Left 4 Dead: Cosplay, Downloads, and Sales, Oh My!

Left 4 Dead. No doubt you have head the name, seen the sreenshots, and played the game. It's a zombie fan's greatest dream come true. I couldn't get my hands on that game fast enough when it was released. Not only is the game play well-thought and fun, but I've met some great people playing online which is where the real fun is.

I've mentioned L4D in several previous posts, most recently to mention the upcoming downloadable content. Well, I try to avoid posting about the same topic but sometimes it warrants it. Case in point, today's post. First, I'd like to offer kudos to Valve for officially selling over 2.5 million copies of the game!

The second reason for today's post is to share some information I found over at Shack News. Featured is an interview with Valve designer, Michael Booth. We've all figured out by now that this game was designed for cooperative play. What I didn't know until now is how and why the Smoker and Boomer were designed. Again, I'm not taking credit for this information. Just doing your zombie homework for you.

The full article can be found here. From Michael Booth, Valve designer:

On the Smoker:

"We had a situation early on in playtesting where survivor teams that were really disciplined and moved through the world like a SWAT team tended to dampen their own drama, because they just handled everything. So we added the Smoker so that every now and then, their perfect little plan was going to get messed up."

On the Boomer:

"The original purpose of the Boomer was to break the rule of shoot everything that moves. Before we had threats like the Boomer, everything that moved became blam, blam blam. By adding threats like the Boomer, as soon as you hear him the area you have to change your thinking.

The original Boomer design had some flaws. Originally the Boomer was a bomb, so when you shot the Boomer, he just exploded and dealt huge amounts of damage. That totally solved the goal of making you think when you shoot... but had real problems with new players.
We also had another creature at that time which was the Screamer. He was a guy in straight jacket... if he saw you he'd freeze, and if you didn't take him out, he'd run off and scream. And if he screamed, all hell broke loose... That guy had all sorts of discovery issues."

Something else I stumbled upon recently are some pictures of a nicely done Left 4 Dead cosplay photo shoot. The pictures are from Nightzero and were originally posted on Pixelated Geek. To keep it brief, I posted a few of the pictures below. Be ready for future updates!

Just a reminder, there are still two weeks left to enter our American Zombie contest. Details can be found here. Winner will receive a free iTunes download of the movie from New Video Digital. We want to thank everyone who has entered so far and don't forget you can earn an additional entry by telling us in your email, "If you were a zombie what job would you want and why?"

If you have any zombie related news or would like to announce an event in your area, email me at zombiesandtoys@gmail.com.