But which safehouseman? Or safehousewoman? That’s your problem, bucko. Your problem to solve as you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead on October 5. Or! As you play the latest DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 on October 5. Yes, yes, they’re doing that. >All is fair in love and released-slightly-too-soon-zombie-sequels. (more…)

That rather confusing title being a reference to the second part of The Sacrifice, the continuity-plugging comic which describes the events that lead up to recent L4D2 DLC The Passing. We posted about the first part here, and now we’re posting about this one here. It’s a 40-page tale of the original Left 4 Deaders, soldiers, and vampires. Sorta. Once again, Michael Avon Oeming takes to the pencils for this big old chunk of survivor chatter. This one includes backstory, and tragedy.

Read it! Read it with your reading organs! Then be mildly frustrated that part three doesn’t land until the 28th.

The first part of the previously announced Left 4 Dead comic is out. It’s coming out in four weekly parts, leading up to the release of the actual The Sacrifice pack. It’s also a hefty creature. The first part is over forty-pages, so the whole thing should be getting on for 160 and actually includes details to the background of the plague itself. It’s also drawn my Michael Avon Oeming, who’s a fantastic visual storyteller and worth looking at generally. I especially like the BLAM! apocalypse. If you want to investigate further, I’ll suggest the first Powers trade. Anyway, you can read the first part of The Sacrifice here. Go! do so!

…who lives and who dies, apparently. As it stands Bill dies in The Passing, and there’s going to be comic that explains how and why that happens. But it turns out that in The Sacrifice, you can – in keeping with the game’s own moment-to-moment decision-making – choose who dies for yourselves. This comes via Kotaku, who point out that in this GameTrailers’ chat with Valve, Mr Faliszek reveals that this next bit of free DLC for Left 4 Dead (and also Left 4 Dead 2, it’ll work with either) enables us to experience what happened in the events of The Passing from the perspective of the original cast. The events of this new expansion will, therefore, allow you to choose which of that original cast winds up dead. The Sacrifice also gives Left 4 Dead 2 owners a version of No Mercy, which seems like a splendid little bonus.

L4D2’s ongoing Mutation event-of-the-week giggles continue, this time pushing the legendary Gnome Chomsky to the forefront of the game. I hand you over the official description:

Last Gnome On Earth: Protect the gnome at all cost.Do you crave attention? Want all the infected to swarm you and the gnome you are carrying? Then we have the game mode for you. The team needs to carry the garden gnome from start to finish in any campaign. The common infected hate the gnome and will swarm whoever is carrying him. Watch out putting him on the ground, a boomer explosion will send him flying!

Carnage, I suspect. In a good way.

Where were we? Sorry about the delay. I’ve been in France, making awful jokes about floating skulls to Chris Avellone. He didn’t punch me, miraculously, but I remain mortified.The Passing, then. I’m going to keep away from spoiler stuff in this post, bar stating the pretty-much-obvious that you don’t get to control the L41 survivors in any way. (more…)