The Sacrifice Announced

Left 4 Dead

As announced by Valve on Gametrailers TV and expanded on in an interview with PCGamer, a Mac port of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 is coming on October 5th along with the next update to Left 4 Dead: a new campaign The Sacrifice, which will reveal the events leading up to the Left 4 Dead 2 campaign The Passing. Somewhat surprisingly, Left 4 Dead 2 is getting the same campaign plus a port of the Left 4 Dead campaign No Mercy. Also coming is a 190 digital comic, and will supposedly begin releasing parts of it next month.

The justification for releasing The Sacrifice in Left 4 Dead 2, as provided by Chet Faliszek, is that they didn't want to force Left 4 Dead 2 players to buy Left 4 Dead to know what happened before The Passing. They actually don't want people to buy their game. I find it almost funny.

I can see a few slight problems with their logic. Any player who owns Left 4 Dead 2 and does not own Left 4 Dead one does not know or care about the four Pennsylvanian survivors of Left 4 Dead and therefore have no reason to care about their origins in The Passing. The ones who do care are the ones who have played the four Pennsylvanian survivors, the owners of Left 4 Dead. Furthermore, if one wants to use the logic of knowing what happens before The Passing without buying Left 4 Dead, one could easily turn it around to argue for a Left 4 Dead version of The Passing so that Left 4 Dead owners can know what happens after The Sacrifice without having to buy Left 4 Dead 2, and somehow I highly doubt Chet and company would ever consider bringing The Passing to Left 4 Dead.

In the end, I guess that this means that The Sacrifice won't be saving Left 4 Dead, as many Left 4 Dead fans had hoped, as there remains no real incentive for Left 4 Dead 2 owners to get Left 4 Dead as well. Putting all that aside, I suppose this is still good news, and there are hints that more stuff will continue to come down the line.

Portal 2

On a lighter note, a short teaser trailer of Portal 2's co-op mode was released in the same episode of Gametrailers TV, along with a few more words about the Playstation 3 version of Portal 2.

References
http://www.gametrailers.com/episode/gametrailers-tv/101&ch=4&sd=0?ep=101&ch=4&sd=0 
http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/08/21/interview-valve-on-their-new-left-4-dead-dlc/