A number of fans express their displeasure over the fact that Valve had decided to release a sequel to their 2008 shooter Left 4 Dead less than a year after the original. But does Valve have something up their sleeve that could merge the two games in some way?

In a new chat with Valve marketing head Doug Lombardi at our sister site Joystiq, he states, " . . .it's definitely a goal of ours to have cross-operability for those who own both games." He points out that mod makers who are currently making levels for Left 4 Dead will have little trouble making those levels work for the sequel when it comes out. He added, " . . . that's stuff we're still really working out and we're not prepared to disclose just yet. We understand that the best possible scenario is to keep everyone together in the same community and treat it as a platform . . . "

Meanwhile despite the Internet furor over Left 4 Dead 2, Lombardi tells Eurogamer that the sequel is already secured twice as many pre-order copies as the first game did at this time last year.

The retail gaming web site GoGamer.com is at it again with its latest price cut sale. This particular one lasts until 3 am Tuesday and is filled with lots of PC games, both new and old. Perhaps the one that will generate the most interest is Left 4 Dead which can be picked up for $29.90 during the sale.

Other games on sale at GoGamer include the just released Overlord 2 for $34.90, The Sims 3 for $37.90 and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for $19.90. You can also grab some older games at rock bottom prices including Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for just $5.90 and the original Call of Juarez for a mere $4.90.

IGN's Direct2Drive site is celebrating the upcoming Fourth of July holiday with some big price cuts on selected games. From now until July 5 you can download and purchase Call of Duty 4 for just $27.95, Call of Duty World at War for just $34.95 and a Company of Heroes bundle (containing the original game and the two stand alone expansion packs) for just $34.95.

If you are a procrasinator you can wait until July 12 to get the following deals: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for just $14.95, the Game of the Year version (containing the original game, the Knights of the Nine and the Shivering Isles expansions and all of the official DLC content) for just $17.95, and the original ArmA for $14.95. You can also get the original ArmA with its just released sequel ArmA II in a bundle for $60.

The Tribes-like first person shooter Section 8 is due to be released in late August but if you want a taste of the game you can head over to Fileplanet and download the multiplayer beta for the game. The beta is now available to all US and Canadian players with a free Fileplanet account.

Just in case you are unfamiliar with Section 8, it's a sci-fi first person shooter where your character is enclosed in a one-man battlesuit to take on the enemy in various planetary locations. It's being developed by Timegate Studios (who previously created two expansion packs for the original F.E.A.R. Originally to be released by the now defunct Gamecock Media, its now found a home in Southpeak Games.

As id Software prepares to say "good-bye" to their long time publishing partner Activision with their upcoming game Wolfenstein, the publisher is promoting its August 4 release with a series of animation shorts on Gametrailers.com that tells the back story of William "B.J." Blazkowicz before the events of the new game.

The first animated short (we might call it a "motion comic" since the animation is so limited) basically is a retelling of the original Wolfenstein 3D game, complete with a Hitler with multiple chainguns. Supposedly there will be new shorts like this released every week until the Raven Software-developed game is released next month. You can check out the video after the jump.

GoG.com has been busy this week adding four games to their line-up of DRM-free PC game titles. This weekend they have a special old-school game sale going on; no first person shooters or real time strategy or role playing games here. They have the simple fun of pinball games at a special price.

Yep from now until the end of the day on Monday you can download all four of GoG.com's PC pinball titles (Pure Pinball 2.0 Redux, Timeshock, Big Race USA and Fantastic Journey) for a mere $4.79 each. That's a 20 percent discount on their already low, low prices. This is not a bundle deal; you get the 20 percent price cut no matter how many you want to get.

Reality Pump Studios knows how to confuse us big time. Their 2007 fantasy RPG Two Worlds was supposed to be followed by an expansion pack called Two Worlds: The Temptation. However those plans changed and in 2008 Two Worlds: The Temptation turned into a full fledged stand alone sequel.

That game was supposed to be released late in 2008 but obviously that didn't happen. Now it appears Reality Pump is going old school by renaming their sequel. It's now simply called Two Worlds II with Reality Pump now promising it will be out sometime this winter. The game itself takes place two years after the original and the developer promises to show us not only new locations in the fantasy world of Eastern Antaloor but graphic engine and AI improvements . . . at least until their next title change.

With all of the networking issues in Demigod now corrected, its publisher Stardock can now put more emphasis on their next major game release, the internally developed fantasy strategy-RPG Elemental: War of Magic. This week, Stardock head Brad Wardell posted up some new screenshots from the game on it's official web site and we have added those shots to our gallery. It's been a while since we have seen new shots with Wardell saying, "We've been hesitant to show too many screenshots until the shadowing is in."

Beta testing for the game should begin "in around 60 days" according to Wardell so expect it to start around the end or August or early September. As usual with Stardock's games, anyone can enter the beta by simply pre-ordering the game now.

One of the big complaints about Left 4 Dead 2 from fans is that the upcoming sequel to the zombie shooter will basically kill support for the original Left 4 Dead. At the time of the sequel's unveiling at E3 last month, developer Valve made it clear that they still planned to support and add content to the original game.

While we still don't know what that content will be like, Computer and Video Games has a quote from Valve's Doug Lombardi who states, "There will be some announcements coming before summer's out about what's coming there . . ". Let's hope so; we don't need another online petition, do we?

Gallery: Left 4 Dead

It looks like game publisher Midway will soon by no more. A story on the Chicago Tribune web site reports that Warner Bros. has been cleared by a Delaware bankruptcy judge to purchase two of Midway's development studios (Chicago and Seattle) along with most of the company's IPs, including the Mortal Kombat franchise. As previously announced Warner Bros. will pay $33 million for those assets.

And what about the other two Midway studios not bought by Warner Bros. (the ones in the UK and San Diego)? Our sister site Joystiq reports via a Midway spokesperson that they are required by law to shut down the studios within 60 days. There's no word yet if any other companies might be interested in acquiring those studios but the UK studio is trying to promote their own open world action game, Necessary Force, as a last ditch attempt to get a publisher to buy their studio.

The three live action films based on the Resident Evil game franchise have always been very loosely based on the Capcom games but the movies have always made their money back and more thanks to relatively low budgets, solid box office returns and high sales of the DVD and Blu-Ray versions. So it's no shock to hear that a fourth Resident Evil movie might be in the works.

According to Shocktillyoudrop.com a "studio source" at Sony's Screen Gems division has supposedly confirmed that the movie, to be titled Resident Evil: Afterlife, is in the works with Sony wanting to put the movie in theaters by September 17, 2010. There's no word yet if the star of the three previous movies, Milla Jovovich, will return for the fourth filick.

There are only a few games with less of a story than Asteroids. The classic sci-fi shooter from Atari is bascially you shooting stuff that are supposed to be rocks in space with an icon that's supposed to be a laser-armed space ship. Pac-Man has more of a plot. Yet, the Hollywood Reporter states that several studios were actually in a recent bidding war to get the movie rights to the game.

The story repors that Universal "won" the bidding war and that screenwriter Matthew Lopez is handling the "adaptation" (he basically has a clean slate to write whatever he wants, we imagine). Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who also produced the awful Doom movie adaptation, is one of the producers of this flick. We hope Universal will get its money back from this deal.

Oh brother . . . will this never end? The team at Phantom Entertainment, the makers of the long awaited (and long delayed) Phantom Lapboard PC gaming oriented keyboard have run into trouble, this time with the US Securites and Exchange Commission. They have halted the trading of stocks in Phantom Entertainment " because they have not filed certain periodic reports with the Commission."

All of this sounds like a repeat of what happened when the company was called Infinium Labs and its now former CEO was accused by the SEC of running an illegal "pump and dump" scheme to boost the price of the company's stock. The company's current CEO John Landino states on the company's blog site, "We are not the company of 2002 – We could have easily taken the easy way out and just shut our doors and quit, but we stayed to push through the bias of the media and Shorters out there to prove that we can be a new company to launch our product, and grow from there." He claims the first shipment of the Phantom Lapboard will happen sometime this month but at this point we will believe it when we see it. And so the drama continues . . .

[Via Blue's News]

Activision has released a playable PC demo for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the just released game adaption of the third movie in the CGI animated series. Yes you can play with the characters from the movie like Scrat, Sid, Manny and Diego as they discover a lost world of dinosaurs. The demo comes from developer Eurocom.

Download the Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs demo (513 MB) at Big Download

After a 24 hour delay, owners of Relic's Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II can now download the open beta update for the sci-fi RTS game via Steam. In order to access the beta, titled "There Is Only War" you first select "file" in the Steam client and then click "change" under the "beta participation" section. Then select "Dawn of War 2" and restart Steam. The beta patch should then start downloading.

You can check out the massive patch list at the game's official web site. The patch includes support for the World Builder map editor and the official web site also has a PDF file with documentation on how to map a simple map using the tool. The patch, as we have mentioned before, has also eight new multiplayer maps the new Observer feature and lots of other new features, balances changes and bug fixes. The beta period will last until July 13.