GameVideos has released a nearly 7 minute video of a straight playthrough of the first map of the Hospital campaign and GameSpot has posted an interview with Doug Lombardi, also showing some new footage. Both videos are well worth your time, but only those with GameSpot Total Access can watch the HD version of their interview.
The 7 minute video by GameVideos shows the Survivors for the most part getting torn apart, with plenty of them getting choked and mauled and whooped on. Louis again seems to get singled out and meets an unfortunate (although not unexpected) demise after a giant horde of infected gets their hands and feet on him. The voice acting and sounds are all great, and many that we haven’t heard before are present. My favorite line is near the end, after us as viewers are watching the team go in and back out and back into the saferoom, until finally Francis yells “LOCK THE GOD DAMN DOOR!”. We hope this isn’t just coincidence and that the characters will react realistically and emotionally to the specific situations they’re put into. Another little detail to notice is that pistols now have unlimited ammo, and the standout disappearing of zombie corpses that was present in the Cornfield video on G4TV seems to have been very much improved.
The interview with Doug Lombardi is of poor quality for us non-subscribers, but we still managed to make out the fact that Louis gets ripped apart several times by the Hunter. Lombardi estimates that the SDK for Left 4 Dead will be released a few weeks after launch.
The most frightening part of the interview is when Lombardi repeats what he said in a previous interview about the two different modes. From what we understand, Left 4 Dead is no longer the same – it is not 4 Survivors trying to make their way through a campaign fighting against 4 player-controlled boss zombies. Lombardi says that there are now two distinct modes, one is “campaign mode” which is L4D with ONLY AI-controlled boss zombies, and the other is called “deathmatch mode” where 4 Survivors fight against 4 player-controlled boss zombies. There are no details available at this time on deathmatch mode, but being called “deathmatch” leads us to believe it has little in common with what we’ve all come to know as L4D. Having followed the game since announcement, this is the first real “WTF?!” moment. We’re deeply disappointed if this is the case and hope that we get some good explanation why the game suddenly changed so dramatically.
You can check out all videos released on Left 4 Dead in our Left 4 Dead videos section.
