First off the bat, Left 4 Dead is beyond awesome. I have just spent the best part of two hours with three of the guys from the RPS Steam Group playing through the demo levels on the Expert mode. It wasn’t until we finally managed to get to the safe room at the end of the second demo level that I realised how long we had been playing.

I was too busy playing and getting sucked into the game to take many screenshots, but those guys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun have some galleries of the game from their trip to Valve.

This game is just amazing in co-op mode, singleplayer is ok, but it has nothing on blasting through the hordes of zombies with three friends. They seriously are hordes, at times the AI Director will send what seems like thousands of zombies at you and will then throw in some Boss characters like the Boomer or Hunter.

When we were playing it was the Director that we talked about most, this thing is magnificent. It can build the tension so much just by keeping the opening areas of a level relatively clear of zombies. After the onslaught that we battled against so often in the opening rooms of the second demo level, to fail and start again in near total silence in freaky.

I won’t forget the moment when we entered the last but one chambers and heard the sobs of the Witch, we saw he sitting in the doorway blocking our path to the final battle. With three of us on very little health we decided to that the person with the most health would instigate the fight. It was quick and brutal, only two of us were left standing with 1 health a piece, we managed to force the Witch to retreat away from the level.

That was intense, and it was pure awesome. I can’t wait to get back to play this again tonight.

Valve have just revealed that Steam Cloud will be going public later this week with the launch of the Left 4 Dead demo. Steam Cloud is the latest, and maybe one of the best, innovations from Valve, with Steam Cloud any personal settings made in a game using Steam Cloud will be available to the same game on any other PC using the same account. Cloud services will be made available to all publishers and developers using Steam, and the service will be applied to all the Valve games on Steam.

Steam Cloud will make its first appearance with the Left 4 Dead demo which is due for release this Thursday to all those who pre-orderd.

Doug Lombardi had this to say while sitting on a cloud:

For some time now, Steam has allowed gamers to log on from any computer in the world and access their applications. This also makes it easy to upgrade a PC without worrying about losing your games. Steam Cloud is a natural extension of the portability Steam affords gamers and developers, and we intend to expand its feature set as it is used in Left 4 Dead and other games coming to Steam.”

The first Left 4 Dead TV ad has been made public by Valve and is part of their massive $10 million marketing campaign for the zombie horror co-op game that is due for release on the 18th November. Courtesy of Doug Lombardi you can find it below right now.

Empire: Total War is ready for pre-purchase on Steam right now. For those of you who chose to pre-purchase you will receive a copy of Rome: Total War Gold for absolutely nothing.

It costs $54.99 here in the UK which is a bargain considering you get Rome thrown in too. Well maybe not a bargain, but it isn’t a bad offer.

The Steam and retail versions of Empire will also come fully loaded with Steamworks which will provide owners of the game with updates, downloadable content and achievements. Steamworks will also act as the multiplayer backend of the game, more details will emerge on this soon.

For those of you who are now worrying about offline gaming, don’t worry, you only need to connect to the internet once via Steam to play single-player.

It is released February 3rd in North America and February 6th in Europe and other territories.

FEAR 2: Project Origin will be coming to numerous digital distribution channels, including Steam on its February 10th 2009 release. Project Origin is the sequel to the 2005 horror hit FEAR and will throw gamers back into a world where Alma is wreaking havoc.

Thomas Gewecke, President, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution was forced by Alma to release the following statement about the digital distribution of FEAR 2.

“More and more gamers are taking advantage of digital distribution to access videogames,”. “Digital distribution is going to be an important facet of the gaming world and we are glad to be a part of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s efforts to offer additional, convenient, and flexible options for players.”

Nice to know well in advance what games we can expect to see on Steam.

It has just been revealed that Far Cry 2 is now available via Steam in most European countries along with Australia and New Zealand. This is the first time a Ubisoft product has been made available in these regions, will it be the start of a new initiative from Ubisoft to expand it’s presence on Steam? I guess we will have to wait a week or so to see if any other games from them appear on Valve’s digital distribution service.

The game is available for $49.99 for UK customers which is pretty competitive with shops if it wasn’t for the inclusion of Vat on top of that price.

In further great news for Steam it has been revealed that Fallout 3 is available for pre-order on Steam ahead of its release at the end of the month. This is another massive game to appear on Steam and most importantly for some it is available in the UK other non-US countries.

All praise Steam!

I know that a lot of people have been saying that they are not prepared to shell out $20 for a copy of World of Goo without first getting a taste of the game. Well now you can as there is a demo now available which features the entire first chapter from the game.

In a message to those of you complaining that you can’t get the game via Steam in Europe please grow some balls and buy it from the developers themselves. C’mon, I know Steam makes things easier but seriously if you want the game just buy it. There are countless games that don’t come to Steam or are sadly not available to use Europeans, but how many times do you actively refuse to buy the game for that reason? If you do, then please realise that while digital distribution is the future of games distribution it isn’t perfect yet. If you want to play a game just buy it, it won’t hurt you to have a game not downloaded from Steam will it?

A worrying message has appeared on the Steam news feed regarding World of Goo’s availability for European customers.

Pretty much if you are a European Steam user then you won’t be able to purchase World of Goo until February/March next year, this is the same time as the planned European retail release. If you have already bought your copy of the game then you are not affected by this.

I have gotten in touch with Kyle from 2D Boy (buy it there European readers!) for more details.This is what he had to say:

As part of our European agreement, we are restricted from selling the game on Steam in Europe. I’m thinking this was a clause that was accidentally left in, since I can’t imagine this kind of restriction is good for anyone. We’re going to try to reverse it. We live in the future. We shouldn’t even have countries and regions. Just one big Internet where everyone is equal.

In some news that I have been sitting on for a few days I am pleased to inform everyone that World of Goo will be getting a release on Steam come Monday the 13th October for $20. Want to know what the best thing is? World of Goo will be using Steamworks which means we will be having a great eight achievements to work our way towards.

Mr. I Decide What Games We Get On Steam Justin Holtman said that World of Goo was one of the most asked for games to come onto Steam.

“More people have told us to get World of Goo on Steam than any other title coming this year. It has captured the imagination of the press and other members of the industry during its incredible pre-launch campaign, and we’re delighted to debut the PC version with Steamworks Achievements.”

He is damn right that World of Goo has captured the imagination of almost everyone. Check out the praise the game has received from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, The Poisoned Sponge and even from yours truly.

There is another bit of great news for those who pre-ordered World of Goo, you won’t be missing out on the Steamworks perks. You will be able to use your Magic Key from your pre-order email to activate the game on Steam. Brilliance!

If you don’t wish to get it from 2D Boy themselves you can get it from a variety of other places including amazon.com and Direct2Drive. Goo will also be purchasable from Indie friendly Greenhouse and from 2D Boy’s North American retail publisher Beanstalk Games.

Seriously there is now no reason why you shouldn’t be buying your daily allowance of Goo.

According to this Edge Online report pre-orders of Valve’s upcoming survival-horror-co-operative-shooter-extravaganza are 60% higher than those for the Orange Box.

Valve managing director Gabe Newell has this to say regarding the pre-orders:

“People had really strong reactions to Left 4 Dead when we started showing it. Our pre-orders are running 60 percent ahead of Orange Box. This in combination with the fact that it is a new IP made us think that an extensive marketing program made a lot of sense.”

Valve have launched a massive promotional campaign for the game costing $10 million and covering television, online, print and outdoor advertising. The promotional posters for the game (as seen below) feature the logo of the game, the disfigured hand that is now synonymous with the game.

These advertisements will run hand in hand with a massive television campaign with 30-second adverts appearing on a wide variety of US TV networks from November 9th to the 28th. The ads will be mixing humour and horror, and I assume with bear classic Valve stylings.

The Xbox 360 and PC demo of the game is slated to be released in early November and will feature 1-4 player gameplay from the game’s “No Mercy” campaign. Newell is also positive regarding the future success of the game.

“Well, Left 4 Dead has a long way to go to beat Half-Life and Counter-Strike, but our fans’ excitement when they play the game has certainly infected us. It will be a top five title for the year, but beyond that we’ll have to see how big it gets.”

Pre-orders up 60% on the Orange Box, a $10 million advertising campaign? I am sure that Left 4 Dead will be a hugely successful game.