SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT: NEW SCREENSHOTS OF VALVE’S LEFT 4 DEAD 2

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6.9.2009

Brandon Boyer

9 Replies

I essentially resolutely refuse to chime in with ongoing posts elsewhere covering the asinine kneejerk ‘Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott’ because, flatly, we don’t have the first clue what Valve are planning to do for either the retail release of the sequel, and even less their continued plans for the expansion of the original.

It’s interesting, of course, to see a developer inadvertently shoot themselves in their own survivor foot by doing nothing more than providing a fantastic, free service to its community (here, the Team Fortress 2 audience) for the past few years, and stirring up a hornet’s nest of car-alarm-angry infected by even suggesting they might have to pay for additional content.

‘Nuff said there, then, and I won’t stretch the metaphor any further, but I will add these new screenshots of the upcoming dirty south expansion (with nice, wide extras under the fold), and idly wonder aloud what it might mean that Ellis (aka ‘the hick-looking one’) not only appears to change his hat, but also his pants (possibly into fire-retardant slacks?) over the course of the shots, and note that Valve recently said that The Wire’s Chad Coleman (‘Cutty‘, aka ‘the one that started the boxing gym’) will be doing the voice of Coach, aka ‘the one in the awesome shirt’, which is a Very Good Thing. (more…)

One game even I continually neglected to mention over the course of E3 — not for lack of interest, but simply from the constant torrent of incoming games — was Sin and Punishment 2, which, as you can see from the trailer above, is looking as fantastic and ephemerally pastel as it should.

The game is, of course, the sequel to the Nintendo 64 original that took some seven years to finally make its way to the states (under Nintendo’s Virtual Console banner), years spent working up a near-mythical level of cult acclaim.

That acclaim is in good part due to the track record of developer Treasure, who — for basically as long as you can remember — has been churning out some of the smartest and equally whimsical and hardcore shooter/action games from Bangai-O to Gunstar Heroes to cult-legend scribble dodgeball game Rakugaki Showtime to Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun.

The Wii S+P will bring the dual Wii-mote/Nunchuk controls the original was begging for, allowing you to control your character/slash foreground characters while simultaneously aiming and shooting at those in the back, and, by all on-the-floor accounts that’ve made their way to me, was shaping up extremely well ahead of its early 2010 release.

Hit the jump for some fantastic hi-res character art and illustrations. (more…)