5) Teamwork

Three guys and a Mohawk Elf

HVZ is the perfect way to brush up on your teamwork. When plotting against a Zombie horde, only the strongest and smartest of teams will survive. This means planning, meetings, secret codes, secret hand signals, secret boxers, etc…. Everyone who has played Left 4 Dead knows that teamwork is essential. No one can be that idiot who rushes ahead and leaves the rest of the team in the dust. Because that idiot is going to be a Zombie, and that’s no good.

4)Community

Chevy Chase and Friends!

The thing that really hooked me the first time I participated in HVZ was the sense of community it inspires. It is like joining a secret club. A cool one though, like the Avengers. Not like the secret garden. That club sucks. I can’t tell you how many friends I made playing HVZ. It brings people together, bonded by the fear of a life spent in want of brains.

3)Nerf Guns

Compensating

Lets face it, the coolest thing about being a kid is being able to play with toys all the time with no one trying to tell you things like “you’re to old for that”, or “you can’t play scuba in the ball pit when you have a beard sir”. So one of the perks of HVZ is being able to play with Nerf guns all the time. Today’s kids have it good. These guns are nuts. The N-Strike series is amazing. Plus you can take out the air restrictors out of them and hit an unsuspecting Zombie in the face. No better feeling than that.

2) Zombies

Just rushing to get that new Taylor Swift album

Zombies are totally in right now. Video Games, Movies, Books; You just can’t seem to escape them. When you think about it, why would you even want to. Zombies are awesome. They are monsters that want nothing but brains. Simple and pure. Pure evil. Seriously they don’t understand emotions anymore so there is no reasoning with them. Just brains.

1)Nerf Ax

TADA!

You remember at the top when I said that players compete in missions. Well the purpose of those missions is to win privileges. One of those privileges is the ability to use melee weapons. Imagine facing the Zombie Horde with that beauty. It is sweet my friends, sweet indeed.

Ever looked at your boring old Windows desktop and thought: ‘I really wish I could be playing Left 4 Dead right now’. Come on, admit it, we’ve all been there. But now thanks to UltraBE and the excellent free desktop customisation software Rainmeter you can feel like you’re in the game when you’re going about your mundane day-to-day office working duties. Word processing has never looked so good.

For full instructions and the theme download head on over to UltraBE’s deviantART Left 4 Dead HUD Desktop.

[Via LifeHacker]

Where have the Teletubbies gone? To the grave.  But just like they keep saying, they will keep coming back “again, again! Again again!” like zomibes.  So kill them all with this L4D mod.

[L4DMods]

Great job Elianora!

You knew it was going to happen sooner or later. First there was Left 4 Head (no I’m not supplying the link) and now this.  Unlike most other animal species, humans have sex for pleasure. Other species “do it” for survival. I guess this mod technically takes care of both. The human in you gets to stare at a barely clothed Zoey, while the monkey in you is trying to survive the never ending waves of zombies that are coming right for you.

The perv in you will click here to download it.

Update: Since many pervs are fapping the l4dmods.com server too hard right now, here’s an alternate link.

One of the more notable post-E3 stories is the backlash that Valve has felt from it’s community in regards to the announcement of a sequel to the massively successful Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead 2 is slated for a November 17, 2009 release date, just one year after it’s predecessor. Is this really enough time to warrant a full fledged sequel? Hit the read link to find out more.

Shortly following the game’s revealing at Microsoft’s E3 press conference, a Steam community group named “L4D2 Boycott (NO-L4D2)” was formed. This group, which now has over 25,000 members, is refusing to purchase Left 4 Dead 2. Their reasoning? The changes being made to Left 4 Dead 2 are not enough to warrant an entirely new game. This, along with the promise of more DLC for Left 4 Dead has the community dumb founded as to why Valve is releasing an entirely new game. The boycott group states that by not releasing this new content as a downloadable addition to the original game, Valve will cause a schism among Left 4 Dead community members, potentially hurting both games.

Valve is a company that prides itself in constantly supporting and updating their games long after being released (Team Fortress 2 has received many free updates since it’s 2007 release). They are also a company that is not known for their timely releases of sequels. Half-Life 2 was released six years after the original and Team Fortress 2 was released nearly 8 years after Team Fortress Classic. So why are they leaving the original Left 4 Dead in the dust so quickly? Some critics believe it is a get rich quick scheme, claiming Valve is trying to bank in on this franchise’s popularity as quickly as possible.

Valve has promptly responded to the wave of negative feedback surrounding the game’s announcement. Chet Faliszek, writer for Left 4 Dead 2, is asking gamers to trust Valve, assuring that there is just too much new content for a downloadable update. Left 4 Dead 2 will now feature melee weapons. Baseballs bats, axes, frying pans, and chainsaws will now all be available to assist you in decimating hordes of zombies. To compliment this new slew of melee weapons, there is now zombie dismemberment. So for example if you were to chop a Common infected in the arm with an axe then it’s arm would come off. This particular feature makes Left 4 Dead 2 a lot gorier than it’s predecessor. For a full briefing on all the new aspects of the game, watch this interview with Valve’s Chet Faliszek below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With all these new features, combined with the core game play that made the original so popular, is Left 4 Dead 2 worth the price of admission? At this point it seems a little unfair to make a judgement either way. Not all the details about the game have been revealed yet. No one is afraid that Left 4 Dead 2 will be a bad game. In fact, with an industry that’s currently over saturated with crappy Wii games and generic, space marine first person shooters, Left 4 Dead 2 will likely stand out as one of the better games to come out in 2009. However, ultimately it is up to you, the consumer, to purchase or not purchase the game. Valve isn’t holding a gun to your head, at least not yet anyway.

Location is now in New Orleans and with added chainsaw, axe and frying pan action!

This Friday only, Valve and Steam are letting you play the super popular PC zombie apocalypse game for free for 24 hours! If you haven’t tried this game yet and were curious about it, here’s your chance.  You’ve got nothing to lose! Except for time installing and playing the game.  But that’s part of the fun!

Go to [VALVE]

Unless you’ve been (un)dead for the past year, Left 4 Dead should be nothing explosively new to you.

Valve’s zombie-shooter for PC and Xbox 360 puts you and three other survivors against horde after horde of those delightfully infected humans. And your only objective is to survive. Although Left 4 Dead was released back in November 2008, it’s obvious that the game is still freshly consuming gamer brain after gamer brain, especially after Night Zero’s L5D photo shoot. Valve has recently released the first official DLC pack, Survival Mode, this past Tuesday, April 21. Unlike most DLC packs, it was surprisingly released free of charge.

Survival Mode is unlike the Campaign and Versus modes, where you and your team must battle through legions in order to reach the level’s designated safe zone. Instead, you are placed on an enclosed area, a modified version of a campaign stage, fighting swarm after swarm of zombies as you attempt to hold out for as long as you can. Areas like the Warehouse from the Blood Harvest scenario and the Airport Terminal from Dead Air have been converted into arenas for a zombie battle royale.

So go ahead, zombie. Make my night.

There are 16 survival maps in total, 15 of which are modified versions of areas from the campaign, such as the church from Death Toll. The 16th map is brand new, made specifically for Survival Mode called Last Stand, a lighthouse arena, which is quite impressive. Aside from the Survival Mode, the DLC pack also includes Versus Mode versions of the Death Toll and Dead Air scenarios, which were previously only available in campaign mode.

One minor complaint when it comes to weapons and ammunition is the placement of the extra ammo. Your only weapons cache is found around the center of the stage, the ammo surrounded by a hunter’s rifle, an M4 carbine and an automatic shotgun. During the planning stage, it’s simple to take your time and stock up on ammo if need be. However, in the heat of combat, it is quite simple to change weapons on accident, costing you time that you don’t really have. This isn’t an issue in Campaign, where most weapons caches are usually found in safe houses where there are no zombies. It isn’t really a glaring issue and can be resolved by managing your ammunition and taking advantage of the pistol’s unlimited ammo.

Left 4 Dead is a game that is clearly intended for a multiplayer experience. While the friendly AI is definitely a competent ally in single player, more enjoyment comes out of coordinating an attack with friends. The enemy AI is no slouch either, offering relentless, unpredictable attack patterns, thanks in part to the main AI, dubbed The Director, which controls enemy and weapons spawn points based on player progress and performance. As such, the game play retains a fresh edge for each experience. In addition to regular infected humans, you have the special zombies, such as the brutish Tank, the bulbous Boomer, the passive but deadly Witch, the rabid Hunter, and the Smoker, named for the cloud of smoke it leaves behind.

Left 4 Dead definitely mixes up the survival horror genre, offering gameplay that is both pulse pounding and relentless. The new Survival Mode is definitely a welcome addition, adding to the pulse pounding nature of the game. If you’ve shelved Left 4 Dead and moved onto other things (shame on you by the way), you might want to consider resurrecting your copy and giving Survival Mode a go. It’s relentlessly brutal and bound to keep you on your toes for a while. Let’s just hope the next DLC pack (if there is one), lives up to this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Night Zero Presents: Left 5 Dead

 

To see the photos from the first photo set, click this.