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'Back 4 Blood' is delayed until October 12th
The spiritual successor to 'Left 4 Dead' was supposed to come out in June.
Check your mail, Evolve alpha invites are out in the wild
You may want to investigate your inbox for signs of evolution, because 2K announced it's sent out invites for the Evolve alpha. According to images posted online, the alpha PC test will run this weekend between Friday, August 1 and Sunday, August 3. If you signed up but didn't get an invite, 2K says there'll be more opportunities in "future alphas." In the meantime, you can live Turtle Rock's Kraken-cracking shooter through our video preview. In it, Editor-in-Chief Ludwig Kietzmann describes the game as similar to that Jurassic Park scene where Robert Muldoon is alone hunting the velociraptor, but now there are four Robert Muldoons and the velociraptor is Godzilla. But no Jeff Goldblum, sadly. If you'd rather wait for the game proper, Evolve hits PS4, Xbox One and PC on October 21. [Image: 2K]
Evolve launches in fall, pre-orders open today
Evolve, the four-on-one shooter from Left 4 Dead creator Turtle Rock and publisher 2K, will launch this fall for Xbox One, PS4 and PC, with pre-orders open now. Order the game through Amazon, Best Buy, Gamestop, Target, Toys R Us or Wal Mart to receive the Monster Expansion Pack, which includes the Savage Goliath skin at launch (for the game's first monster, Goliath), and adds a new monster once that's released later on. All pre-orders are available here. In Evolve, four hunters take on one monster – the hunters are playable in first-person, while the monster is third-person. There are four hunter classes: Trapper, Support, Assault and Medic. As a monster, players will have "savage abilities and an animalistic sense," Turtle Rock says.
THQ's new head promises no more job cuts, but 'everything is up for change'
For a guy who's only been on the job for a dozen days, newly appointed THQ president Jason Rubin is awfully comfortable answering very specific questions. He probably should be, given his title, but it was impressive nonetheless that he was able to speak with such specificity to nebulous projects like Guillermo del Toro's planned "Insane" trilogy. "Currently it's still in the slate," Rubin told Joystiq in an E3 interview. That doesn't mean the barely detailed project is a sure thing, of course. THQ will be "a different company" in the next year or two, according to Rubin. Will ambitious projects like Insane make the cut?"I'm taking every project as clay, a clay statue that's been built. It's not nearly been completed. It can be augmented, it can be shrunk, it can be changed. Everything is up for change to make the best possible product that could be," Rubin said.With THQ's financial troubles as of late, it's fair to wonder if the trilogy will ever materialize, not to mention Turtle Rock's unnamed FPS project, or THQ Montreal's new IP. "I'm well aware of the other projects that are kind of in what you would call 'nebulous states' (though internally they may not be so nebulous)," Rubin said. "I have to go around and look at everything over the next few weeks, next month, and I have to then decide which of the titles are the titles we're gonna focus on based on what I believe our future should be."Thankfully for THQ's employees (approximately 1,750 as of March 31, 2011), the coming change within the publisher doesn't mean a reckoning. "We have the appropriate number of teams and the appropriate number of people working on products, and we're not gonna be continuing to cut teams," Rubin told us. "But as far as product goes, I think we'll have to find out exactly where that's going."
Left 4 Dead 4 November
You've been 4-warned. Valve's PC and Xbox 360 zombie apocalypse sim, Left 4 Dead, will be overturning store shelves in a frantic search for essential supplies on November 4th. We highly recommend that you and three of your best friends shoot through the throbbing, mindless masses of a dilapidated modern society, if only so you can get home quicker and load up the game. Be sure to read our hands-on impressions before you brave the undead hordes. And for heaven's sake, never go back for the dog. That's just stupid.%Gallery-22771%
Valve: Left4Dead will come to PS3 if another dev wants to port it
Valve's multiplayer survival-horror romp Left4Dead is due out later this year, but it won't be coming to the PlayStation 3. Said Valve's Doug Lombardi, "We're not PS3 developers -- we're doing PC and 360 like with Orange Box" (Via CVG). He said that Valve would consider a PS3 port if L4D ends up a success and if another dev wanted "to take on that investment and risk" to port the game.Lombardi explained that the PS3 port of Orange Box came about after Electronic Arts offered to do the port -- and we've all heard the story of that one.
Valve acquires Left4Dead dev Turtle Rock Studios
Valve Corporation today announced that it has acquired Turtle Rock Studios, developers of the upcoming zombie survival game Left 4 Dead. The company has also contributed various maps for Counter-Strike: Source, including a remake of cs_militia. Given Turtle Rock's close relationship with Valve, we're not too surprised by this move. Previously, Valve has hired developers of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Narbacular Drop, the latter title serving as a spiritual precursor for Portal.Left 4 Dead, originally announced November 2006 and utilizing the Source Engine, is a four-player co-op game where a team of survivors take on a horde of zombies and four player-controlled "super zombies." It is slated for release later this year.
Video: Shaky Left 4 Dead zombownage
Video footage has surfaced from the showdownLAN of the upcoming PC and Xbox 360 zombie vs. human shooter, Left 4 Dead. Brought to us by Turtle Rock Studios and Valve, who made a little ditty called Counter-Strike. The video above shows four survivors fighting off a bunch of the Infected. Gameplay looks fast, furious, and bloody. Not shown in the video are the "Super Infected' which are more formidable than the fodder shown above. We'll be sure to keep a keen eye on this as more details emerge.[Via Joystiq]
Today's most interesting shaky cam footage: Left 4 Dead at showdownLAN
Footage from showdownLAN has surfaced on showing off a public playtest of Left 4 Dead, an ambitious zombie-centric -esque team game from Turtle Rock Studios (Counter-Strike) and Valve. Four survivors take on waves of the Infected (think 28 Days Later) and four Super Infected as they make their way to a helicopter landing point.Shown in the clip is footage from four player-controlled survivors. Though the Super Infected can also be player-controlled, we don't have any video of that in action. There is, however, a moment where you can spot The Smoker strangling a survivor with its tongue. The video is grainy and shaky at times, but it's the best we've got on this so-far reclusive game.Left 4 Dead 411 has impressions from people who attended showdownLAN, as well as a gallery of the event. The game is due out this summer for PC and this winter for Xbox 360. Video embedded after the break.
Left 4 Dead: co-op zombie slaying action [update 2]
Let's talk about great game conventions. Let's see, there's guns. Everyone likes those. Zombies, gotta love zombies. What else? Ooh, co-op. There's nothing like good co-op. Turtle Rock Studios, the team behind the AI bots in Counter-Strike, looks to combine all of these things in one glorious package with their latest offering, Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead puts players in the middle of a contemporary setting in which an incredibly virulent strain of rabies has overtaken the general populace. So, we're not dealing with zombies per se, but definitely crazed people with a penchant for biting their neighbors. Players will create a group of four different survivors, each with different personalities and backgrounds, and fight for survival. Players will cooperate in a survival horror setting, blasting their way through several different "campaigns" which are essentially a series of connected maps that end in a final standoff as players wait for rescue. But here's the twist: the enemies (the "infected") are playable as well. Whereas the human survivors have the same basic weapons and skills, the infected are divided into classes. Some enemies can vomit blood to attract other infected, others can reel in survivors with a long tongue, and the "tank" class can even power through concrete walls. Finally, Turtle Rock claims that their next gen AI technology will allow human players to drop in and out of the game without affecting the overall experience or restarting the scenario.The idea of playing an online enabled, co-op survival horror game with playable enemies is positively dreamy (though not exactly original). If all that wasn't enough, the game is expected to hit the 360 by the end of 2007. Looks like we might have one more to put up on the big board.[Via Xboxygen] Update: Replaced crappy not moving image with awesome trailer. Thanks for spotting this, Mike.Update 2: Turtle Rock implemented bots into CS. They didn't create the game.
