After three years of labor, French development team Elseware Experience is finally ready to release DNIEPR, a custom Left 4 Dead campaign placed in the bleak Soviet-era ghost town of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
I can't believe I didn't realize before now how perfect the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat (also the subject of STALKER: Call of Pripyat) would be for zombie hordes and rampaging Tanks. Now that I’ve seen it in action, it’s chilling how much photos of Pripyat already look like set dressing for The Walking Dead.



This project is the kind of thing that makes you love gaming on PC. Three and a half years after Left 4 Dead 2 released, here we are with another completely new campaign with four new maps, an original story, an original soundtrack and custom models. If you'd like to show your support for the "hundreds and hundreds" of hours Elseware took to create DNIEPR, you can send them a donation at the bottom of this page.


DNIEPR will be available for download on May 20. If you haven’t played L4D2 in a while, this is a perfect excuse to reinstall and jump back in. If you need even more reasons, we've covered a plenty of great content mods for Left 4 Dead before.

Last week, Techland announced its new game, Hellraid, with a few screenshots and some promises. This week, though, they’ve got a teaser trailer full of gameplay that backs up some of those promises, and it’s looking pretty interesting.

There’s a distinct taste of Skyrim in the visuals, but the melee combat in The Elder Scrolls has never had this much gravitas without extensive modding. Enemies counter and duck your sword, and parrying has an impact you can feel.



Watch for the trademarked front kick familiar from Techland’s last game, Dead Island, at about the 0:20 mark.

Hellraid will feature up to four person co-op, and I’m betting that it will follow the same drop-in-drop-out connection formula that worked pretty well (mostly) in Dead Island. Four classes are announced so far; the warrior and the mage get a lot of screen time in the trailer. It’s just a teaser, of course, but so far we haven’t seen any sign of the other two classes, the paladin and the rogue.

The other mystery involves the Game Master, the overseeing AI that will tweak, balance and randomize parts of the game like loot and spawn points. Like the director in Left 4 Dead, having a part of the game that is playing you can be an interesting experience.

Hellraid should be released later this year.

There may come a day when preparing for the next chapter of a Left 4 Dead game will include wiping down your sweaty palms and taking a deep, deep breath. If you don’t, the zombies will get faster.

In remarks during the 2013 NeuroGaming Conference and Expo (via VentureBeat), Valve’s in-house experimental psychologist—Wait, hold on. Did you know that Valve employs an experimental psychologist? I wonder if he has lunch sometimes with the economist.

Anyway, Valve’s in-house mad scientist, Mike Ambinder, discussed experiments where players’ overall nervousness and agitation were measured, in part by recording sweatiness. If players began to show signs of nervousness or fear, the game would speed up. This new control scheme—mouse, keyboard, sweat-measuring skin pads—added another way for the player to interact with the game. Shoot zombie, reload pistols, keep calm. Signal for rescue, throw molotov, keep calm.

Ambinder also described other experiments in game design and biofeedback—which Valve has been talking about for a few years—including a version of Portal 2 that was played via eye tracking. Exploring the next generation of possible gaming inputs shows once again that Valve continues to operate, and plan, on a whole different level.

So good for you, Mike Ambinder. Just stay away from the mega-baboon hearts and everything will work out just fine.

There may come a day when preparing for the next chapter of a Left 4 Dead game will include wiping down your sweaty palms and taking a deep, deep breath. If you don’t, the zombies will get faster.

In remarks during the 2013 NeuroGaming Conference and Expo (via VentureBeat), Valve’s in-house experimental psychologist—Wait, hold on. Did you know that Valve employs an experimental psychologist? I wonder if he has lunch sometimes with the economist.

Anyway, Valve’s in-house mad scientist, Mike Ambinder, discussed experiments where players’ overall nervousness and agitation were measured, in part by recording sweatiness. If players began to show signs of nervousness or fear, the game would speed up. This new control scheme—mouse, keyboard, sweat-measuring skin pads—added another way for the player to interact with the game. Shoot zombie, reload pistols, keep calm. Signal for rescue, throw molotov, keep calm.

Ambinder also described other experiments in game design and biofeedback—which Valve has been talking about for a few years—including a version of Portal 2 that was played via eye tracking. Exploring the next generation of possible gaming inputs shows once again that Valve continues to operate, and plan, on a whole different level.

So good for you, Mike Ambinder. Just stay away from the mega-baboon hearts and everything will work out just fine.