This is an ode to a strange, huddled creature. A crying, singing, tangle of ragged limbs and ferocious eyes. Terrifyingly deadly, and yet so distressingly vulnerable. Left 4 Dead’s Witch is unparalleled for me amongst all of gaming’s enemies, more frightening and fascinating than any before. She is pure fear.
I feel little more is necessary to demonstrate this than to recount a typical encounter. It inevitably works something like this:
The four of you are in the middle of a fray. Perhaps walking down a railway track in the open air. The game has chosen to spring hordes of Infected on you from three sides, and you stand together, huddled, protecting each other from the constant waves of crazed undead. The music is swelling to accompany the onslaught, and concentration on any one aspect is constantly torn away by the surprise pouncing of a Hunter, or one of your team being drawn away by the tongue of a Smoker. It’s intense, and you think about nothing other than simply surviving, hoping for a pause and time to recover. But then someone says, their voice slightly halted, “Can anyone hear a Witch?”
You strain to listen, trying to pick out someone other than the cacophony of music and screams and frothing gurgles of zombie attackers. And somewhere amongst it all, just about, you can perhaps hear the tail of that terrible song.
It changes the mood immediately. Before it was simply a case of shoot everything that wasn’t a teammate. Suddenly bullets can no longer go stray. Cars alarms cannot be triggered. Explosions cannot be caused. Somewhere near you is a Witch, and you’ve no idea where. Panic begins.
As the battle begins to wane, the song becomes more clear. And then the sobbing is heard. In the relative calm you can begin to work out whereabouts she might be, her aimless wail coming from a specific place. She’s somewhere down the tracks, sitting beside a derailed container, her back toward you. She’s staring down the tracks you need to follow. Rocking and staring.
The order is inevitably shouted by one player. “Switch off your torch!” One person who has yet to spot where she sits ignores it, swinging the beam around wildly. The other three scream together, “TURN OFF YOUR TORCH!” Then a plan is formulated.
“Okay, look. If we go behind the container, we don’t need to go anywhere near her. We can stick to the far left of the tracks and just keep going. No one hesitate, no one turn around.”
Then the scene plays out in two ways.
1) Everyone backs up, moves to the left, and hurries past the container, past the Witch, and far farther down the track than she could ever see, before relaxing, her song finally too distant to be heard.
2) Someone in your group says it will be easier just to kill her. There’s no changing their mind, and you’re forced to stick together. To carry on would be to leave them to die alone, and you need them with you. So you relent, and two people agree to offer back up, while a third stays back to pick off any oncoming Infected. With their shotgun they sneak up behind the Witch. It ends two ways.
a) They fire a series of rounds directly into her back. She screams, flails out, but collapses dead. This is rarely true.
b) In a moment of fear, the would-be attacker hesitates for a split second. It’s too long. The Witch springs up from her haunches, whirling around with her claw-hands immediately sunk into the player’s flesh, as everyone begins frantically emptying their ammo into her. She screeches and tears, lashing and lashing and lashing, until the player is dead. The others finish her off, and stare at the two dead bodies lying on the floor as the next wave of Infected pour in.
The Witch is to be avoided. That’s incredible alone. Who designs a character for gamers to never go near? Who spends the time to create the most terrifying creature imaginable, and doesn’t impose it on players? Well, clearly Valve. The temptation to have her be aggravated from great distances, to force her to attack when encountered, must have been there. But then she’d have lost her power. Her power comes from just sitting there. It’s that benign, ragged, vulnerable form. It’s the combination of singing and crying. Oh God, the singing and crying.
I asked Valve’s Chet Faliszek about this. He told me,
“It has been odd to make a character that we wanted to look scary, threatening and cool; but that you should avoid looking at. I think this is where her audio becomes so important. Once you know her voice, that moaning and wailing build her up more than even seeing her. Hearing players in the demo whisper when they hear the witch but don’t yet see here let’s us know it must be working.”
Crying is so evocative. It’s a familiar tactic in horror. A sound of fear and innocence perverted. It’s a distress signal, and our response should be to look for who is in trouble. To help them. BioShock teaches us to help the crying children. Life teaches us that. Our biology instructs us to do it. And here we’re reeling in fear at the sound. We back away from it, reroute to avoid it. It’s already just wrong.
Then that song. A far more simple reaction: it’s a fearful melody, attacking with its minor key. Haunting, and floating, and too near. Hiding it behind the ruckus, making it something we have to strain to pick out, trains us to constantly worry it might be there right now and we’ve yet to notice it. It becomes a tune we can start to imagine, picking out a note from the white noise and filling in the gaps with our imagination. It can be heard outside of the game, in any muffled noise.
Thief 3’s zombie guards within The Cradle had previously been the gaming enemy of which I was most scared. Their fractured walk, contorted masks, and gross parody of a mental patient was a horrible sight. I remember my reaction to them: just running. They were too terrible to do anything else. A flash bomb might keep them off you, but that would mean looking right at them as they stumbled toward you, and my visceral response was too powerful to contend with that. Out of revulsion I would spin the mouse and run through the barred rooms, any attempts at subtlety and sneaking in shadows abandoned.
The Witch holds the same power. She is an enemy I have no intention of fighting. But she scares me more by simply sitting still. The Cradle’s inhabitants made their threat apparent. The Witch sits and stares, her brown/gold eyes piercing. That look, when I’m trying to find her, and I stumble upon the room in which she’s sat, and her head turns toward me and I see those eyes… it’s just ridiculous panic. I have to get a hold of myself and remember how to operate a mouse before I can pull myself away from the glare.
She casts no spells. She possesses no apparent magic powers. She does not cackle, and she certainly does not wear a pointed hat. No cats surround her. She throws no runes. She shuffles no bones. But she is a Witch. The most terrifying form imaginable. For God’s sake, turn off your flashlight, stop firing toward those cars, and just walk past. And whatever you do, don’t turn around to look.
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The tank generates a much greater “oh shi-!” reaction than the witch, but the latter is far more unsettling. The reason is that the witch can be avoided. Unlike the tank, there are multiple valid reactions to your fight or flight instinct. Because you can (often) sneak past her, the game encourages uncertainty when confronting a witch instead of the comforting gaming strategy of shooting anything that moves. You can kill a witch without taking casualties (been there, done that), but it’s often not the optimal approach. The witch changes your style of play, and thus enhances her emotional impact, in a way that the tank simply can’t accomplish.
I just played No Mercy on normal to see how it “ended” – it was quite tough, I found. For instance tanks scare me now though, oddly, not as much as witches. I have to say being an achievement whore (dirty, dirty whore, it’s OK, I was playing offline) I was trying to headshot the witch with the hunting rifle. It never worked. The rifle is really good though… I like popping heads. Dunno how it is against the tank, though; I unloaded shots into it as quickly as I could and it just got angrier. But I am so glad I bought this game. I’ve had to stop myself already, I have exams in three weeks. Bad timing
ValveEdinburgh University.I’ve been thinking a lot about this game (I don’t own it yet, but I played the demo about 15 times). I love it–don’t get me wrong–but I’ve always thought it was missing something. It feels more “action” than “horror.”
Then, I realized the issue: the root of the fear in the great zombie flick is not necessarily the zombies ripping you to shreds. that fear, alone, is great for shocking moments and initial feelings of dread, but it’s rarely enough to sustain full film in a satisfactory way. It’s the tension and paranoia that build up between the characters in the film. Ultimately, zombies don’t kill the characters–they tear each other apart. When I play “Left 4 Dead,” I worry about the zombies, not my teammates (save, of course, the occasional griefer).
I don’t just mean contagious zombieness (although that would be a nice touch). I’m talking about infighting over limited resources, plans of attacks, etc. I know this might seem weird, but something akin to the mechanics of the Zelda: 4 Swords series might be interesting. A bit of tit-for-tat style game theory: sure, if everybody works together, everybody benefits. But a properly timed double-cross could increase the benefit for one (at the cost of the others). Such a dynamic could change the entire tone of the game.
All this is a long way of saying that that’s what makes the witch so great. In a perfect world, most witches are easily avoidable. You shut off your lights, find her, and move around her. The tension comes from the fact that you’re trusting three people you don’t fully know to do the right thing as well.
@PHeMox,
Um….ok. So, the fact that Normal is pretty dang easy (admitted) means you didn’t try the harder ones because you assumed they would be easy?
Tell you what. Go online and pop into an Expert game. If the beatdown you experience is not to your liking, I’ll cut off my hand and attach a chainsaw.
Better start cutting… I obviously DID try out the harder levels of difficulty as well.
I’m really loving the people saying that the entire game is too easy, based on the first level and a half of a campaign. Tee hee.
Here’s a sentence that’s going to be typed a lot tonight:
“Um, guys? Can we… er… vote the difficulty down now?”
I’ve not tried expert yet, but normal and advanced are pretty straightforward when it comes to the witch. Lets say expert mode is exceptionally different (and by all accounts; it is) there’s still a valid complaint that the witch (touted as the most dangerous creature by Valve themselves) is something of a misnomer on the lower difficulty levels.
@Sammy; right on. Agreed. Left 4 Dead is just the beginning I suppose.
Did the difficulty change a bit sometime yesterday? I know a change went through where rescued players only have the handgun, but it seemed like the hardest difficulty level got a lot worse last night. Maybe I was just unlucky, and my team sucked, but we were getting raped by 3 boss zombies at a time repeatedly. I had generally been able to muddle my way through the demo before.
I’m all for the game being super difficult. This is one of the few FPSs I’ve ever played that is fun to lose. Just as long as the director occasionally throws you a bone instead of another tank once in awhile.
Too much arguing over the difficulty worries me; it makes me think that I’m going to have trouble finding games where people aren’t adamant to prove how macho they are by going through on Expert when Advanced might be preferable.
“Pfft, advanced is too easy, tanks aren’t that hard *die* hey, why didn’t you have my back, man?”
Shudder.
There actually seems to be only a single way to kill a witch with a single headshot – and that is sneaking up on her and giving out a shotgun blast to the neck. I tried to do it with a grenade, with a minigun, with the sniper and with various kinds of fire. Apart from the shotgun, nothing was enough.
It’s pretty easy to do if she’s sitting next to the minigun in the subways, as you can hide behind the nearby steel girders.
For reference, she has 1000 health on advanced. A tank has 8000.
I’m a fan of the Witch, such a good idea for a game element. Sure the Tank is a harder foe, thats its role, but the Witch is complete wildcard in the game. She could be easy to take down no problem, but equally she could tear through your team in a second and leave you that extra bit vulnerable to the horde, if not kill you all outright. Its that element of uncertainty with the Witch that, for me, makes her such a good, creepy monster.
Witches (know as Bitches in every team i’ve played on) and Tanks are both really scary, but different types. The witch means we have to go slow and careful, and watch our shooting. Tanks are less of a “alright… careful… lets go around..” and much more of a “Uh.. that sounds like a tank…. yes. yes its a tankSHIT TANK BACK UP BACK UP SHIT TANK TANK TANK!!!!!”
@sammy, thats a good point, the fear of the witch comes mainly from the fact that you don’t know if your teammates are going to alert the witch, or be of any help if it is necessary to do so.
I also found that the main problem behind the witch was less the witch herself, but the fact that when disturbed a wave of common infected suddenly comes. Does it actually do this? because on Advanced in the demo, thats how it always seemed to happen with me..
Yes. The Witch is not so much a threat in herself, not more than the Hunter or Smoker. She is more like a landmine. Only instead of a facefull or shrapnel. You get a facefull of angry banshee and a assfull of zombies.
I’m really loving the people saying that the entire game is too easy, based on the first level and a half of a campaign. Tee hee.
Here’s a sentence that’s going to be typed a lot tonight:
“Um, guys? Can we… er… vote the difficulty down now?”
Yeah funny guy, I’m sure the full game is a totally different experience. In that case it’s a bad demo as it’s not representative. I do enjoy shooting up zombies, so I might as well go ahead and grab me a copy.
I don’t find the game scary at all, which is kind of strange since I shit my pants just playing F.E.A.R.. Though it does get your heart racing more than enough, especially when you’re alone against a tank when all others have died…
God people can complain about ANYTHING.
The demo is too easy? Jesus christ.
I didn’t realize it was unlocked yesterday.
I took a sickday too, I could have been mowing down zombies like I was mowing down an inordinate number of criminals in City of Heroes. (You’d think they’d have street crime wrapped up already.)
This error WILL be rectified.
As for mods, I wouldn’t mind playing Portal with three friends and an assload of Zombies.
@clovus:
Glad you mentioned that about the difficulty going up last night. It certainly seemed that way. I know the demo updated, and after that we actually couldn’t get through on Expert. Plus it did seem there were more boss enemies around. I’ll certainly be starting off on advanced (or maybe even normal) when I get the full game.
My favourite thing about the game so far, having only played the demo many times, is that I don’t play it like I used to seriously with Quake 2 and the like. We’re talking years ago but it used to be all about hit boxes and console commands to make the water transparent so you could shoot your foe :). My point is that unlike every multi-player game I’ve played recently, I’m tending to get involved with each scenario in this. As in I’m role-playing a little, I’ll peak around a corner knowing full well that it might be the end of me. I act like I’m in the apocalypse and it’s wonderful. I’m not twitch shooting (well, I am in context) – instead, I’m shuffling around, checking angles on door ways, and the like, constantly calling ‘Bill’ like a love-sick puppy. I’m just not playing it like some cynical gamer and I love it for that. The only thing that I shouldn’t be concerned about, being the avid gamer I am, is the versus mode – will it undermine everything I’m loving about i?
Hah, O Fortuna was playing while reading this. Just great combo.
I don’t quite understand the flashlight hate with witches. I haven’t messed about much in the full version, but in the demo at least it didn’t seem to make a great deal of difference if you’re aren’t an idiot.
To give it (my) perspective – I beat the demo on advanced, where the most damage I ever took got me to 33%, and that was at the very, very end.
On the hardest, however, I haven’t beat the demo. Granted, I’m going with the A.I., which as far as I can tell has no fucking idea what it’s doing.
If there’s one complaint I have with Left 4 Dead, it’s that in Versus the team that’s behind tends to lose members and never get them back, with no apparent way to rectify this. I’ve had trouble even joining a versus server to fill the gaps, myself, it’s as if the matchmaking and browser system are conspiring to make these things peter out 9 times out of 10.
The survivor AI is buggedly incapable of handling Versus mode, I’ve seen them just stand and stare, from 3 feet away, while a Hunter was wailing on my face. All it had to do was tap the melee key and it failed, had to wait for another player to shoot the thing off me.
The worst part is that the AI has no initiative, so if it’s the empty team’s turn to play survivors they never leave the safe house and the game just hangs in limbo.
I’ve been on a dedicated server where the infected all left, nobody came to replace them, we got rescued, but we couldn’t finish the campaign because there was nobody on the other team. We waited about 5 minutes during peak hours and nobody came so we just gave up and quit.
PRetty fucking cool game, only played the demo, will buy the final game.
Too easy? Ridicolous. Expert is superb, a very hard but doable challenge. And I’m talking about the first two levels in the demo, I suppose the game gets tougher later on.
The thing I love about the Witch is, as John’s article points out, it just changes the mood immediately. I was playing a level where she was placed right in the middle of a tunnel we had to go through.
It went from frenetic action to completely still immediately. We all just stood there, knowing we had to disturb the witch.
It took a good 2 silent minutes before anyone said, ‘Right, we’d better do this…’
I know the demo updated, and after that we actually couldn’t get through on Expert.
I’m pretty sure it did not get updated as I have played until the last few minutes before the demo got locked (apparently for everyone).
The sniper rifle is really better than any other weapon, except that it’s not worth shit on the move. So its pretty good at finales and holdouts, but otherwise mediocre.
@Phemox
No, it did update, I just don’t know if it affected the difficulty. I don’t have my computer on all the time, and I manually start steam. I played the day before, and when I went to play the next day I had to wait for it to update.
Did you notice the change where rescued players lose their main weapon? Probably not since you’re so 1337 you never died. If the difficulty did go up a bit you probably wouldn’t notice that either for the same reason.
It’s quite possible that my team just sucked or something too. Perhaps I’m terrible at the game and only ever got through Expert by randomly ending up on a decent team.
Anyway, I’m sad that the demo is gone. I still can’t stomach paying $45 for this. When the Orange Box came out I got it for $25 on “Black Friday” (crazy day after Thanksgiving shopping; don’t know if this is a US only thing). I don’t think that will happen this year though…
Regarding difficulty:
Initially last night I was playing with 2 friends with which I had coasted through expert on the demo many times. We had to turn it down to advanced to beat the full second level of the first campaign. I can’t imagine how hard a climax on expert is going to be (but I can’t wait to try).
@PHeMox,
Didn’t mean to sound too harsh; hoped the Evil Dead reference would get across the “not so serious” aspect of the post. Sorry.
Anyway, first climax last night, on the top of Mercy Hospital. Good team, with 1 very experienced player (for a 1-day old game), 1 other demo repeater like myself, and a decently talented newbie. We lasted all of 5 – 7 minutes…3 times. Rarely have I been so satisfied with an asskicking by a game.
I just had my creepiest run-in with the witch last night. Usually games with enemies like that are black and white. The enemy is asleep, you bump them, they wake up, you shoot them in the face. A witch was blocking our path and I decided to test the breaking point and try and slowwwly hug the wall and slip around her. As I got close she raised her head and looked up at me with those OH SO CREEPY EYES and that “don’t test me, bitch” look. I conceded, and slowly backed off, witch still staring at me with raised shoulders, but right about when I thought I was clear it was like she suddenly made her mind up and charged me. Leaving me, of course, turning around to my teammates down the hallway running and yelling AHH SHE GOT PISSSED, SHOOT HER, SHOOT HER!
Playing single player earlier and got to a point where had to take on the witch. For the first time ever, after emptying the first clip of my assault rifle into her, I abandoned further firepower, panicked and just started to leg it the other way.
Fortunately the AI is pretty reliable as far as taking out the witch is concerned. Except twice during this run through of death toll where one of the AI managed to upset two witches somehow.
At some point the demo changed on Expert. It wasn’t an utter bastard every time on Expert, but every so often a Director would turn psychotic, and when it did, it stayed that way. I’ve been on teams which simply gave up after being hammered by wave on wave of zombies and specials coming from all directions every time we stirred beyond the saferoom door. I successfully managed to get through a psycho Director run – but that featured the surviving two of us who were already almost dead from early on being pursued halfway through the level by a Tank before finally dropping it, having to kill three special infected (Smoker-Hunter-Boomer) in quick succession by myself on one flight of steps while on one health, finally rescuing the others and successfully strategising our way through the minigun section to escape.
I’m really quite sceptical about those people claiming to have nothing but easy runs on Expert. If nothing else, you should have at least taken an accidental shotgun blast in the back from a teammate in panic mode even when not facing the psycho director – and on Expert, that drops you really fast. Maybe all your teammates were super-cautious in their firing habits, but mine certainly haven’t been.
Whoever said it earlier, Witch in front of safe room door = bollicks.
Worst encounter we had was some idiot in our team attracting the horde, everyone low on ammo sprinting for the safe room door, where there’s a FUCKIN’ WITCH sitting in front. Someone lobbed a pipebomb. Someone volunteered to sacrifice. We made it to the saferoom alive, minus a player, who was resurrected anyways.
I’m with the crowd that fears the tank more than a witch. Although I still scream at players that wont turn off their flashlights.
When the music starts up and the grounds starts shaking then it’s real panic. I like to recall the time on the finale of No Mercy before reaching the actual rooftop when I was on point so I was closer to the tank so I got the music and shaking first and said “Uh guys… tank” and the response was “You’re joking!”.
Once we thought we were laughing when a tank appeared right next to the safe room, we just went back inside and slammed the door and jeered at him… then he smashed right through the door as if it wasn’t there…
A tank isn’t too bad on its own if you’re in an open space and can keep ahead of it and lead it on a merry chase but if you combine it with anything else or face it in a cramped corridor it’s deadly.
I was more moved by the lone woman I heard crying, in BioShock. Moving slowly around one of the more deserted areas, I heard this weeping. The wall to the right of my was made of just wooden panels, some of which were splintered, allowing one to peek through to the dimly lit room on the other side. There was a woman, bent double over a coffin, which as far as I could tell, housed the corpse of her deceased husband. It was a shocking moment – in this underwater hell was a mortified woman, mourning the man she loved. My first instinct – and that which I prayed the game would let me do – was to walk around and comfort her, to give her a shoulder to cry on. As I tried to do this, she heard me walking up behind her, and span around. Of course, she wasn’t just a woman anymore, but a splicer – corrupted by this once-utopian world into something far more disturbing. It was such a depressing moment to realise there was nothing I could do for this poor woman, yet I couldn’t hurt her. I literally stood there whilst she tore at me with her claw-like hands and let her kill me, or come as close to death as BioShock allows. I then reloaded to a previous save file, and decided to leave her alone, to let her be.
She isnt that scary the really scary thing in L4D is a Tank on expert becuase everyone is like OH F**k forget about everything else and unload your ammo on the tank and then you full team is dead if the tank isnt on fire.
Can’t say I find anything about Left 4 Dead even remotely scary or creepy, no matter the difficulty setting.
And I doubt it was supposed to be.
The Witch could perhaps have been a little creepy for me, if when huddled and crying she looked like a little baby instead, and when you got close she morphed into what she looks like now. The action in the game would also have to be turned down about 50 notches, because running around pumping out 500 rounds a minute, I just don’t find anything scary. You won’t have that type of immersion then, well, at least I don’t.
Games that are creepy for me are the Silent Hill type, which is slow moving, and a bit skimpy on the action. Gives more time for a different type of immersion.
I enjoy L4D though, great blastfest. But I’ve gone through the campaigns now, played about 12 hours, and that’s enough for me. I might go back and play some good user levels or new official content though.
The Witch is also REAL EASY to kill. You just throw a molotov on her before you start shooting.
@Nehr: totally agree.
After playing through all the campaigns I’ve found that there have been few times when encountering the witch actually alters the gameplay. Sometimes she’ll bit sitting on the ladder/door/tunnel you need to go down, and at those points (assuming there isn’t a hoarde attacking) one needs to stop for a moment and consider the plan for killing her. But mostly a molotov renders her pretty shit and you can just run backwards shooting. It’s actually pretty rare than anyone dies from her. I think the game would be a lot better if it was programmed so that she never actually completely blocked your path, but if you did ever disturb her it would be by accident and she could wipe almost all of you out before you could touch her. Maybe resistant to fire, and able to run along the ceiling and freaky things. She just isn’t ever hard to beat, even on Expert. For her to work she needs to be stronger and the game needs to vary the tempo even more. Having played a fair bit on versus, you realise how difficult it is to actually die, and when you do, the penalty is waiting for a few minutes until the next cupboard/safe-room is found. If the witch knocked you out for the rest of the level and could always kill in one or two hits, maybe she’d be scary.
The most irritating about a Witch is that she’s always in the wrong places. Example: Me and my team have around 20HP each, playing ‘No Mercy’ on Expert, safe house nearby and then there’s a Witch in front of it. I throw a molotov at her, and she attacks me like a madman (on fire!). She hits me and I’m dead because I already got incapacitated two times. The team goes on and I can continue to play in the next level (2: The Subway). Oh boy, safe house ahead! But then we heard crying again, we (well, two of us since the others were dead) just killed a f*cking Tank and then there’s another WITCH! We tried to avoid her, but she was on the stairwell just outside the safehouse. I have 1HP because I bled to ‘death’ after one incapacity. My mate had around 80 HP still, so he got to startle the Witch to clear the path and he did. SLICE! My friend is incapacitated and WHACK there’s a Hunter, punted me, incapacitated and we had to start over again.
I’m not saying the Witch was a bad idea, it’s a great idea. I only get frustrating because she’s on ALL vital spots where we HAVE to kill her because otherwise we can’t proceed.
Generally most of the time I run into one it’s followed by cursing, shiting myself, running, and shooting. Personally I feel witch= a little tank and most of the fear can be dumped on: Not knowing where she is and who is around her, and to make you think, to not shoot randomly, to stick together and not split up in simple words No Heroes, Teamwork.
On another note sometimes she could spawn in better places.
We walk into the subway, one of us made a joke “Hey I know you, your a tank.” not knowing there was one. I walk pass the rubble next to the flipped train and get punch across the room in to a load of zombies. We break for it and the tank tosses a piece of wall a hits? A damn witch right in front of us she kills two of us as we are forced back to the tank, me and the other guy split. Then mic gets filled with screams and static (a classic, and horrible horror movie trick) and then the guy gets tossed right pass me into a horde. I make it to the ammo stash and Blam the witch runs into me, then a smoker grabs me , a horde gang me, a hunter rips me, and the tanks kicks my ass.
Oh, very nice. She mostly reminds me of one of the bosses from Clive Barker’s Undying, I think it was Lizbeth or Aaron or a combination of them 2 created by my powerful mind.
So I have the best Witch story ever. The other day I was playing and there was a Witch right in front of an escalator I needed to go up. So I creeeeeeped up and tried to go around. She looked up at me and snarled and I backed up real quick. So then I used some debris to climb up onto the escalator from the side. But when I got to the top of the escalator there was a Boomer, which I shot and was promptly covered in goo. So as I’m (blinded, keep in mind) fighting off the Hoard, one of my teammates disturbs the Witch, probably by hitting her with a stray bullet. So now, there’s a pissed off Witch I can hear screaming up a storm, a ton of infected, and I still can’t see ‘cuz I’m covered in Boomer goo. It was very hectic.
The first time I saw her it was really frightening. But I think this article, while well written, overblows her a bit.
The first time I saw her it was a quick shot to the head with the hunting rifle. Unfortunately this gave me a false sense of security…
First time playing my friends told me about her just as we heard the crying, me wanting confirmation if it was her I saw I fired a round at her just as I said, “Is this her?”. Let me just tell you I almost fell of my chair.
Still think its too bad you can’t play as her when you play horde, but nothing is better when your playing a full game and you spawn as the tank. Can’t help but shout “Its clawbering time!” as I swat my enemies away like flys on a corps.
and yet, on my first round ever of L4D, i got the witch hunter achievement. (kill the witch without any part of your team taking damage) maybe im just lucky…..