January 18th - Left 4 Dead Xbox 360 Update

January 18, 2011 - L4D Team

Last night a few updates were applied to the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead.

Foremost is the ability to recover achievement progress that was lost after The Sacrifice release. Recovered progress will be added to any new progress made since the release. In a few cases it may not be possible to recover the data for every achievement, but the majority of players should see their progress restored.

The update also includes the following:

• In Versus mode Tanks will spawn in stasis until a human player takes over. Tanks in stasis are invisible and invulnerable, and won't move or attack.
• Tank speed is no longer reduced when on fire.
• Allow players on the Infected team to manually spawn during finales.
• Added a vote option to toggle All-Talk.
• Special Infected that causes a Survivor to stumble into a "ledge hang" situation will receive 50 points.
• Bullets that first pass through an infected character before striking a Survivor are now ignored as friendly fire.
• In Versus mode car alarms will now trigger anytime a Special Infected pulls or stumbles a Survivor into an alarm car.
• Survivor Bots no longer try to melee exploding barrels out of their way.
• Fixed the Sacrifizzle achievement.

January 14th Update

January 14, 2011 - L4D Team

Riding My Survivor, Secondary Weapon, The Next Mutation, Custom Campaigns

Riding My Survivor
Do I hear a Jockey?

This Versus Mutation is all about Jockeys. The Jockeys have increased health ,speed and damage. The humans have increased hatred for the Jockey’s call. This community Mutation was created by Winded.

Secondary Weapon
Last poll asked what secondary weapon do you prefer. 47% chose Melee. 33% chose the Magnum. 18% chose dual pistols. And that leaves 2% for a single pistol or more likely 2% of the people answering the poll each week hit the wrong button …

Future Mutation?
One last question on Mutations themselves. Would you prefer encore selections on a regular schedule or continuing to experiment with Community Mutations each update?

Custom Campaigns
PC users, don’t forget we updated the current featured campaign to One 4 Nine. Check our blog at l4d.com for more information.

One of the most asked questions we get - can the Xbox 360 get community campaigns? Yes and no. We can’t just put the maps up on our servers and have them work. We need to release the maps as part of a DLC package.

So the next question is - will we include community campaigns in future DLC? We are exploring that possibility and meeting with people to try and put it into motion. You can help by participating in the next poll that will be about community campaigns for both the PC and Xbox 360.

Featured Campaign: One 4 Nine

January 7, 2011 - L4D Team

The new featured campaign is Kev Edwards’ awesome One 4 Nine. What’s not to love? You have an Army base in the Nevada desert housing an ancient “alien tomb”. We have been digging Versus in this campaign but coop and survival modes are also available.

Not sure how to play a custom campaign? Download the campaign from here and then check out this blog post for more information.

Having you been checking our Facebook pages? You should. While this witch isn't too scary, seems someone else is scared of the witch. We really think Mike Kutish needs to work with some modders. We need to see more of his Left 4 Dead 2 posters.

New Year's Eve Update

December 31, 2010 - L4D Team

Flu Season, Mutation Poll, Secondary Weapon, Next Year

Flu Season
The smell of spit and bile in the air.

This Coop Mutation is a mashup of "Boomer Shooter" by SR69MMJC and "Spitters!" by Karma Jockey. The only specials are Boomers and Spitters. The only commons are the result of the Boomer. The only other change is we amped up everything about these two Specials. But don’t worry you’ll be okay as long as you avoid all the goo flying in the air.

Mutation Poll
Last poll asked what game mode should this week’s Mutation support. PC and 360 players voted almost identically. Coop squeaked out a win with 35%, Versus followed with 33%, Survival and Solo tied with 13% each and Scavenge came in last with 6%. This week we will have a Coop Mutation and will look at Versus Mutations for the next one.

Secondary Weapon
While this answer can be situational, in general – what secondary weapon do you prefer? Vote for your favorite using the polling system available inside the in-game blog.

Next Year
We hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year's Eve tonight. Remember, the safest way to spend your New Year's Eve is at home, in the safety of your basement killing zombies. The entire Left 4 Dead team would like to thank everyone for a great 2010 and we are all looking forward to more fun in 2011.

December 17th Update

December 17, 2010 - L4D Team

Special Delivery, The Walking Dead, The Next Mutation

Special Delivery
These Specials deliver non-stop action!

This Mutation is a variation of Hard Eight. Spawn timers have been removed and the Special spawn cap has been raised to ten. The changes sound subtle, but they really mix up the gameplay.

The Walking Dead?
Last poll asked if you were watching the television series The Walking Dead. If it is available in your area - you are. 55% of 360 players and 49% of PC players are watching. 20% of the PC players did not have it available in their area compared to 15% on the 360. This variation matches the geographical makeup of each player base as there is a slightly greater International mix of players on the PC.

Mutation Madness!
With today’s Mutation, we are releasing for the first time for us community created content on the XBOX 360. This is only the first with many more to follow. Some Mutations will be takes on existing ones and some will take us into wild variations. We wanted to start with something familiar and move from there.

It has been great playing all the community Mutations and we can’t wait to release more for everyone to play. With that in mind, while we can see what Mutations are the most popular, the numbers can be misleading. That number only shows us what people play but doesn’t tell us what they want to play. Right now the most popular Mutations are Coop then Versus. But our question to you is what game mode should the next Mutation be? Vote in this week’s poll to let us know.

Holiday Schedule
We will have another update and blog post in two weeks and then we will get back to a regular schedule of a Mutation every two weeks, a featured campaigns on the off week, and more frequent blog posts. For upcoming posts we are going to look at the data we have gathered from our Realism Versus tests, the impact of playing with friends, a look at coop and more.