14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has officially announced that a new campaign for Left 4 Dead will be released on the PC and the Xbox 360 gaming console from Microsoft on September 29. Players who are interested in more zombie fighting before the release of the sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, will need to pay 540 Microsoft Points, if they play on the Xbox 360. The PC version of the content is free, as per usual Valve policy. Initially, the new content was set to arrive on September 23, but, again in true Valve fashion, the date was subject to change, as the company put the finishing touches on a new campaign. Crash Course basically picks up just as the four survivors are picked up by a helicopter at the end of the No Mercy campaign in the original Left 4 Dead. The chopper does not manage to stay in the air for long and they are back on the ground fighting waves after waves of zombies in order to stay alive and escape. The new campaign can be played in the Co-Operative and in the Survival modes, but Valve mainly sought to make sure that it delivered a new Versus experience, which took less time to play and reached a wider player base.
Since Valve has announced Left 4 Dead 2 as coming late this year, there has been a backlash from some fans of the original game, who have been saying that the development team is abandoning its promise to offer new content for it. Valve have long maintained that this is not the case and that it will be working on the two titles in parallel.
Left 4 Dead 2 is set to expand the experience by moving the action to the South of the United States, introducing four new survivors, along with more weapons, the ability to use melee attacks with objects like frying pans and baseball bats and all-new types of infected enemies, which can counter the tactics players have used in the original Left 4 Dead.