FanPoll'08: Best New Original IP of the Year

by Xav de Matos on Dec 30th 2008 5:30PM

Taking its second award in our reader poll, Left 4 Dead trounced the competition with a commanding 40% of the votes to be named the community Best New Original IP. Second place was given to Dead Space (which was named Best Original IP by X3F's Dustin Burg and Xav de Matos) with 22% of the vote ahead of XBLA titles Braid and Castle Crashers at 17% and 16% respectively. Pure rounded out the votes with 3%.

It's the zombie apocalypse. Bring a friend. Left 4 Dead is a co-operative first-person shooter where you and three friends must fight to survive a horde of infected humans hell bent on stopping your progress and eating your delicious braaaaaaaains!

From the comments:
"Originality from Left 4 Dead is based on the concept of NECESSITY of Teamwork. Not to mention the fact which you can play both sides of the game, being the zombies (Online) as well as the humans... in the same game." -- HighImpact 1

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Reader Comments (4)

First! I'm disappointed with this result. I would not say L4D was super-original, but it was very refined, which is what I liked about it. There was virtually no option which was not included, with tons of extras that seem like a 'duh' but that most games skim over. Like replacing players that time-out with bots. It was a significant advancement in the already established FPS genre.

But Dead Space pretty much reinvented the entire survival horror genre. Creating a game that was both action-packing and also claustrophobic and scary, which most 'horror' games had become pretty much just action games with zombies in them that rained bullets and bad dialog from every orifice.

have you ever played fatal frame? it's not a 360 game, but you might want to look into that for a pretty good horror game. i hope they re-iterate it for the 360 or ps3. those games scared the crap out of me.

L4D is not original, there was a zombie mod for HL2 years ago.

This is mass voting by fanboys, Dead Space felt like a complete reinvention whereas L4D was just a first party mod.

Don't get me wrong, I voted for Dead Space as well but how can you say that it reinvented anything? Was this your first horror/action game? It's basically stole all of the best parts from Resident Evil 4, Bioshock, and Gears of War put it into one very pretty package.