Well, this wouldn't be the gaming forum if we didn't talk about games; and boy, do we have a good one here!
Left 4 Dead is a FPS Zombie game with 4 player co-op, where you take the part of four zombie apocalypse survivors trying to.. survive. The catch of this game is all zombie spawns and encounters are dynamic over the campaign and controlled by probably the best AI for games ever.
The AI Director controls when where and how often you get attacked by zombies and it all depends on how worked you feel at the current moment. If it just sent huge waves from all directions attacking you, it'll probably lay off you for a few moments before sucking you back into the zombie slaughtering action. Throughout the campaign the Director will also bring some pretty awesome "boss" zombies to attack you when it feels like it's good to do so. The following descriptions are ripped from Wikipedia:
* The Boomer is a hugely obese Infected that can spew projectile vomit at the Survivors, blinding them and attracting swarms of nearby Infected to them. Boomers blow up when they die, spraying nearby Survivors with blood that also attracts the Infected.
* The Hunter is an agile Infected who can climb walls and jump over rooftops, similar to I Am Legend Infected and Half-Life 2's Fast Zombie. Crouching for some time gives the Hunter access to a powerful pounce attack that pins a Survivor down until the Hunter is knocked off.
* The Smoker has a long, whip-like tongue that can strangle Survivors and drag them away from their team mates, similar to Half-Life's Barnacle and Resident Evil's Licker. When in danger, it can leave a haze of black smoke, distorting the Survivors' vision.
* The Tank, a huge, muscular but noisy Infected, is capable of throwing large items - such as cars - or blocks of concrete. The Tank can take a large amount of damage before dying and can deal a lot of damage. Also, the tank has a "Frustration Meter" which means that control will be taken away from a human player if the Tank does not engage the survivors for a certain time.
* The Witch is the only mutant Infected that cannot be played by human players and appears in all difficulty modes. They are normally passive and can be avoided by careful players, but flashlight beams, physical contact, and loud sounds such as gunfire or car alarms in their vicinity rouses them. Witches can strike a Survivor down in one hit and can take a large amount of damage.
Not only is there the co-op game mode, there is also what I call counter-co-op (they call it versus mode). There's the four survivors as normal, but there's also an additional 4 players who take the part of the boss zombies working together to kill the survivors. Yep.
I highly recommend you guys take a look at some of the videos of gameplay, it's really really awesome.
Left 4 Dead is available on Steam for prepurchase for $44.99 USD (Normal price is $49.99 (10% off if you preorder)). The release date is set for November 18th in North America. Should you preorder through Steam, or GameStop/EBGames, you'll get early access to the demo tomorrow (Thursday, November 6th, 2008) instead of the normal November 11th that every else gets.
I hope that at least some of you get this, I'd love to play with x86.
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_4_DeadVideos:
http://left4dead411.com/left-4-dead-nov5-preview-3http://left4dead411.com/left-4-dead-nov5-preview-4http://left4dead411.com/left-4-dead-nov5-preview-5
