Sunday Left 4 Dead Update - 11/2/08

Lots of Left 4 Dead-related news the Sunday before the much anticipated L4D demo arrives. I apologize for the lateness of some of this.. we were going to post it on Thursday, but figured you'd be too busy checking out the L4D TV Spot. Then we planned on an update for Friday, but holy shit, the L4D opening cinematic arrived and we've just been sitting here with our jaws wide open from the overwhelming awesomeness. If you can send that to a gamer and they don't want to get Left 4 Dead, I suggest you stop talking to them.

We'll start off with the Germans.

The German box art will feature a temporary "low violence cover" in some retailers during the Christmas shopping season. It's the box art but with a thumb, and is super duper awesome. The German version of Left 4 Dead will also feature green blood and no helpless enemies (zombies sitting or lying). Community member Dead Fish found a couple German previews with a picture of the Blood Harvest movie poster, 21 screenshots, pictures of Valve, and news that Bill will be voiced by the German voice actor of Dr. House.

HLPortal.de posted some comparison shots with the old and new Survivors, but the most striking change is between this shot and this one. Nice.

Left 4 Dead was present at the Eurogamer Expo at the London Games Festival. Simon Jones played Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360 and sounds like many PC players after trying a 360 shooter (including us). Good impressions.

The dedicated server files for Left 4 Dead are set to be released prior to the demo this week, meaning within the next few days. Hopefully some hosting companies will get things up and running quickly.

Two minutes of No Mercy cam footage is up at D+PAD TV from the Eurogamer Expo. G4TV posted their video interview with Mike Booth where he explains each of the boss infected. This interview took place at the San Francisco event a few weeks ago where Valve showed off the Versus mode.

PCGamer has a very short article on some pre-release strategy for fighting the boss infected if you're really starved for content.

The Microsoft Xbox Monster Makeover Sweepstakes is going on and the first episode featured artists trying to make zombies out of people. I tried watching it, but halfway through the video stopped so I'm not sure if you'll have the same luck.

All entries should be in for our contest, results will be posted on Tuesday. Other contests are going on like we posted about last week, and a new one has entered the mix: Left 4 Dead Concept Art Contest by Mod DB. If you have any artistic ability whatsoever, enter. The grand prize is an Xbox 360 console and a copy of Left 4 Dead or a video card and Left 4 Dead if you're a PC gamer.

Legendary Boys of Floyd posted a Left 4 Dead-inspired comic.

That's it for most of the news. Our server move was very successful with only minor freaking out and only a few dozen people should have experienced anything wrong. Left 4 Dead on Thursday. 80 hours? That's enough time to watch the intro movie over 900 times. Mmm.