Great moments in PC gaming: "Don't startle the witch"

Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

Each of the special infected in Left 4 Dead has its own musical tell. The hunter’s is a tripping plink-plonk-plink, the spitter’s got an eerie four notes versus the smoker’s simple two, while the tank rolls up with its own miniature symphony. Play for long enough and you’ll learn them all, but it’s probably the witch you memorize first. Her musical sting is high-pitched and insistent, the first melody quickly joined by a second to create a sense of escalation. Even before you hear her sobbing, that tune plays and you know it’s time to turn off the flashlight and step carefully.

Not startling her should be easy, but then the director plants her somewhere unavoidable, or your friend turns a corner a little too fast, or a stray bullet or pipe bomb catches her and that’s it. She goes from sobbing to screaming and beelines for the survivor who startled her, fingerknives out as she knocks them down. She’s not the kind of threat who’ll take out a whole party, and eventually you learn to deal with her, but the terror of that shrieking attack is hard to get used to.

(Image credit: Valve)

When you stumble across zombies in Left 4 Dead they’re often just doing their own thing, leaning against walls looking sad. Until you bumble up waving your guns and one-liners around they just want to be left alone with their misery. The witch is the most miserable of the miserable, a goth queen whose sobbing is a warning to just let her be. Left 4 Dead calls them Infected rather than zombies which rehumanizes them a little, and the witch is the most human of all, the one who seems most aware of the tragedy of her situation.