Valve recently began offering pre-loading of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo which pre-orderers will be able to play this coming Tuesday, October 27. This sounds like a sweet gift, but in reality, it's a double-edged sword on which you probably be impaled. See, if you'd like, you can download it now -- but you won't be able to play it until Tuesday, giving you three days to fester in your impatience, all the while gazing at the demo which you have and yet you don't. Sounds to us like a recipe for a slow-boiling sort of madness.
However, the alternative is that you don't pre-load the demo, and waste precious time downloading the game on Tuesday -- time which could be spent hitting the walking dead with sports paraphernalia and gas-powered agricultural implements. This fact alone could send you down an inescapable spiral of depression.
So, what's it going to be? Madness, or depression? Sure, neither are extraordinarily pleasant -- but hey, you get to play Left 4 Dead 2 early. We don't want to hear your complaining.
Reader Comments (46)
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 2:52PM I AM IRONHIDE said
You took the easy way out, the hard way is through complaining about other zombie killing games.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 2:39PM CaramelZappa said
Last night my friends and I decided to get the 4 pack. I was going to wait for a Steam sale, but for $35, and knowing I have 3 friends to play it with, how could I pass it up?
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 5:22PM (Unverified) said
@Monica
It does.
From the Steam News Post:
Those who have pre-purchased Left 4 Dead 2 via Steam may begin pre-loading the demo, which is due to open early access on Tuesday, October 27. The early access to the L4D2 demo is open to both retail and Steam customers on both the PC and Xbox 360. Those who pre-ordered via retail should be able to pick up their early access codes now and be ready to play the demo on Tues.
Reply
It does.
From the Steam News Post:
Those who have pre-purchased Left 4 Dead 2 via Steam may begin pre-loading the demo, which is due to open early access on Tuesday, October 27. The early access to the L4D2 demo is open to both retail and Steam customers on both the PC and Xbox 360. Those who pre-ordered via retail should be able to pick up their early access codes now and be ready to play the demo on Tues.
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 2:48PM Special Agent Steve said
I'm just gonna pre-order for 45$. I don't have any friends... well I do, except they're all broke.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 3:05PM (Unverified) said
Any word on whether or not they're planning to offer pre-downloading for the public release of the demo on Nov 3?
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 3:30PM (Unverified) said
I've never played L4D on the PC, so can somebody please tell me if there's a good matchmaking system (or whatever system it is)?
The reason I'm asking is because I don't have any friends who play PC games that much (I'm fairly new to PC gaming), and I'll be wanting to play L4D2 with people online not AI.
Hopefully some of you nice Joystiqians could help me with my question, thanks :-)
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The reason I'm asking is because I don't have any friends who play PC games that much (I'm fairly new to PC gaming), and I'll be wanting to play L4D2 with people online not AI.
Hopefully some of you nice Joystiqians could help me with my question, thanks :-)
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 3:42PM Special Agent Steve said
Matchmaking on the first one sucked until about 6 months after it was released. The server finding was slow, and no one could connect. That's why our clan started our own server. After that, things (right now) are very smooth. I'm sure valve everything in order for this release, so expect it to be amazing.
Oh, and public play is great right now (except some of your teamates will be complete NOOBS) lol.
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Oh, and public play is great right now (except some of your teamates will be complete NOOBS) lol.
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 5:21PM (Unverified) said
Ok, thanks for the info man :-) That's everything I wanted to know.
Like you say, if Valve have sorted everything out for the first game then L4D2 should work like a charm. Thanks again dude, I'm preordering it from Steam right ... now.
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Like you say, if Valve have sorted everything out for the first game then L4D2 should work like a charm. Thanks again dude, I'm preordering it from Steam right ... now.
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 5:11PM SmokemeaKipper said
Random is random, but fucktards are few in my experience.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 3:28PM Arsenic13 said
I was going to preoder today but Gamestop says billing will happen when the shipment is processed. Im new to ordering and managing my own card and I know I will forget about the $. I would rather they take it out now. But I do want this demo... BLAST!
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 3:52PM Misguided Terran said
Effin heck... I guess this only applies to the PC platform, and not us inferior worms who get it on the 'Box.
I just don't have a good comp....
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I just don't have a good comp....
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 5:20PM (Unverified) said
L4D2 is coming at a terrible time for me. Just on the 3rd I have Dragon Age, The Force Unleashed: USE, North by Northwest 50th Anniversary Edition, and now my earbuds have a short in them. Add in the fact I just picked up the original a month ago when Wally finally cut it to 29.99 and I'll have to hold off for a bit.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 10:07PM Durr Durrington said
Posted: Oct 24th 2009 5:41PM (Unverified) said
Sounds like a deal to me. People who are eagerly waiting for L4D might have a desktop wallpaper already so that they become immune to their desires until the game finally releases.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 6:41PM (Unverified) said
Am I the only one who thinks pirates will extract the game from the preloaded GCFs and put it up before release?
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Posted: Oct 25th 2009 12:28AM CaramelZappa said
Valve has stated several times that they don't really worry about pirates. Even if the GCF's get unencrypted and pirates get a cracked version of the DEMO (you can't pre-load the game yet) What good is it going to do them? Even later, when we're allowed to pre-load the game, pirates are going to get their copies, but those people wouldn't have bought the game anyways.
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Posted: Oct 25th 2009 1:37AM (Unverified) said
I guess you guys are right. Even if they did get it, they'd have to play on cracked servers, which basically means no one would be online.
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Posted: Oct 24th 2009 7:40PM emperorzeroxx said
I honestly don't see the point of this... if it's available to download then it should technically be playable sooo why not just let people play now? Are they afraid it will be so popular the mass downloads will cause server issues? Or are they just being mean.
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Posted: Oct 25th 2009 12:31AM CaramelZappa said
They probably want to offload a lot of their bandwidth so that steam doesn't crash with EVERYONE trying to download the demo at the same time. That way when the game is "released" for the most part they will be using minimal bandwidth just unlocking the game, instead of a million people trying to download it at once and crashing their servers. Remember when Halo 3 launched and Live was useless for about a month? They don't want a situation like that.
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Posted: Oct 28th 2009 5:05PM (Unverified) said
Well, the way things are going, it'll be Tuesday before pre-ordering folks get it. FU, Valve.
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