Conclusion
We hope you’ve enjoyed the footage. A couple things:
- The tooltip popup things are awesome. They show up less and less as you play more, and if you didn’t have them first-time players including experienced gamers would get lost in the chaos.
- They made the change where closing a door locks it automatically. This is very handy.
- Unlimited pistol ammo is absolutely necessary. I ran out of ammo so many times, if I ended up running out of pistol it’d just be ridiculous. You’re punished enough from running out of main weapon ammo.
- The pipe bomb is amazing. It’s a great tool for bad situations.
- As you’ve seen from the opening cinematic, the new Survivor designs work out really great. They have a lot of personality and I am perfectly happy with them, even if Zoey is less attractive.
- There are no voice wheels at all in the Xbox 360 version, and the wheel that alerted teammates to Boomer/Hunter/boss infected has been taken out of the PC version (it’s all automatic now). You still have the other two wheels which I use quite often in the videos.
- Propane tanks, oxygen tanks and gas cans are awesome pickup weapons that are distributed randomly throughout the maps
- Boomer vomit is green. Our second design had green Boomer vomit even when it was actually red. We called it.
- As mentioned, closer proximity to an enemy means you do more damage with the weapon. Very useful fact to know vs. the Tank and Witch.
- Headshot gibs are awesome.
- Both Frogopus and I are terrible at Xbox 360 shooters, but split-screen co-op is really nice.
We flew to California to Valve South wondering whether the game we fell in love with so long ago was still the same.
It’s certainly a lot prettier, much more refined, and thankfully is still the same Left 4 Dead.
It is intense, fast-paced, thrilling, exhilarating, and exhausting. I am still in awe over how fun and unique of an experience it offers. It is challenging, and I certainly failed quite a bit. I screamed, cursed, laughed, and cried, and definitely loved every single second of it.
To put it simply, this is the game I’ve always wanted.
Big thanks to Valve for everything – you guys are super cool. Make sure to keep checking Left 4 Dead 411 for all your Left 4 Dead news, information and strategy. Post on the forums. We’ll have our Versus impressions in the near future, and look forward to playing with you in the demo or after November 18th.
