Left 4 Dead 2 is looming in the horizon just a little less than a month away and here at DDN we’re all excited! Yesterday an amazing new trailer was conveniently leaked online. Finally we get a better glimpse at the personalities of the survivors. I’m quite fond of Coach, who we see showing complete disregard for the new melee weapons in the game and simply punching a freaking zombie right in the face. You know, I’m fine with that, a man should need no better tool than his fists to end a zombie apocalypse.

Are you excited? Let us know!

There’s a lot of great cosplay out there but even some of the best cosplayers out there often forget about the play in cosplay. Not so for this amazing man cosplaying Heavy Weapons Guy. The guy not only has a spot-on costume, he has the voice and mannerisms down to a science. Cosplayers, we need more of this! Heavy Weapons Guy is credit to cosplay!

Today the unexpected and quite welcome First Ever Classless Update for Team Fotress 2 came out. With this latest update we get eighteen new and quite awesome hats. Too bad they are still rare as hell. We also get a new game mode, King of the Hill. The verdict? Like every other KOTH mode on any other FPS… it’s a spamfest, and this is coming from someone who plays Demoman a lot.

The devil, as always, is in the details though. A really big list of small updates to the game were implemented that make the game more enjoyable and for once this all happens without a class getting overused for two weeks. There were really very heavy hints at the next update being for the soldier and there are even conspiracy theorists that claim that Friday Valve will release a fourth day of updates.

Not excited? How about this: There’s a small segmen on GTTV tonight with Valve and apparently they will talk more about TF2 animated clips, the comic and even Half-Life Episode 3. You heard that right, Episode 3. Expect more in the morning.

The Horde is back and now it brought friends. Left 4 Dead 2 was announced today to the total surprise of everyone. Its bigger, better and brighter, with a lot of the campaigns now taking place in daylight. Set in the southern United States, this game is composed of 5 brand new campaigns which are now finally intertwined in a bigger story. Here’s what we know.

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Valve finally released the Scout update for Team Fortress two. Along with a sleuth of new community maps, a stunning baseball, an energy drink called BONK and a more sawed off sawed off shotgun, the update fixed a bunch of old annoying things about the game. The most important of these being the facestabs the spy could pull off. However the long awaited addition to the Meet the Team videos was… unexpectedly missing. That’s right, no new meet the team video, not even a Meet the Sandvich clip like the last time.

However, not all is lost, the update also added a bunch of new voice commands and domination taunts. So far only the Scout domination taunts have been released and brother, they are awesome. This video, compiled by the wonderful Nero, is the magnum opus of insults and taunts. You’ll never hit his tiny head!

If you dont have TF2 yet, its the perfect time to buy it at half price (only $10 you cheapskates), if you already have it, prepare for a couple of weeks of playing Pyro and taking it easy as the scout rushes burn in your wake.

Thanks Nero!

From the ‘GIVE US MOAR’ department here at DDN HQ we bring you Escape From City 17, a short film about the escape from city 17 of some members of the resistance. Filmed in episodes, just like the game, the first 2 episodes are a wonder of guerrilla filmmaking, both being made for under $500. The creators, the Purchase Brothers, are a duo of film makers usually focusing on commercials.

Fans of the Half Life series will appreciate the perfect mix of in game sounds and little details that appear in this film. So far only part 1 has been released, showing scenes of the protagonists escaping City 17 and what appears to be Ravenholm (awesome!) but will surely keep you posted as more are released.

The short looks so genuine that it makes you crave for more. Both Valve and the Purchase Brothers are to blame here. Valve for creating such a believable urban environment and TPB for pulling off some film magic the likes of which we rarely see.

And yes, there’s crowbar manslaughter, glorious crowbar manslaughter!

[The Purchase Brothers]

Here you can see Valve’s Gabe Newell and some others playing through the first 12 minutes or so of the upcoming horror FPS Left 4 Dead. Among the highlights are Gabe extolling the benefits of pretending you’re a girl in online games, and the poor sap in the first person view not knowing where the “plus use” key is.

Fast, ferocious, and unrelenting, Left 4 Dead has the feel of an arcade game, pitting you and some friends against a seemingly unstoppable zombie army. The flow of gameplay is a bit like a simplified Half Life, in that between scripted combat events you can find safe-houses with weapons, ammo, and health.

While it looks like fun, so far it seems to lack depth: I didn’t see any puzzles or any tasks that really needed the co-operation of the teammates besides combat situations. I also thought the darkness was excessive and the combat scenarios were a bit repetetive. But then again this is just an early part of the game, and I assume things become more complex from here and more enemy types are introduced. Either way I’m curious to see how it turns out.

Make the cut (I’m coining this phrase because I’m sick of “hit the jump”) to see the second half.

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Games have always been a sort of easily discernible thing, gameplay wise. Usually you have your story-driven single-player games, where you have hordes of computer-controlled baddies that you must gun-down mercilessly to attain whatever blood-soaked goal you might have. Then you have multi-player, where multiple players hop onto a server, and massacre each other over and over again, to see how many times you can cap the other guy, before he caps you. Raphael Colantonio over at Arkane studios is setting up to throw the entire separation on its head with their new game, The Crossing.

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Valve announced that they will release upgrades to Counter-Strike: Source in two weeks through Steam. Changes range from the aesthetic, like new HDR lighting on the de_train map, to core elements of gameplay getting modified, for example:

when you look directly at an enemy for a long enough time for their name to appear on your screen, everyone on your team will be able to see that enemy in the radar.

There will also be a couple of minor bug fixes, but I doubt anyone will be nitpicking those in light of such bigger changes.

[Steampowered]