Turtle Rock Studios, the developer that works on Counter-Strike: Source, is creating a new game called Left 4 Dead.
Details are light at this stage, but it's been revealed that the title's a co-op multiplayer action game that employs the most advanced version of the Source engine and version 2 of Turtle rock's AI tech. It's due to hit PC in 2007.
"By leveraging its industry-leading AI technology and years of Counter-Strike development experience, Turtle Rock is building upon the elements that make Counter-Strike successful and applying them to Left 4 Dead," Valve's Gabe Newell tells us, adding the bold promise that "What Counter-Strike did for multiplayer action games, Left 4 Dead will do for co-op games."
++ UPDATE ++ A preview article on Left 4 Dead appearing in PC Gamer (UK) Issue #169 informs us that the game's a multiplayer co-op survival horror-style shooter that sees a team named the Survivors (consisting of four combatants) fighting against The Infected which have overrun the game's urban battlegrounds - The Infected are a mixture of fast-moving, cannon-fodder zombies and other mutated nasties sporting powerful abilities. Players can form-up as the Survivors or slip into grotesque skin as the mutated section of the bad guys, with four-versus-four one of the possible player combinations that additionally include - for example - one player versus AI-controlled The Infected and two players versus the AI.
From what we can ascertain, should you opt to play The Infected you have the ability to command AI-controlled zombies, implying that a slice of strategy is being thrown into the action mix. And we get the impression too that playing as one of the mutated The Infected requires you to don your thinking hat and consider how best you use the abilities at your disposal to dispatch your opponents. Naturally, you'll be facing Survivors toting a variety of weapons, Uzis, pistols, shotguns and an M60 the good-guy firepower that's been mentioned to date.
A couple of other interesting points featuring in the article are worth making note of. First up, Left 4 Dead's creator Michael Booth has described the game as a "procedural experience" as opposed to a scripted one. Elaborating, PCG has gone on to explain that "levels are populated with zombie hordes by a central AI 'director', a system which works out a random distribution of baddies on the fly and then introduces more of the for dramatic effect". Second, Turtle Rock's included a context-sensitive warning system that means that your character will automatically cry the likes of "Look out!" when you spot a bad guy that isn't in a buddy's line of sight.
Fan-f**king-tastic! The return of co-op has been a long time coming. The only thing that worries me is the terrible name. It sounds more like a console game tbh.
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