While many loyal Valve customers were angry at the launch announcement of Left 4 Dead 2, placing the release date “only” one year after the release of the original, I was thrilled at the prospect of new content in my favorite zombie-bashing shooter!

In fact, I  pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2, pre-loaded it, and played it the moment it was released. I sympathized with most of the points “the mob” was making, but the fact that I was excited about the upcoming product and was very willing to pay for it meant everything.

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It’s been a month and a half now of mowing down zombie after zombie in Valve’s spectacular coop extravaganza: Left 4 Dead.

I have to admit, Left 4 Dead disappointed me on day one. I beat all of the campaigns on the normal difficulty setting in 5 hours on the first day. I played them alone since my wife didn’t want to try it and I didn’t know anyone else who had it on the 360. In general, I don’t like playing online with people I don’t know so I went solo. When it was all over, I felt somewhat unsatisfied. It was short and didn’t feel very different from a regular FPS.

Then I finally convinced my wife to try Versus Mode with me online and that was the end of my social life. Now we’re both addicted and play it daily yelling at each other to get the Hunter off or freaking out at the sight of the dreaded Witch! Valve, you’ve got a winner in Left 4 Dead and I hope you don’t take too long to come out with some DLC!

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I know I can’t be the only person out there looking forward to this one! Four player coop zombie bashing? Am I dreaming?? If so, please don’t wake me up until after it launches in November! Call me a sucker for zombies but Dead Rising was by far my favorite single-player experience on the X-Box 360!

Yes, I’ve played Oblivion, GTA4, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty 4, and Gears of War. No, I’m not on medication and, to the best of my knowledge, don’t need to be. Although Dead Rising was far from perfect, its biggest fault was the lack of coop. It was almost a crime! Enter: Left 4 Dead to fill that need!

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As some of you may already know, Osama had some problems running Steam under Windows Vista.  He was frustrated and gave up on fixing it. I went over to his house a couple of nights ago and decided to take a look at this Steam problem. I use XP myself and haven’t experienced any problems with Steam before. After doing research on Google, a little experimenting and gulping down some tasty macaroons his wife made, I am happy to say I was able to solve his Steam problem. =)

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Honestly, if you hire someone for a technical support position, shouldn’t you make sure they know about the product they’re supposed to be supporting?

I worked as a technical support agent in the past, so I do know it’s a hard job. I appreciate that most of your clients are old techno-phobic half-blind dumb people who would need instructions to plug in a power cord. I appreciate that, but that is not me.

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To make the claim that any game is “the Future of Gaming” is a bold move, I admit, but if you’ve played Valve’s Portal than I’m sure you’ll agree that the industry will (or at least should) head in this direction. Sure, Portal hasn’t made any hardware innovations such as rumble support, online play, or motion/touch controls. Sure, it’s not even a new genre as much as a new spin on several pre-existing genres. It’s true that every element, except for the actual portal game mechanic, has existed in games before. But that, my friends, is not why Portal is the Future of Gaming. It is so because it does offer something which we haven’t seen in the video-game industry in a long time … hope.

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