By John Walker on July 21st, 2008 at 8:00 pm.
Skeptics like me have wondered if Left 4 Dead will hit its November deadline. It’s hardly the most radical of ideas – in fact someone suggesting that Valve might release a game on time should more likely be ostracised and pitied. However, screw me then, because Valve are acting with a healthy bravado about the release date. Not only have they announced you can now pre-order the game in your favourite retail outlet, but they’ve released the cover art for the boxed copy of the game. Click on for the fullsize image.
Haha, nice:-)
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Wouldn’t it have made more sense for that hand to be the other way round.. the scratches are over it so its behind something.. would have looked better with hand pressing up against it I guess.
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…probably not the cover of the 360 version. I mean you DO need a thumb for the analogue stick after all;-)
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Not really fond of it.
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The game was already delayed once, so I won’t be surprised to see it actually released November 4th. Also, the E3 videos show the game in a very playable state, it looks to be in the “Valve spitshine” phase right now.
The cover art looks a bit too “Saw” for me.
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Eww.
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I wonder when we’ll be able to pre-order it on Steam.
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I can see the sequels already, counting down/removing the fingers as the characters are killed off.
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Looks a bit amateurish and hastily cobbled together, but then so do the covers for The Orange Box and everything in it.
“Stop buying box copies,” they seem to be saying.
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Nice to know what the box I won’t need to haul home and pry open because I’ve bought the game off of Steam looks like. The future is digital distribution. Anything else is a drain on the environment and a waste of time and space. Unless a game comes with something that can’t be transmitted via 1s and 0s I can’t see any reason to go with a bona fide boxed copy over an archival backup onto a DVD (which is only necessary if you can’t count on Internet, really).
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http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/july08/l4d360.jpg
Sorry slang : )
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Hopefully Valve will have the decency to actually print the great manual unlike what they did with The Orange Box. Games should be more than just a DVD in a box, if they take the effort for making a nice pdf-file (hidden away of course) of it then they can just as well print it.
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Valve are pretty much my favorite developers on the planet but they really suck at box-art (with the possible exeception of the first Half-life).
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Cover?
On a Valve game?
How quaint.
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Pretty shit tbh, but who really cares, it’s the cover of a box.
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I am seeing a theme here. Dead Space’s cover:
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/07/ds_eapcpftfrnt-1024.jpg
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Yeah very similar except much much better.
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Boxes? We don’t need no stinkin’ boxes!
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I like it.
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Battered hands are the new close-up-on-grimacing-face.
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I like it. I’d give it 4/5.
ho ho.
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Thumbs up from me..
Oh.
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They missed a trick not using the zombie’s left hand.
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What’s a “box”?
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So I guess it really is too much to hope for a “Green Box” or something with HL2 Ep3, Left4Dead and Portal 2.
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It’s the sort of thing a GCSE Media Studies class would produce…
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I have to confess something: I’ll be getting this game for the 360 and not the PC. It’s just peer pressure, really. All my friends are getting the console version and I’m planning to play it with them, so it just makes sense to get it for the 360 version.
Look, it’s nothing personal. I still like you, pc. No, you’re not too fat. No, you’re not too old either. It’s really just because of my mates and they say…
I’m not making this any better, am I?
But I promise, I’ll play Fallout 3 with you. Ok? Just the two of us, spending whole weekends together? That sounds good, doesn’t it? And if Beth release the editor with it, we’ll do some modding. I know you like that.
I’m feeling like a jerk right now. Maybe I should get her some flowers…
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Yargh– … Third game in the trilogy: 2 Dead 2 Furious?
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Well, you’ve got to hand it to em.
And the award for World’s most obvious pun goes to…
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I like it. Definitely picking up a boxed copy (same price as a download-only copy, and I get to have a box to display on my shelf, which matters to me, as a collector), on the day it comes out.
What kind of bums me out severely, though, is that Gamestop and Amazon are listing the PC version at $44.99. That’s the higest price for a single, standalone, non-bundled Valve game since Half-Life 1. I’m was expecting something in the $30 range. Oh, well.
I rather like the Dead Space box, as well. The simpler imagery works for me, versus the typical boxshot full of heroes/villians.
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Needs more teeth marks on the hand, or chunks bitten out. That’s what zombies do, right? (well, one of the things zombies do…)
Still, I care more about how the game PLAYS than its cover, tbh.
Edit: Oh, is there 4 fingers, as in Left “4″ Dead? Hmmm…
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I don’t think it’s amateurish at all. I would loved to see an Orange Box manual or some of its kind included in the retail version but since I’m probably getting this one through Steam I don’t really care.
Anyway, I can’t stop looking to where the thumb was before some shotgun blew it off. Looks very realistic to me!
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[Sorry if my comment didn't make any sense - my english is not that good]
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@chipp: that was perfect English :)
I like the box.
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Soooo excited!
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Lovely box art. Really. It’s simple, it’s iconic rather than eye-grabbing, and it does not feature gratuitous breastscapes.
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I quite like it. They did indeed miss a trick by using the right hand, but it’s far superior to the amateur look of the Dead Space box and dare I say it’s fairly ghoulish and therefore apt.
If Valve pull this off then they will have done a 5/5 for excellent games (HL, HL2, Portal, TF2 and this). What on Earth will we do then? They are already purveyors of Very High Quality games and if they keep the standard up a lot of developers are going to start looking very stupid or very lazy.
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@BonSequiter: what’s wrong with breasteses?
I like it – it’s very simple and cool-looking, and it takes a second to get the joke. Of course, ever since someone mentioned the hand facing the wrong way relative to the glass that’s bugging me.
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I didn’t think it was glass, I thought it was that iconic ‘zombie hand rises from the grave’ shot, which is always shot from that side. And I also kinda liked it, at least conceptually.
I guess I am stupid again.
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Considering all the great art present in the game… What an insanely generic cover. Its a good thing Valve has the following that it does; if I’d seen this cover in my local game shop, I’d make some snide remark about what a goober Photoshop job it is and walk right past it.
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They kinda went overboard with the filtering effects along the top of the hand.
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“I’d seen this cover in my local game shop, I’d make some snide remark about what a goober Photoshop job it is and walk right past it.”
Isn’t this worse than graphics whore-ery ? Book by it’s cover?
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Why are you posting box-art when you could be posting the Duke Nukem Trilogy trailer?
Trailers will never be the same!
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I like that for what it’s not. Anything that steps away from the usual ‘heroes-facing-out-enemies-behind-and-a-bit-of-scenery-plus-title’ box art is a step in the right direction.
The colours and shapes stand out, it’s a nice simple concept, if a little over filter-ized, and the visual joke is good.
I’ll still be getting the download version. I like this planet quite a lot and I’m thinking of living here.
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@James T: The Duke Nukem trailer is epic in every possible sense. Any other trailer looks primitive after viewing it.
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It would have been cooler if it were a left hand instead.
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It would have been cooler if it were a left foot instead. Think outside the box man, hands are sooo yesterday.
Also regarding Duke Nukem trailer, they really must have balls of steel to release that…or no brains and just a head full of steel balls.
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They seem to have forgotten to mention which retail outlets are accepting pre-orders on the actual official L4D site. That, in marketing terms, is almost as amateurish as the box art.
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I think it’s pretty cool. But really, Valve have done the hands thing before. Remember “born” from HL2?
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Looks similar enough to the Urban Dead logo to be an homage, down to the color and the font used for the word “DEAD”.
/secretly hoping that the places in L4D are named after Malton suburb areas :]
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