Release Dates

11/20/08

TBA

11/7/08

TBA

Left 4 Dead is a cooperative survivor horror game where four survivors must work together to escape a city teeming with an overwhelming number of the infected. This new team-based game pits small teams of humans against "the infected," which are hordes of ordinary people transformed into mindless killing machines by a mysterious virus that has spread throughout the game's various environments.

Players can choose to play the human survivors or the 'infected'. In a cool twist, the 'infected' are essentially 'boss' characters with specific skills that differentiate themselves from the normal 'zombies' that populate the gameworld that makes life difficult for the humans.

For example, the 'boomer' can vomit blood on his victim, which attracts hordes of infected to this victim. The 'smoker', meanwhile, has a 50-foot tongue that can pull a survivor out of position or even leave them hanging.

The campaigns are a connected and evolving set of maps. Like Counter-Strike, the design goal is to create interesting areas that will allow for extended replay value. Unlike Counter-Strike, the maps in each campaign are connected and lead to an eventual finale that the survivors are challenged to reach and complete. And along the way, player stats are collected and displayed at given intervals.

The only "story" elements in the game are the differing goals of each campaign, which are all of the "survive-and-escape" variety.