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What you'll get in the 'Back 4 Blood' open beta
This one is for Left 4 Dead fans and newcomers to the zombie shooter genre.
'Back 4 Blood' is delayed until October 12th
The spiritual successor to 'Left 4 Dead' was supposed to come out in June.
Valve is definitely not working on 'Left 4 Dead 3'
An HTC executive is learning first-hand about the dangers of making unsupported statements in your presentations. Valve has rejected speculation that it's working on a third Left 4 Dead game after Alvin Wang Graylin, HTC's president for Vive in China, posted a slide claiming that "LFD3" (along with Half-Life: Alyx) would spur demand for VR in 2020. The developer's staff are "absolutely not working on anything L4D related now, and haven't for years," according to a statement to IGN. While Valve did "briefly" look at a next-gen version of the co-op shooter a few years prior, there's nothing in the works now.
Co-operative horror shooter ‘GTFO’ hits Steam Early Access
After it was first announced three years ago, co-operative horror shooter GTFO is now available through Steam Early Access. If you haven't heard of this one before, it attempts to scratch the same itch as titles like Left 4 Dead, pitting you and three friends against hordes of monsters inside of an oppressive and dark underground facility. 10 Chambers Collective, a studio that includes several designers who worked on the Payday series, developed GTFO.
'Left 4 Dead' studio Turtle Rock returns with 'Back 4 Blood'
You're probably not going to get Left 4 Dead 3 any time soon, but you might get the next best thing. Original developer Turtle Rock Studios and Warner Bros. have announced Back 4 Blood, a team-based zombie shooter that aims to modernize the L4D concept with "new features and state-of-the-art technology." The game is so early that there isn't even a logo for it yet, but Turtle Rock said in an FAQ that it will be a "premium, AAA title" initially designed for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Super Time Force Ultra adds Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 characters
Capybara Games has turned the proverbial Valve, and now three characters drawn from Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 are pouring forth into the upcoming game, Super Time Force Ultra. Zoey from L4D uses twin pistols and propane tanks to destroy her foes, while the Pyro and Saxton Hale - both from TF2 - roast baddies with a flamethrower and punch them into oblivion, respectively. STFU (get it?) is an updated version of Capy's Super Time Force, which released earlier this year for Xbox 360 and Xbox One. We thought it was quite good, though not without flaws. Ultra adds not only the new characters mentioned above, but a new Ultra Force power mode and 50 Helladeck challenge levels. STFU will complete its journey through time and space and arrive on Steam on August 25. [Image: Capy Games]
Left 4 Dead: Survivors brings a new team to Japanese arcades
Taito unveiled the player characters for the Japanese arcade version of Left 4 Dead, and it's certainly a different type of crew to what's come before. The new heroes are (left to right) American bartender and ex-marine Jordan Blake, university student Yusuke Kudo, half-American, half-Japanese tour guide Sara Kirishima and high school student Hirose Haruka. The international mixture comes from the retained American setting, with the Japanese characters visiting the States on holiday - it's always a pain when you have to deal with a zombie outbreak on vacation. It's strikingly a younger cast compared to either Left 4 Dead game, and we wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone told us we were looking at Japan's version of Scooby Doo. Minus the dog, that is, which would be somewhat weird. Left 4 Dead: Survivors, as it's called, comes to test locations in Tokyo this weekend. To see how else it differs from the original, check out Taito's trailer and the much more involved user interface. [Image: Square Enix]
Left 4 Dead arcade's clean gameplay
The Taito Channel has a video featuring the Japanese arcade version of Valve's Left 4 Dead. The video looks pretty clean and like the co-op zombie game folks have been playing on their consoles and PC for years. After the break we've got a GIF of what the game reportedly looks like. Far more clutter on the screen. The only thing missing from the UI is somone popping up and exclaiming, "TOASTY!"
Left 4 Dead planned for arcade release in Japan
Arcade game manufacturer Taito has partnered with Valve to produce an arcade adaptation of Turtle Rock Studios' co-op zombie FPS Left 4 Dead in Japan. News of the tie-in arrives shortly after Taito announced "Project Z", a zombie-themed shooter due to hit arcades this year. The official Project Z site has since been updated with a Left 4 Dead logo and Valve copyright, though it's currently unknown whether Taito's upcoming Left 4 Dead: Seizansha-tachi (Left 4 Dead: Survivors) is an all-new spin-off or a modified adaptation of a previous game in the series. Taito previously struck up a partnership with Valve for Half-Life 2: Survivor, a sit-down cabinet release featuring elements from Half-Life 2 and its follow-up episodes. [Video: Taito / Valve]
Xbox 360 Ultimate Sale continues with FIFA 14, Skyrim, Dead Island: Riptide
It's day 3 of the Xbox 360 Ultimate Game Sale, and that means seven more discounts vying to divorce hard-earned cash from bank accounts. The big name games include FIFA 14, Skyrim, and Dead Island: Riptide, but the biggest discount of the day goes to Bejeweled 3; should you want your precious time consumed by addictive match-3 puzzling, the Arcade game is down by a whopping 93 percent to just over a buck. We've got today's one-day-only discounts in full below the break. Don't forget, there's also a collection of games staying on sale throughout the week, including a little-known gem by the name of Portal 2. Could be a sleeper hit, that game, so if you want to get ahead of the curve, it's two-thirds off at $9.89/£6.59/9.89 euros.
Why Left 4 Dead devs are sticking with 4 in 'Evolve'
When Valve first got its hands on Turtle Rock's Counter-Strike mod, Left 4 Dead, it tried upping the number of players from four to five or six, even after Turtle Rock said it wouldn't turn out well. Valve tried it and it didn't work out, and Left 4 Dead shipped with four playable characters. Evolve, Turtle Rock's next-gen monster shooter, sticks with four hunters fighting against one monster (hunters shown above). Turtle Rock isn't sure why four players works out best, but creative director Chris Ashton shared his theory with Game Informer: "What happens is there's a weird thing in that most people I think are able to track three friends. I can know that you're over here and you're in front of me and you're to my left. And I can keep that in my mind, and I can keep in my mind that you have 50 health and you have 80 health, and I can keep track of that and fight another team. But if it's four guys, it feels like I'm always losing one. I always don't know where someone is, I don't know where somebody's health is – keeping track of four other friends is too much." Those who play as the super-powered monster will have their hands full keeping tabs on all four enemies, Ashton said. "That's what makes it a challenge for him," he said. "As soon as you kill one guy and get one guy out of the picture, I think three humans are way easier to deal with and keep mental tabs on." Evolve is due out this fall for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. And speaking of Left 4 Dead – is that Bill on the far left in that image up there? Or the far right? Or do we just really miss Bill?
Left 4 Dead creator Turtle Rock developing co-op shooter Evolve
Publisher 2K Games has partnered with Left 4 Dead series developer Turtle Rock Studios for the upcoming release of the cooperative multiplayer first-person shooter Evolve for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms, Game Informer reports. Evolve first crawled out of the ooze in 2012 as a trademark filing by THQ. When that publisher went under the same year, the intellectual property was purchased by Take-Two Interactive at auction for $10.9 million, beating out the game's developer, Turtle Rock, which had tried to keep the game inside its own shell for $250,000. Evolve centers around a four-versus-one Hunt mode in which four teammates square off against a fifth player, who controls a powerful alien creature that grows stronger as matches progress. The cooperative/competitive gameplay dynamic defined Turtle Rock's Left 4 Dead games, which put players on opposing sides of a zombie apocalypse.
Valve measures sweat during Left 4 Dead play
Valve tinkers with a lot of things – whatever it feels like, mostly – but has a particular interest in biometrics and direct player feedback within games. At the Neurogaming Conference last week, Valve Experimental Psychologist (seriously, whatever if feels like) Mike Ambinder described a few tests he'd recently run, as reported by Venture Beat. In one test, Valve measured how much players sweat while playing Left 4 Dead, as correlated to their levels of arousal – just as Valve boss Gabe Newell specified back in March, concerning biometrics in the Steam Box. Another experiment gave players four minutes to shoot 100 enemies, and the game would move more quickly as the player showed signs of nervousness. Valve also created a successful version of Portal 2 controlled with players' eyeballs, but it was necessary to separate aiming and viewpoint – where your eyes are looking and where your head is facing – for that to work properly. The Steam Box will host some sort of biometric scheme, Newell said in that March interview. "What we've found is you can directly measure player state and it turns out to be very useful," Newell said. "You need to be able to directly measure how aroused the player is, what their heart rate is, things like that, in order to continue to offer them a new experience each time they play."
Steam Holiday Sale, day 9: Assassin's Creed, Prototype, Left 4 Dead franchises and more
The majority of mainstream shopping holidays have now reached a complete stop, but the sales live on – especially in the case of Valve's annual Steam Holiday Sale, which today enters its ninth day of dealing out discounted digital sundries.PC gamers can save 25 to 75 percent on every game in the Assassin's Creed series, 75/50 percent off Prototype and Prototype 2 respectively, get Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 for a cold dead $7.49, Limbo for a spooky $2.49, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion for an astronomically low $13.59 and Just Cause 2 for a justified $3.74.Yesterday's deals also remain active for another 20 hours or so, including LA Noire for $4.99, FTL for $4.99 and 33 percent off XCOM: Enemy Unknown. As always, flash sales and community choice sales change throughout the day.
Valve says NVIDIA's the best, Steam and Left 4 Dead for Linux coming along nicely
The godfather of Linux, Linus Torvalds, may think that NVIDIA is "the worst," but Valve respectfully disagrees. The company has been working closely with the manufacturer, as well as AMD and Intel, to boost performance of its hardware under the open source OS. The developer clearly has an interest in getting the best from those companies as it works to port Left 4 Dead 2 and Steam to Linux. That close partnership is already bearing impressive fruit as Valve claims its co-op zombie shooter now performs better on Ubuntu than it does under Windows 7 using a GeForce GTX 680. The first Open GL Linux version managed a measly six frames per second, while the Direct X powered Microsoft one was topping 270. Only a few months later, and Left 4 Dead 2 is hitting 315fps on the 32-bit version of Precise Pangolin, outperforming even the Open GL Windows port which sits at 305fps. Of course, it's relatively well established that Ubuntu has lower overhead and running Direct X only compounds the issue, though, its unparalleled driver support can't be denied. While it's not completely fair to compare performance on a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit one, Valve is proving that gaming on Linux need not be some proof-of-concept exercise. Linus can flip NVIDIA the bird all he wants but, through its work with Valve, it may be doing more to bring Linux to the mainstream than anyone previously has.
Left 4 Dead fan short is 'Seriously' gory
Seriously Left 4 Dead is a new fan short revolving around three characters that seem to hate each other as much as they do the zombies. Watch this one in the comfort of your own home, unless your office approves of excessive swearing and blood-filled zombie heads popping all over your monitor.
Left 4 Dead running on Vita via PlayStation Mobile is pretty Suite
The wizard digitalarts001 has made it possible to run Left 4 Dead with motion controls on the PS Vita, via remote desktop play and PlayStation Mobile (formerly "Suite"). The above video provides a magical demonstration of L4D on Vita, appearing to run smoothly even when motion controls are activated by the player pressing the left trigger and mumbling an incantation in broken Latin, we assume.A remote desktop application is just one of the homebrew innovations we can expect from PlayStation Mobile, but it may be one of the most important: When players can make their own games suddenly appear on the Vita, Sony won't have to create any of its own titles. Now you're thinking with Portals, Sony. Speaking of....
Cold Stream DLC for L4D2 making waves on July 24
Cold Stream, the massive, much-anticipated and acceptably murderous DLC pack for Left 4 Dead 2, is set to launch on PC, Mac and Xbox 360 on July 24. Cold Stream includes a fan-made campaign, and ports of Left 4 Dead's Death Toll, Dead Air, Blood Harvest and Crash Course levels.Cold Stream first entered beta in March 2011 and is still open for PC and Mac on Steam, making this launch more of an official, polishing update for those platforms. Valve initially said Cold Stream would launch "some time after Portal 2," and really, it's not as if they were wrong about that one. Clever, Valve. Clever.
Valve Source Filmmaker makes a movie out of any Source game, now you're directing with Portals (video)
Creating machinima with a video game engine usually requires accepting one of two truths: either that it will require a lot of fudging or that it will have all the sophistication of playing with action figures. Valve Software isn't very happy with that dichotomy, which is why it's posting its very own movie-making tool, Source Filmmaker, as a public beta. Any game that runs on the Source engine, whether it's Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 or another in the family, can have gameplay run-throughs edited and dissected right down to custom facial expressions. As Valve expounds in the video after the break, throwing a gaming-grade PC at the task gives directors the advantage of seeing exactly how any changes will look in the final scene; there's no rough wireframes or pre-rendering here. Budding Francis Ford Coppolas can sign up for an invitation to the Filmmaker beta at the project page. If you'd just like to see how far someone can go with the end results, we've also included the latest Team Fortress 2 character profile video, Meet the Pyro, after the jump.
Payday: The Heist - No Mercy sets the scene for Left 4 Dead [Update: It's 'not canon,' Valve clarifies]
A trailer posted by Overkill Software (since pulled) revealed the collaboration between Overkill and Valve as Payday: The Heist - No Mercy, a Payday game (either a new standalone release or a DLC expansion, it's unclear which) that crosses Overkill's heist series with Left 4 Dead.The trailer reveals that the episode will act as a prequel for Valve's zombie shooting series, with a heist in Left 4 Dead's Mercy Hospital. "Have you ever wondered how the Left 4 Dead series began?" the YouTube description asks. "It started with a heist!" So by playing this, you'll very likely trigger the zombie pandemic in those two games. Real nice, butterfingers.Update: Valve's Chet Faliszek has clarified to Kotaku that the YouTube video isn't a prequel, saying the video description was the work of "some over-excited marketing guys." The map is a Overkill mission "simply set in no mercy hospital," he says. It is not part of the Left 4 Dead narrative in any way.
