Even though it has been called by many who attended the worst E3 ever held, that hasn't stopped the Game Critics Awards from naming their picks for the nominees for their annual Best of E3 award. The awards, picked by a group of mainstream and game oriented journalists (including Chris Grant of our sister site Joystiq) had three games that will appear on the PC platform named as Best in Show (Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge and Spore). The nominations for Best PC Game are Spore, Dragon Age: Origins, Warhammer Online, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and Left 4 Dead. Indeed Valve's upcoming zombie shooter got three more nominations (Best Original Game, Best Action Game and Best Online Multiplayer Game). You can go to the Game Critics Awards' web site for all the nominees; the winners will be named on August 5....

Valve Software VP of marketing Doug Lombardi has released the official box art for developer Turtle Rock Studios' upcoming Left 4 Dead, a squad-based shooter that will pit humans in a fight for survival against legions of zombies. Though we find the box art to be stylish yet simple, snazzy yet unassuming, we find ourselves hesitant to award the art a thumbs-up.A number of different characters will be available to hunt down the city's undead legions. Because Left 4 Dead will prominently feature undead gorging and head-popping, Valve has affirmed their hope to integrate movie recording and playback features into the game, certain that players will wan to relieve their glorious escapes -- and eviscerations.Wielding guns, grenades, and a release date of November 4, 2008, Left 4 Dead will be released on PC and Xbox 360....

During an interview at E3, Valve's Doug Lombardi revealed that the company hopes to add a movie making function to Left 4 Dead at some point after the launch of the core game. He loosely described features that would allow players to record, edit, play back, and possibly share their virtual near-death experiences. Sadly, that functionality probably will not be available for a while; we didn't see it in our own hands-on experience with the game.Lombardi also mentioned that Valve went to Microsoft, Yahoo!, and RealNetworks when it was first conceptualizing Steam, but was told by all that such a service would only exist "10, 15 years in the future." Of course, now Microsoft operates the separate and struggling Games for Windows Live service, which shares some features with Steam.And yes, we know the above screenshot features the old, now-replaced Left 4 Dead characters. But how about a little nostalgia?...

Developer Turtle Rock Studios had been working for some time on Left 4 Dead before the company was bought out by Valve Software (Turtle Rock helped out on various Valve projects in the past and was using Valve's Source engine for Left 4 Dead). So that means that opportunities to play builds of the game have been fairly frequent in the past year or so. However, shooting zombies never really gets old and at E3 2008 today we got yet another chance to make a lot of blood go on the walls (virtually speaking of course).Along with some human teammates we got to play the first level of Left 4 Dead's first scenario (there are four such scenarios in all, each with five levels). Our goal was to get basically from one point to another without being taken by the zombie horde. After each of our characters loaded up with head, weapons and ammo we left via a rooftop and went down the stairs through the building. It didn't take long for the zombies to start swarming all over the place. They acted like they need a human fix. By the way, these zombies are of the Dawn of the Dead remake variety; they are fast, relentless and hungry for your brains....

Valve Software's Gabe Newell took the stage at EA's E3 press conference to present the cooperative horror game Left 4 Dead. We have the video of that presentation on the other side of the jump, but here are the Cliff's Notes.All four current player character models will be replaced with the above-pictured folks. This was probably a good change; the old ones weren't very likable or varied. In addition to that bit of info, Newell talked about the game's AI director, which will adjust the gameplay to match players' playstyles, positions, and status.He also said the game is coming out on November 4th, but that news ain't new. Anyway, the game seems to be coming along swimmingly. Be sure and check out the video after the break!...

Electronic Arts' EA press conference is long over with but we do have a ton of new screenshots for a number of games that the publisher released today. Naturally all of the shots are for titles that will be released for the PC. Unfortunately there's no Dragon Age Origins shots today but we hope to get the first ones later this week...

The excitement is building to next week's E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles (man does that sound like some kind of soulless seminar at some Holiday Inn but we aren't in charge of the naming of the event) where over 5,000 journalists have been invited to attend the largest single gathering of game publishers in North America. Big Download will be covering the event all next week but this week we are counting down our top 25 most anticipated PC games we hope we will get to see and maybe play at the event. On Monday we went through our 25-21 picks so if its Tuesday it must be time for the 20-16 picks on our list. As we mentioned previously, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision or Vivendi Games/Blizzard titles on this list due to the two publishers bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that publisher (and maybe Vivendi/Blizzard as well). With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list...

Your daily wrap-up of the hottest stories in PC gaming in the last 24 hours. Big Download Interview: Alone In The DarkIt's taken a long time but today is finally the day for the reimagining of the Alone in the Dark franchise to finally head to store shelves for the PC and other platforms. Developer Eden Studios and publisher Atari/Infogrames have a lot riding on the success of this huge survival horror title. Indeed the publisher is hoping to sell between two to three million copies of the game this year. Spore Galactic Edition evolves into online retailA special edition of Spore has appeared at online retailers for pre-ordering. It's called the "Galactic Edition," and it comes with a making-of DVD, a DVD by National Geographic called "The Human Toolkit," a hardback book of concept art, a fold-out poster, and a "premium 100-page Galactic Handbook." We're not sure what the handbook will entail, but the rest sounds pretty cool. Should BioShock have failed?It was one of the most anticipated games of 2007 and the final release of 2K Games' first person shooter BioShock was one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year. But should the game have failed? That was the premise of the chat made by 2K Boston lead programmer Chris Kline at this week's Paris GDC event. Gamasutra has a report on the speech where Kline admitted, " . . . it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game." Guide to TF2 Pyro Achievements, Part 2Glorious fire! You just love to burn things! We can't blame you, though. Nobody knows who you are, where you come from, or what your real gender even is, pyro, but we know that you sure love to set things on fire. Don't worry, though. We want to help you. We love your work. That's why we have crafted for you this very guide to ease your attempts to fulfill the strange objectives given to you. You have read the first part, so here is the second. Soon you'll be back on the road, setting fire to all the wildlife as you pass by. ...

The folks at Novint have demoed their unique force feedback PC game controller the Novint Falcon by, among other means, using Valve's Half-Life 2. The demo allowed people to use the controller to "feel" effects like weapon fire recoil, the weight of holding objects like barrels and even feel textures in the game world. Now IGN is reporting that Novint and Valve are planning to expand their relationship.The report states that Valve plans to support the Novint Falcon beyond just Half-Life 2 to cover all of the games covered in their Orange Box collection (Half-Life 2, Episodes One and Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal) along with Counter-Strike Source and the upcoming Left 4 Dead. Novint will also release a special Orange Box version of the Falcon controller later this year. A new pistol grip attachment for the Falcon should start shipping to stores soon....

Time to revamp your zombie apocalypse plan. After numerous delays the highly anticipated shooter, Left 4 Dead, will release on November 4. From publisher Valve and newly acquired developer Turtle Rock, the announced date confirms earlier statements made by Valve Software's Doug Lombardi who promised the title within the month. Since being announced in the early days of 2007 and first showcasing its flood of zombie enemies, gamers have been clamoring to get their hands on the Source Engine powered title. Shipping on the PC and Xbox 360, Left 4 Dead also allows gamers the opportunity to play as various "boss" zombie characters-- each class with their own special deadly ability. Stockpile your nonperishables and pick your squad ASAP, Left 4 Dead is only a few months away....

During a recent visit to Valve's offices to experience more Left 4 Dead goodness, Shacknews came face-to-face with the witch, one of the game's unplayable boss characters.Shacknews writer Aaron Linde detailed his initial encounter against the female boss infected, stating that "perhaps most unsettling is [her] quiet weeping; the witch is most often heard before she's seen." Upon requesting a confrontation, Valve writer Chet Faliszek cautioned that the witch is "entirely lethal. Whoever sets her off, she'll go after that one person and she will kill them. Other creatures, yeah, you can push them away, you can run, you can do all these different things, but she is single-track. She's going to kill you."Undaunted, the squad readied their weapons as Faliszek lobbed a molotov cocktail at a nearby witch, who was huddled, weeping, on a sidewalk.Did the Shack crew emerge victorious, or were they cut down to a man? Read their entire preview to find out....

Valve Software's Doug Lombardi revealed in the second half of a two part interview with Shacknews (in part one he declared PC gaming alive and well) that the studio hopes to ship its co-op, zombie-themed, survival horror FPS Left 4 Dead sometime in November of this year.Left 4 Dead is Valve's big release this year, and the company hopes that it will do the same thing for co-op multi-player gaming that Counter Strike did for competitive play. The audience is clearly there; zombie-themed, user-created Half-Life 2 mods like Zombie Master and Zombie Panic are among the most popular on Steam.Lombardi also suggested that gamers will get to play the full version of Left 4 Dead free for a whole weekend, and that a demo is probably coming as well. He wasn't able to confirm a time-frame for either of those, though....

It's always a good time to play games with your buddies, whether they are right next to you or if they are online thousands of miles away. Developers Turtle Rock Studios and Valve know this well. They also know that shooting through an army of zombies is fun, too. Thus was born the co-op oriented Left 4 Dead which Turtle Rock and Valve plan to spring on players sometime this fall.Some new screenshots from the game just got released and they show a lot of folks who look like they need to take some baths going up against the flesh eating undead with a truckload of ordinance. Since this is Valve we are talking about here we are betting that even after the game is released there will be some extra content for the game that will find its way via its Steam client. In any case, we can't wait to get some hands-on time with Left 4 Dead very soon...

We've been following the list of exhibitors coming to this July's invite only E3 event and one interesting new entry just popped up on the (password protected) E3summit08.com web site. The name? Valve Software. Yep, the Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike and Portal deveopers will have a separate meeting room at the LA Convention Center.Of course, Valve does have a game coming out this year, the zombie co-op shooter Left 4 Dead that has been in development for some time at their recently acquired Turtle Rock Studios team. However do they have something else they plan to show at E3 this year? Let the guessing games begin . . ....

Lets just admit it: We've got an obsession with zombies. Some people may not be so how on running from them, too, but then again they probably haven't played (or even heard of) Left 4 Dead yet. If that's the case, then would you kindly direct your attention over to this interview with Chet Faliszek about all things zombie-killing in the upcoming Steam and Xbox 360 title.Because of the fact that Left 4 Dead is one of those games you really have to play for yourself, we're happy to find out that Valve plans to do some kind of demo when the game launches. Otherwise we'd be stuck trying to explain to people that L4D is a four-player co-op game played against AI controlled zombies, that's also a 4v4 team-based game where the other four players take control of specific super-zombies. Curious? Yeah, we thought you might be....