Anyone who has pre-ordered Left 4 Dead 2 through Steam can now start the pre-loading process. Weighing in at a little over 6GB in size, it's a good idea to start your download early so you can be sure to have it ready when it's unlocked on November 17th. Steam won't prompt you to start the process, so right click the title in your client and under "View pre-load info" you can start it manually.

Read the whole story

Just judging by the number of "Bill" hats I've been seeing in TF2, I'd say a lot of people will be playing the game right off the bat. I'm pretty excited about the game myself, but too frugile (cheap?) to pay full price, or even a 10% off price.

I'm waiting for the L4D2 free-to-play weekend with (hopefully) a major discount :)

I hear ya , I can wait for the discount myself ,,, I am not fond of the original and what the community has done with the tools valve gave them to appease the launch of L4D2

Seems you just can't play a normal game without people wanting to cheat or spawn stuff , funny how I thought there would be some good levels made by the community ,, wasn't that the point of the tools?

I'll probably get it, I just love the first game and the demo made me super hyped.

Wish it is going to be better than L4D, after playing it for a couple days the game became so repetitive and boring... find a good defense spot, once the music started get there and shoot like crazy.

Adding to that the little extra content the game had (Official at least, much of the fan work was... time passing at best), was a rip off! Specially since Steam made a commitment with players to work on free extra content (the reason why so many bought it), instead of that they worked on a second part from which squish more money out of the gamers.

1 less point to steam and valve!

I usually don't pay full price for any game, I'll wait till they go on sale for around $20. I don't mind waiting a while for it either. I'm not a 'must have it now' kind of person (unless it is The Old Republic 8) !

I pre-paid for the whole shebang and when it came time to download and play the demo it took 2+ days for it to happen because of server lag from who knows how many tens of thousands - if not millions - of users trying to do the same. Very frustrating.

Now having said that, I've played the demo a couple of times, both solo and on-online with friends and I'm telling ya - this game rocks! It offers a ton of different options/strategies from the original and clearly worth the price of admission.

For you L4D originals who want to cry foul and bemoan the fact that you should be entitled to this for free (after a number of DLC's have been made available to the original)....all I can say is you're welcome to sit on the stool in the corner with your dunce cap on and cry your tears out. The rest of us are hunting zombies. BRAINZZZZZ...!!!

The game looks good and probably is a lot of fun but unfortunately i don't have the money for an new game now. I bought some games from steam that were on sale (18 euro total ^_^):
-RIP Trilogy
-Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete
-Mass Effect
I can't buy expensive games with my small salary.

I just don't get the comments about how Steam and Valve ripped people off because of how little extra content is available for the original L4D. Seriously, greedy much? How many other games out there come out, are popular, and then start giving you FREE content to enhance the game as time goes on? And then have the customer base whine about how LITTLE free extra stuff they are getting? Wow. Just wow.

They added some great campaigns, provided the tools for players to make their own, and then people whine about how the people making add-ons just used the stuff to do extra spawns and boring crap. Sorry, but Valve are not puppetmasters in control of every move the player community makes, they can't force people to make good content. Me, I found some pretty fun add-on campaigns (there is a "vienna calling" one that is quite impressive) and have been generally more than pleased with L4D. Is it simple, rather straightforward stuff? Hell yes, and if you expected anything else, you obviously didn't pay attention when looking it over before buying it. For what it is, it's fun and entertaining. For the people who always want more more more, I'm sure it was a disappointment.

Valve took the suggestions from players of L4D, took some things they had been working on, and made a newer better version, improving on the original. The changes were too big and too deep in the code to just patch and update the original game, so it became a sequel title. And L4D2 should be a lot of fun, which is what gaming is supposed to be about, right?

The game as a whole, it's fun for a couple days, even in multiplayer it's fun for a while, but then it is the same old story and the same old old old... old maps... again, the DLC you mention is flimsy at best, and by far if you compare it to Fallout 3 DLC.

For the price it has, it should've been a lot more.

That is not the point, Valve promised content with L4D. All they did was give editing tools and unlocked multilayer on campaigns already in the game? I do believe it is not the customers job to make the content good sir. Free content? CoD4, TF2, CS:S, Guild Wars, WoW(though requires a sub), Halo, and many, MANY more games give free content. Its like going to the store and buying a phone which doesn't have the camera unlocked but, they say it will be unlocked later in the year. You come to find out they just unlock the picture editor instead, then tell you a better version of your phone will be coming out with a camera. You get no upgrade special and have to pay full price for the new hardware. Expecting content that was promised is not greedy.