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Versus mode in Left 4 Dead can be pretty unforgiving at first. Since there’s no single player to help you learn the basics, your first experience with Versus is an online game with 3 other people depending on you. Moreso than campaign, Versus relies on solid teamwork (both as Survivors and as Infected). If you’re new to the game, your team is going to have to cope with your inexperience.

Left 4 Dead's versus mode is very unforgiving to newcomers

Since campaign doesn’t offer any opportunities to play as Infected, you won’t be used to the controls of the Infected when you play your first Versus game. Since some of the controls take a bit of getting used to (especially the Hunter), it would be really nice if you could learn the basics of Versus mode without actually playing in a real game.

Even though the game doesn’t offer a one-player Versus, through the use of the console you can actually practice on your own! Here’s how…

Enable the Console

If you haven’t already, this is a quick step:

1. Open the Settings for Left 4 Dead.
2. Click on “Keyboard Mouse”
3. Set the console to be enabled.

Open up a practice level

1. Go to the main menu and open the console by pressing the “`” key on your keyboard.
2. Type in “sv_cheats 1″ (without quotes of course) and hit “Submit”
3. Type in “map l4d_”. You should see a list pop up showing some of the maps. Type in “vs” if you want to use a versus map to practice, or just select one of the others. The versus maps are ready to go, but the campaign maps are incomplete (though you can still play them). Select where you want to start and hit “Submit”. For example, if you want to start at the beginning of No Mercy, you would type ”
   map l4d_vs_hospital01_apartment” and hit Submit. This will load you into the game.
4. Reopen the console once the game loads and type “director_force_versus_start”. Press Submit again.
5. Then type in: “director_no_human_zombies 0″ and submit that.
6. Lastly, type in “sb_all_bot_team 1″ and hit submit. Close the console.
7. Press “M” (or whatever key you use to switch teams) and you should be allowed to choose the Infected team. You will then spawn like normal and have to kill the bots. If it won’t let you switch teams, I’ve found I can make it work by shooting my own teammates once or twice and reentering “sb_all_bot_team 1″ into the console.

Killing the bots isn’t very easy on your own, but you might want to take advantage of the opportunity to try moving around and getting a feel for each character.

Spawning specific characters

If you want to spawn as a specific infected, open that console up again! Entering these commands will spawn a special infected wherever you are looking, and you will become that special infected.

• Hunter: “z_spawn hunter”
• Smoker: “z_spawn smoker”
• Boomer: “z_spawn boomer”
• Tank: “z_spawn tank”
• Witch: “z_spawn witch” (you can’t play as the witch, this will just spawn one right there)

Remember how we bounded keys to make Zoey scream and to toggle crouch? You can also use that to set up a key to spawn specific infected. Simply type “bind <key> “z_spawn <infected>”" into the console. Replace “<key>” with the key you want to press and “<infected>” with the type of infected (as listed above). Note that you need quotes around “z_spawn <infected>”.

For example, if I want the number 7 to spawn a tank every time I press it, I would type in:

bind 7 "z_spawn tank"

And then a tank would spawn. You can spawn multiple infected at a time (including multiple tanks).

Spawning as a smoker in a game of bots

If you’re going to spawn infected via the console, I recommend entering this line into the console also: “spec_allowroaming 1″. Otherwise, the infected you spawn will be right where the team of bots is, and you will be immediately killed.

In addition to providing great practice as Infected, this is also a lot of fun if you just want to screw around. There’s nothing like watching 4 bots try to take down 4 tanks!

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