Jokes & boycotts aside, Left 4 Dead is still very much alive.  Valve are releasing ‘The Sacrifice’ DLC in October (for both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2) and, in typical Valve fashion, they’re doing it in a spectacular way.

This time, we get a humongous comic graphic novel, granularly released over 4 weeks, documenting the aftermath of the military rescue at the end of Blood Harvest, the origin of the plague & the survivors plight.

Episode 1 features Louis.  His first encounter with a zombie is on the loo, which may very well explain his demeanour.

Read … Read More...

We’re hoping to get our Left 4 Dead 2 review out soon, but other commitments have held that up.  Now the excuses are done, it’s time to mention the first DLC pack for the zombie co-op sequel.

Zoey, Bill, Francis and Louis are due to appear in the first pack, which goes by the name ‘The Passing’ and features new single & multiplayer content for the game on both formats.

Pricing is currently ambiguously ‘TBA’, but will probably follow the old ‘free for PC, chargeable for Xbox 360 because Microsoft smell’ pattern, unless Valve are ready to trigger yet another … Read More...

Set between (fan favourite) No Mercy & Death Toll, Crash Course attempts to copy L4D2′s practice of linking the narrative of the campaigns by explaining how the duo trio erm, four survivors end up in the middle of nowhere following their rooftop escape from Mercy Hospital.

The campaign covers just two maps and is designed for quick-fire Versus games (as opposed to the more drawn-out marathon maps included).

Crash Course is available for free on PC via Steam … Read More...

Those lovable scamps at GameTrailers have the exclusive on the Survivor Pack add-on for Left 4 Dead (skip to the final chapter if you don’t care about the GTAIV DLC).

There’s no footage of the new Survival mode (just lots of Dead Air & Death Toll Versus gameplay), but it turns out it is basically everything we expected – Gears of War 2 Horde mode in L4D clothing.  Teams of players will compete on a worldwide leader board to survive the longest, with Source playing its usual ‘track every stat under the sun’ trick to make sure that my friend … Read More...

The survival pack includes a new multiplayer mode funnily enough called Survival (no details yet on what that entails, we’re waiting to hear back from Valve on this one) and two more campaigns for Versus mode (the two that were missing from launch).  There will also be a new retail bundle including all this content.

Also in the spring Valve will release the Software Development Kit for L4D … Read More...

Alongside a raft of much-demanded tweaks and fixes, major changes include the buffing of the Hunter’s pounce move, general improvements to the Smoker class to make it useful and wholesale rejigging of Extra-Special Infected spawn management in the Versus mode (basically meaning more consistent Tanks & Witches for the unlucky humans to fight!)

Full list of improvements after the jump

Left 4 Dead Update Released

January 14, 2009, 5:11 pm – Jason

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First up, Blues News are carrying news of an announcement on the Bethesda Forum that the first proper patch for Fallout 3 (cunningly carrying the moniker v1.1) is now available via auto-update on Games for Windows: Live, Xbox Live & the Playstation Network.

UPDATE – Manual patches are now available at your favourite download repository, but there’s still no word on how long until the patch hits Steam.

Secondly, … Read More...

Because we’re having a slow news time, what with there being a typical post-christmas lull, a global recession and nothing but a load of announcements & promises in the form of press releases (coupled with the fact we forgot to do it in 2008), here’s the CNS Best of 2008

On the contrary, Barry (the site overlord) and myself (the lowly news goat) will have differing tastes and opinions, meaning one central mega-list would be unfeasibly messy (and, of course, since I’m writing the article, his opinions would just be wrong!).

As a result, what follows can only be described … Read More...

Whether it is down to George Romero’s genre-defining Dead series, setting a standard that many have followed, or just the parallels we can all draw with them (they are, after all, just human…  only a bit dead), nobody knows, but we love ‘em all the same, with their snarly but vacant faces, … Read More...

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