L4D Videos, Podcasts, and Mints - 7/23/08

GameSpot has released their interview with Doug Lombardi about Left 4 Dead taken during E3 2008. It is over 12 minutes long and you can find it here or just watch it embedded below. You should watch it because it has footage of the first map of the Farmhouse level. You also have to watch console commands being typed in to show off the pipe bomb at 4:35, but eventually it gets to more gameplay footage of the Hospital. Doug is asked about the new character models and also refers to the scenarios/campaigns as 'movies' many times. The best news from the interview is that when explaining how many maps there will be, he explains that Versus mode maps will be "remixes" of the 20 co-op maps (4 scenarios, 5 maps each).

Thanks to community member Dead Fish for the following information: two podcasts have come out that both speak of Left 4 Dead. The first is from Giant Bombcast and takes place between 41:26 and 46:04. They talk about the new characters and the difficulty of the game: at the time they played Left 4 Dead, at the end of day 3 at E3, no press had beaten the Hospital scenario. This is really great to hear, and one of the guys even said it was tougher than it was the last time he had played. Another guy on the podcast said he didn't think the dynamic difficulty was working correctly, and it's unfortunate but it seems like the impression that people got from Gabe Newell's E3 presentation was that the AI Director is for making the game easier for people who are doing worse. Mike set the record straight in the recent Maximum PC interview, and we hope the point continues to be driven that the Director isn't just to make the game easier when you're doing worse.

The second podcast that Dead Fish told us about is from Sarcastic Gamer and takes place between 27:49 and 29:50. They mention that Gears of War 2 and Left 4 Dead are releasing on practically the same day, which is unfortunate. They liked the game, and also said that there's an option when setting up the game to have all-chat on. The last bit of the podcast pertaining to Left 4 Dead deals with L4D mints pictured here:

You can read their story here, but basically Valve brought too many mints to E3 and gave them a bunch of them. One guy that did get them at E3 is selling his on eBay, but Sarcastic Gamer is choosing to include them in any purchase of a Sarcastic Gamer t-shirt ($16) or mousepad ($6). Needless to say, I have a mousepad incoming and will let you know if they deliver the goods. Finally, MTV Multiplayer says that Left 4 Dead was good and felt finished.