to boot another player, Left 4 Dead makes it almost as easy as firing your gun. Thus, "Guy Who Blares Music" has evolved into "Guy Who Blares Music for 30 Seconds Before Being Kicked." And the world has been much better off for it.

The Team-Killer

In a game where you literally need your teammates to even have a chance of playing the game for more than two minutes at a time, you'd think that you would never run into the Team-Killer. You would be wrong. The Team-Killer operates like Batman villain, The Joker (the one from The Dark Knight, as opposed to the one from the 60's TV series). He thrives only on chaos and apparently spent $50 just to ruin other peoples' fun online. This is the person who will "accidentally" unload all his ammo into you when a shadow spooked him. His mirth is short-lived however, since once the other players catch on to what he's really doing, a brief ritual ensues that involves: 1) shooting the offending player until he is downed, 2) leaving him to bleed to death on his own, and 3) kicking him from the game entirely. There really is no justice quite like internet justice.