Left 4 Dead, From The Makers Of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

I wonder, purely rhetorically (and maybe just a bit ironically), how many of you have already forgotten all about Counter-Strike: Condition Zero? You know, that MOD turned into a full-fledged game, developed for around three years, during which time it switched three studios (Rogue, Gearbox and Ritual), before the team from Turtle Rock Studios eventually managed to finalize the project in the glorious Spring of 2004. It's a pitty that the game went thorough such a troubled production and drowned in mediocrity by the time it was completed, because Turtle Rock seemed like a promising bunch, having split from the old Westwood / EA Pacific.

It's been quite a while since 2004, however, and the devs didn't lose much time: from Valve's communique we received last night, it turns out that Turtle Rock have been busy working on a new game, called Left 4 Dead. Shortly put, it promises to do for co-op games, what Counter-Strike did for multiplayer action games.

Even the title itself - along with the hordes of zombies from this first image - lead us to hope that Left 4 Dead will include a co-op mode for up to four players, which would be quite something indeed. But it remains to be seen if Valve will confirm our suspicion, because they didn't offer any other gameplay details so far (our request for further information on this matter still remains unanswered).

The only other thing they mentioned was that Left 4 Dead is built atop the most advanced version of the Source Engine, and that it introduces version 2 of Turtle Rock's A.I. technology. The game's release is planned for the year 2007.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)