Left4Dead is a co-operative, multi-player shooting game set in a zombie apocalypse. It will be available for Windows and the Xbox360 on November 18, 2008. I have anxiously watched the game’s progress. My love for the zombie genre is well documented, and the concept of blasting the undead with three of my friends seems too good to be true.

Thanks to a tip from Ars Technica member and Gibberish reader Agreschn, I was able to get early access to the game’s demo. I debated playing the game after getting my access key for two days. I was disappointed by the 360’s zombie breakout hit Dead Rising, and the fear of disliking Left4Dead was almost greater than my interest in playing the demo ahead of everyone else.

I also had two competing objectives when I played the demo: I wanted to write as much as possible about the game, but I didn’t want to spoil the experience. Some demos are just a tutorial, some are a random chapter of the game, or is a special-made level. Left4Dead starts you off at the beginning of the storyline: you are one of four humans trying to escape a city overrun by zombies. A helicopter passes by, loudspeakers blaring the location of an evacuation point. I played the first level a few times and the second level once. My initial observations may change once I play the full game, but here they are so far.
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