Left 4 Dead

This One Time, Me and My Friend Keith...

HIGH: Barreling through all four survivors with the charger.

LOW: Rochelle's extremely bland character.

WTF: Why can't the tank pick people up like the charger does?

With the release of Left 4 Dead 2 just around the corner (it streets on November 17th for the PC and Xbox 360) expect to start hearing more about the game. Gamestop teamed up with Valve to create this new teaser commercial for the cooperative zombie-slaying game, which highlights not only a bit of what players can expect in the follow up to the wildly popular original, but to also convince players to pre-order their copy through Gamestop so they can procure the in-game American Baseball Bat weapon. Ah marketing…is there anything you won’t do?

I guess this means I need to get my red-ringed Xbox 360 fixed posthaste…

Many video games are escapist in one sense or another and have to deal with the maximum agency afforded to the player, and in most cases we're talking about agency in the idealized, physical sense.  If the protagonist is not physically attractive or physically "able" (and this is to say nothing of the marginalizing of the physically handicapped or disabled in video games... perhaps a topic for future discussion), at the very least he/she is youthful... iconic of the kind of template for change and dynamic narrative-based character shifts we all look for in the classic bildungsroman that forms the basis for games ranging from Braid to Fable 2.

Been out of action for a while, so I'm catching up on some old news. I did the pre-order deal for Left 4 Dead 2 with three friends, which nets us a discount and the Scout's bat from Team Fortress 2 as a melee weapon. I'm genuinely impressed with what I've seen so far, so hopefully my purchase is justified. In effort to quell some the unrest over the release of the sequel so soon after the original, Valve recently flew two of the most prominent boycotters out to their headquarters for some hands-on time with the game. Now if I'm understanding this correctly, if I complain loudly enough about one of their games Valve will fly me out to their secret bunker and let me play it before anyone else. And so, I'd like to announce my boycott of Half Life 2: Episode 3....

I very much enjoy Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2. I have over 100 hours logged both games and I continue to play today. So, when I first heard the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 less than a year after the release of the original, my thoughts were of the skeptical variety. A sequel? Really? They hadn’t even released the map tools for the first game at the time. And where the hell is all the DLC Valve promised?

With all of the E3 craziness this week, I somehow forgot to post this footage of Left 4 Dead 2’s multiplayer in action.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out below.

Good news for gamers who love the zombie apocalypse. Valve has announced that Left 4 Dead 2 will be available on the Xbox 360 and PC on November 17th.

The sequel ups the ante from the original game, moving to a new locale with a new cast of survivors and features melee combat (the chainsaws look fun…), boss zombies, and like all sequels, is said to be bigger than the game that started it all.

"Gettin' good players is easy.  Gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part." -Casey Stengel

HIGH The frenzy of a tank battle in versus mode.

LOW When players quit in the middle of a match and I'm forced to deal with the CPU players.

WTF Since when is it healthy to chug an entire bottle of pills?

Romero's heroes

HIGH It might have taken fifteen years for someone to figure out that a zombie-killing FPS was a good idea, but at least the wait is finally over.

LOW Other than the fact that you actually get to kill zombies in it, there is nothing to recommend this game.

WTF Bombs that make loud beeping sounds make zombies attack the bombs. Car alarms that make loud beeping sounds make zombies attack me. What?