Left 4 Dead

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.

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

As promised, the latest update for Valve's zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead is now available to download via Steam. As we reported a few days ago this update is being released primarily to help make user created campaigns easier to make and earlier to install.

For players, the update lets you select any third party maps and campaigns via the game's user interface. It also adds matchmaking support for those maps as well as leaderboard support. Players can download any add-on maps and campaigns as one .VPK file. For mod makers, the update offers up sample files for Left 4 Dead's official maps as a resource to map new maps and campaigns.

It took much longer than previously announced but today Valve revealed that they have added support via Steam for the Novint Falcon PC game controller to all of the games in Valve's Orange Box collection. That includes Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2 along with Portal and Team Fortress 2 (the original Half-Life 2 already supports the Falcon controller via a patch from Novint).

The controller allows gamers to "feel" effects like weapon fire recoil, the weight of holding objects like barrels and even feel textures in the game world. Valve has promised that they will add Falcon support to their other games including Left 4 Dead.

Star Wars: The Old Republic just got a ton of pressure put on it. The upcoming MMO from BioWare, EA and LucasArts was just named as the Best PC Game by the Game Critics Awards as they announced the winners of their annual E3 awards.

The awards, as we have mentioned before, are not a fullproof way of predicting a game's final form. Witness the fact that Spore won the same award three times and ended up as something of a dissapointment when it was finally released. We hope that BioWare's title is an exception.

In other catagories, Modern Warfare 2 won for Best Action Game, Mass Effect 2 (another BioWare title) won for Best Role Playing Game, Split/Second won for Best Racing Game, Supreme Commander 2 won for Best Strategy Game and Left 4 Dead 2 won for Best Online Multiplayer.

Valve's head man Gabe Newell mentioned earlier this year that sales of their games tend to spike when they have price cuts on Steam. Now a new study seems to confirm that player activity for their zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has gone up for the PC version compared to the Xbox 360 port of the game.

Gamasutra reports that a new study from DFC Intelligence and the social networking site GamerDNA shows that player activity for both versions of the game were more or less the same until Valve held a 50 percent sale of the PC version on Steam in February. PC player activity went up and then leveled off but still was somewhat higher than the Xbox 360 version.

In late April the free Survival Pack was released for both platforms and while both the PC and Xbox 360 experienced spikes in player activities, the PC version went even higher thanks to a "Free to play" weekend that the Xbox 360 version could not duplicate. Since then the PC version has continued to be much higher in terms of player activity than the Xbox 360 port.

Valve is getting ready to release a major update to its zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead and this week the game's official blog site posted up some details. The update, to be released automatically via Steam sometime next week, will concentrate on supporting new campaign add-ons made by third parties.

The update will include the official release of the game's SDK editing tools (the SDK has been in open beta for some time) with a few changes and fixes. The mod tools will allow players to make their own campaigns for Left 4 Dead. The update will also have some UI changes to support add-ons as will as matchmaking for any new third party campaigns.

According to the note, "Content authors will be able to package up their new maps, along with new posters, models, and textures, into a single .VPK file." They can then be placed in an addons folder in the game where they will be accessed via the game's Extras menu as seen above.

Even though we have mentioned that the idea of a standard awards set-up for E3 is like giving a movie after showing a two minute trailer, a group of both mainstream and gaming enthusiast media have once again gathered to give their picks for the 2009 edition of the show.

The biggest award for "Best In Show" has three games slated for the PC in the list (Mass Effect 2, Modern Warfare 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction). In the specific Best PC Game category the nods went to DC Universe Online, Dragon Age: Origins, Left 4 Dead 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Supreme Commander 2. Check out the web site for all of the categories and nominated games; the winners will be announced a week from today.

We are not sure if Valve is just pulling our finger (pun intended) but in their latest blog post on the Left 4 Dead site they talk about how they created the image of the four fingered hand for the box cover to their zombie co-op shooter. Valve didn't want to use Photoshop so they got one of their artists, Andrea Wicklund, to bite her thumb for reference pictures.

Valve then claims the ESRB ratings board didn't care for that kind of dedication to the art, saying they "cited some fake-sounding legal loophole about it being illegal to take pictures of people biting off parts of their hands." For the upcoming sequel Left 4 Dead 2 Valve says they simply tucked in two fingers for the box design (which you can see after the jump). Valve does say " . . .it took lopping the fingers off two staff members' hands to get the lighting reference perfect, but since those didn't appear on the box, we think we're legally in the clear." We think they are joking.

We don't like to editorialize in news stories but it's pretty clear that a lot of Left 4 Dead fans are very upset about Valve's surprise reveal during E3 2009 about Left 4 Dead 2. The game's new official message boards are full of comments saying basically, "Valve's releasing a sequel too quickly for us; this should be a free content update for the original game." As Valve's Doug Lombardi told us during our play time with a build of the game this past week, "This is something new for us." By "new" he meant that this time Valve is not waiting for years to release a commercial follow-up to one of their major games. (Half-Life 2: Episode 3, hello?)

Many fans are not happy because they feel the original game (still a top 10 best selling PC game in retail stores months after release) will be forgotten now with Left 4 Dead 2's announcement. Again, Lombardi assured us at E3 that is not the case, promising that the first game will still be getting updates and new content (although exactly what they have planned is still a mystery). Lombardi also told Rock Paper Shotgun that any maps made for Left 4 Dead's SDK will work for Left 4 Dead 2.

You are running. Running for your life as a horde of zombies are charging at you trying to kill you. You are faced with dozens of undead and flesh eating folks ready to make you their next meal. So naturally you do what you would normally do in this situation; you hit them with a . . . frying pan?

Yep, that's one of the new melee weapons in Left 4 Dead 2, the surprisingly quick-to-announce release sequel to Valve's hit shooter that is still on the top 10 best selling PC game list several months after its November 2008 release. E3 2009 gave us a chance to go hands on with one of the campaigns in the game which is coming on Nov. 17.

Following the trailer premiere earlier today Valve has now issued the first press release for Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to their best selling zombie co-op shooter. The press release promises that gamers will control all new human survivors as they deal with new zombie bosses and use new weapons and items (including melee weapons like chainsaws, frying pans, axes, and baseball bats). Valve is also promising that Left 4 Dead 2 will be a larger game than the original with more campaigns, Versus maps and Survival maps out of the box than Left 4 Dead 1.

In addition, the original game's AI Director will be adding new features such as the ability to "change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players' performance." The game will race into stores on Nov. 17, just a year after the original came out.

It looks like the rumors were true. During Microsoft's E3 2009 press conference it was announced that Valve will release Left 4 Dead 2, a full sequel to their 2008 zombie co-op shooter series. They showed off a trailer during the press conference but little else was revealed about the game itself . . .well, other than it will have lots of zombies to shoot.

The game already has a release date for November 17 which means that this title has jumped up to near the top of the list of our "Big PC Games of 2009." We hope to learn more about the game when we meet with Valve at E3 later this week.

GoGamer.com's newest online sale for their retail gaming web site is a nice one indeed with a number of popular PC game titles on the pricing chopping block. For this new 48 Hour Madness sale (which actually ends on Saturday at 3 am ET) they have put the Left 4 Dead Game of the Year Edition on sale for just $29.90, a 25 percent savings.

Fallout 3 also got a price cut for the sale. It's currently listed at $32.90, a 33 percent savings from its normal price. There are also some older games with even deeper price cuts such as the original Just Cause for just $1.90, Infernal for $2.90 and the Collector's Edition of Age of Conan for just $9.90.

In related news, the newly revamped Gamersgate web site has posted up a one-day sale of the acclaimed RPG title Mount and Blade for just $14.95, a 50 percent savings from its usual price.

Thanks to all of you who entered our recent first anniversary giveaway contest where we gave out 10 free Steam codes for Valve's zombie shooter Left 4 Dead. We have now picked the winners of the contest. Receiving the codes are Chris Russell of Norcross, GA, Andy Figueroa of Los Angeles, CA, Bryan Dockler of Keizer, OR, Jason Leistiko of Milwaukie OR, Jeph Pratt of Verona Beach NY, Joseph Singh of Oak Ridge, TN, Garrett McFarlane of Penbroke Pines, FL, Jochen Cobussen of Elkhart, IN, Robert E. Morris Jr. of Coon Rapids, MN and Jeff Miller of Mountain View, CA.

Congrats to all of our winners and thanks to everyone who enters. Thanks once again to Valve for providing the codes.