Two new hands-on previews! - 3/2/07

Eurogamer.net has a first impression of Left 4 Dead up. Great article, go read it now. The new specific information it gives is the following:

"You begin with a pistol and your choice of shotgun or submachine gun, and Molotov or pipe bomb. Later in the level you can add a second pistol and upgrade to an auto shotgun, heavy assault rifle or sniper rifle, but that's it - Left 4 Dead's weaponry is as resolutely unfancy as its backstory."

The witch only appears on normal difficulty and above (two levels exist above that). It says that on normal difficulty the Valve testers survive about 20 percent of the time. This is perhaps the greatest news yet. It had been a worry that AI enemies (even with 4 humans controlling some) wouldn't pose as much of a challenge as humans such as in competitive games (CS:S). If there is no real challenge there wouldn't be any real reason to continually play it.. rejoice!

This is not just a one trick weekend. CVG also has a new preview. It mentions the melee attack, and specifically that it can be "used as a stealth kill if you catch an Infected unaware." Awesome. This article also talks about the challenge that the AI poses, all the better! Go read the two articles and feed (temporarily) your hunger for infected-killing goodness.