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No BS Podcast #88a: The We've Got Zombie Fever Edition

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:07:46 -0600

Zombie Fever rages on at Maximum PC. We put aside our constant discussion of Left4Dead to answer reader questions. Little did we know, but the question queue had been invaded by... you guessed it -- Zombies. Honest folks, we tried to get back to talking about tech, but about 75% of the questions in the queue were undead-related. So, we pulled out our auto-shottys, loaded our akimbo pistols, and settled down to answer a whole boatload of reader questions about the upcoming zombie apocalypse, and give a little upgrading advice along the way. Join the podcast gang as we answer your tech questions, take a trip to the Lab, and get another dose of Gordon Mah Ung's Rant of the Week!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by. For the love of all that's holy people, if you guys don't start asking tech questions, we're going to change the name to the Nothing But Undead podcast...

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The Top Five Zombie Timewasting Games!

David Murphy — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:30:36 -0600

Left 4 What? If you're not one of the legions to be playing Valve's newest zombie shoot-em' up, fear not. Just because you aren't killing the undead with your friends doesn't mean that you can't partake in the best open-source and freeware zombie titles! Better yet, fire up some of these games while waiting for your big Steam download to finish. Because nothing gets one in the mood to kill zombies like, well, killing zombies.

Facewound

Why it rocks: This 2D side-scroller is full of blood and guts. Enjoy battling the legions of the undead using all sorts of colorful weaponry. The game's beautiful particle effects and "unfunny 'in' jokes" will keep you coming back for more -- especially helpful, given that zombie hordes never really stop... coming. The only bummer about Facewound is that its a title that will never actually be finished -- you're playing a build of the game, not the imaginary final product.

Black Shades

Murrgh: Is it a zombie game? No. But this title, which pits you as a psychic bodyguard tasked with protecting VIPs each level, does come with a super-special zombie mode after subsequent levels of gameplay. Just what you need when you've finished protecting the imaginary president from assassins: Protecting the imaginary president from zombie assassins.

Election Year: Zombies versus Pirates

Urhrhhgh: No, this is not a joke. In this independent title, you're going to be mashing the spacebar to raise support for your Zombie senate candidate over the dastardly Senator Birdbeard. We only include this game on the list as its hilarious story (and suggestion of a Zombie/Pirate governmental system) totally outweighs any other flaws the game might have. It's up to you to do you undead civic duty and install this immediately!

Zombie Smashers

Braaaains: With three successive iterations under its belt, this 2D side-scroller is barbaric in its zombie bloodletting. The premise is simple: Use a bunch of weapons to bash zombie brains in. The weapons themselves can consist of anything from the mundane (trash can lids) to the creative (frying pans) to the squishy (severed spinal cords). And your character grows the more you kill, earning tattoos as upgrades to increase the power of you undead pulverization. You can even cast magic spells, including one that summons a fully-loaded Uzi to your hands--not exactly the D&D wizardry we're used to, but hilarious nonetheless.

Cottage of Doom

Jamboree: Board up the doors. Zombies are attacking your little cottage, and it's up to you to keep them at bay! But we're serious: Board up the doors, the windows, and stack anything you can against the entrances of your little hut! This game gives you a lot of creative leeway in protecting your domain from the undead, reminding us a lot of our favorite desktop time-waster, Tower Defense. This should give you a lot of practice for the strategic elements of Left4Dead

Super-Secret Zombie Flash Game Bonus

Huh: Zombie Baseball. 'nuff said.

No BS Podcast #86: Hologram Fail

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:40:45 -0600

Core 2 Quad? That's so early 2008. Intel officially launched its Core i7 CPU on Monday, and this speedy new chip is the hot topic of discussion this week. The podcast gang grills Gordon about his benchmarking experience with three Core i7 CPUs, and we have a lively debate about the usefulness of CNN's hologram interview technology. The release of the Left4Dead demo excites everyone, and we also welcome a new member to the Maximum PC team. As always, we also answer a load of listener questions!

Plus, podcast producer Andy Bauman's interview with GirlTalk: http://www.vimeo.com/2150443

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Exclusive: Full List of Official Left4Dead Achievements

Norman Chan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:25:32 -0500

We'd slay zombies all day just for the heck of it, but turns out you can earn some sweet rewards for putting down the undead. Steam (and Xbox 360) achievement points, to be exact. Valve Software has hooked us up with the official full list of Left4Dead's 50 game achievements, which can be earned on both the Survivor and Infected side (in Versus mode). Among our favorites in the list? "Zombie Genocidest", which requires that we kill 53,595 common infected zombies, and "101 Cremations", which you earn by setting 101 infected on fire with the molotov cocktail.

Edit: There are actually only 50 achievements, not 52.

Dead Stop    Punch a Hunter as he is pouncing.    10
Drag and Drop    Rescue a Survivor from a Smoker's tongue before he takes damage.    20
Cr0wnd    Kill a Witch with a single headshot.    30
Untouchables    No Survivors take damage after contacting the rescue vehicle.        30
Blind Luck    You or another Survivor take no damage after being vomited on by a Boomer.    20
My Bodyguard    Protect any Survivor from an attacking Infected 50 times.        15
Akimbo Assassin    Survive a campaign firing no guns other than pistols.        30
Field Medic    Heal 25 Survivors with a first aid kit.        20
Pharm-assist    Give pain pills to 10 Survivors.        20
Helping Hand    Revive 50 incapacitated Survivors.        20
Hero Closet    Rescue a Survivor trapped in a closet.        10
Hunter Punter    Shove a Hunter off of a pinned and helpless Survivor.    10
Tongue Twister    Kill a Smoker who has grabbed you with his tongue.    20
No Smoking Section    Kill 10 Smokers as they are pulling helpless Survivors.    15
101 Cremations    Set 101 Infected on fire.        20
Do Not Disturb    Sneak past all Witches in a campaign without disturbing one.    20
Man vs Tank    Single-handedly kill a Tank.    30
Tankbusters    Kill a Tank without it dealing any damage to a Survivor.    20
Safety First    Play through a campaign with no Survivors taking friendly fire damage.        30
No-One Left Behind    Beat a campaign with all 4 Survivors.        20
Unbreakable    Beat a campaign without ever using a first aid kit on yourself.        30
Witch Hunter    Kill a Witch without any Survivor taking damage from her.    20
Red Mist    Kill 1000 Infected with a mounted machine gun.        20
Pyrotechnician    Blow up 20 Infected in a single explosion.        20
Zombie Genocidest    Kill 53,595 Infected.        20
Dead Giveaway    Heal a fellow Survivor when your own health is below 10.        10
Ground Cover    Save another Survivor from a Special Infected while on the ground.        30
Clean Kill    Shove a Boomer and then kill him without him splashing on anyone.    10
Stand Tall    Survive a campaign without being incapacitated.        20
Back 2 Help    Leave a safe room to save an incapped teammate and bring them back safely.        20
Zombicidal Maniac    Survive any campaign on Impossible.        30
What Are You Trying To Prove?    Survive all campaigns on Impossible.        35
Lamb 2 Slaughter    Incapacitate a Survivor after he has entered and exited a safe room.        20
Nothing Special    Survive a campaign with no Survivors taking damage from Specials.        30
Burn the Witch    Light a Witch with a Molotov.    10
Towering Inferno    Light a Tank with a Molotov.    10
Spinal Tap    Kill an Infected with a single blow from behind.        10
Stomach Upset    All Survivors complete a campaign without being vomited on.    20
Brain Salad    Make 100 headshot kills.        15
Jump Shot    Headshot a Hunter while he's leaping.    20
Mercy Killer    Survive the No Mercy campaign.        15
Toll Collector    Survive the Death Toll campaign.        15
Dead Baron    Survive the Dead Air campaign.        15
Grim Reaper    Survive the Blood Harvest campaign.        15
Barf Bagged    Cover four Survivors with Boomer bile at once.    20
Big Drag    Drag a Survivor x distance with your tongue.    20
Chain Smoker    Constrict two Survivors on one life as a Smoker.    20
Double Jump    Pounce two different Survivors on one life as a Hunter.    20
All 4 Dead    Kill all four Survivors on one life as a Tank.    30
Dead Wreckening    Dole out 5000 total Survivor damage as a Special Infected.        20

No BS Podcast #84: The Zombie Slaying Edition

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:55:07 -0500

Mark your calendars, because the zombie apocalypse is coming on November 18th. But we've got your covered. The podcast gang recounts their visit to Valve's Left4Dead preview event, where the game's Versus mode debuted to the public. We also quiz Will about his adventure in Apple land for the Macbook Pro keynote, and as always, answer a load of listener questions.

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Will makes a special guest appearance at the 25 minute mark in the Apple keynote webcast.

Caption this image! The best caption will get mad props on our next podcast and possibly some sweet prize. Photoshops welcome as well!

Exclusive: High-Resolution Left4Dead Screenshots and Gritty Source Engine Upgrade Details

Norman Chan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:06:22 -0500

Read our interview with Zombie Master Michael Booth here!

You've read our in-depth interview with the designer of the game, but here's a chance to you to get a clear look at the awesome zombie slaughterfest in Left4Dead. Valve has given us four exclusive screenshots from its upcoming multiplayer shooter, along with a detailed briefing explaining the graphical enhancements they've made to the game engine since acquiring Turtle Rock Studios. The new post-processed filmic effects and advanced shadow rendering makes the game look like nothing you've seen before. It sure doesn't look like Half-Life 2!

Left4Dead Source Engine Details:

The infected hoard in Left4Dead are realistically animated so they anticipate and lean into turns based on the curvature of their AI navigation paths.
The physics are simulated with a blending of traditional animation and ragdoll physics. In addition to location-specific damage, shoves and gunshots are physics interactions, based on the location of impact and what the infected hits afterward.
Even if zombies are brain dead, the AI driving them is smart. The infected will climb and path-find over objects, not just around them. They'll even break down walls and doors to get to you.
Filmic effects: Color correction allows the developers to maintain a specific palette while controlling saturation and visual elements based on their importance to the player and the scene.
Film grain is enhanced in dark areas, and contrast is ramped up to sharpen areas with high visual detail. Subtle reduction of brightness at the top and sides of the screen draws your attention toward the action and increases the tension.
Self-shadowed Normal Mapping locally alters surface orientation to cause detailed lighting effects. This feature incorporates local self-shadowing information to add greater surface richness. Surfaces will react to lighting from radiosity as well as dynamic lights in the scene, like your flashlight (which cast dynamic soft-shadows in the level).

E3 2008: Left4Dead Interview. New Graphics, Weapons, and Steam Achievement Details

Norman Chan — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Face it, pirates and ninjas are out and zombies are in. And we have no doubt that one of our most high-anticipated games of this year is Left4Dead, Valve’s post-apocalyptic survival horror shooter. Our initial playtest sent chills down our spine when we first saw it at last year’s Showdown LAN, and the game looked much more refined and polished when we played it at this year’s E3. A revamped visual style and new character designs suit the cinematic direction -- the levels looked grittier and the zombies were definitely more terrifying (if that’s even possible). We spoke with Michael Booth, the designer of Left4Dead, to find out what other changes have been made to the game since Valve bought up his development team.

Maximum PC: Tell us a little about Left4Dead, assuming we've never played it before.

Michael Booth, Designer: So the main thing with Left4Dead is, in a nut shell, it’s you and your friends surviving the zombie apocalypse. But the key thing that we’re pushing for with this game that differentiates it from any other game like this is the level of cooperation that’s required. This is really a cooperative game. With other cooperative games you may be able to play the same game together [with friends], but you kind of do your own thing. In this game you have to stay together, work together, and watch each other’s back. Because if you run off by yourself, you’re going to die.

MPC: So we just spent some time playing the game and we noticed a couple of things right off the bat: zombies running up to people, us punching them off, people getting knocked down, zombies are piling on them and then we have to punch them off and then help our teammates back up. Stuff like that -- healing other people sharing ammo.

MB: Right. At the most fundamental level, there are just too many zombies that you can’t handle them yourself right. But then beyond that we have explicit attacks like the Hunter’s pounce. If he pounces on you, you are helpless -- you’re done and will die unless a friend comes and saves you. The Smoker’s tongue is the same way. He pulls you way out of position but once he gets you he’s going to squeeze you until you die.

MPC: This is the thing that comes and grabs you from above and sucks you up into the air.

MB: Exactly. And with the Boomer you know if he hits you with his vomit then you’re tagged. All the zombies will be coming after you so your friends need to help. The Tank is another good example where if everyone stays calm and focuses fire on it you’ll probably be ok. But if the team panics and someone breaks and runs, the team spreads apart you’re in big trouble. And then of course there’s reviving people when their health reaches zero. I can guarantee you that if you don’t do those things the team is not going to make it.

MPC: So one of the things that Left4Dead does that is really kind of unique is the really dynamic difficulty system. Can you explain a little bit about that?

MB: Dynamic difficulty isn’t exactly the right term. It’s a dynamic drama pacing system so it doesn’t nerf the game to bring it down to someone’s level so much as it really makes sure that you have an exciting experience. It’ss very easy for us in this game to give you a very intense experience.

MPC: You just keep throwing zombies non stop and…

MB: Right. So what the “AI Director” is doing in that case is it’s watching for cases where the team is just getting pounded on and then it’ll ramp things down a bit, to make sure there’s a gap a pacing.
MPC: So you watch statistics like health, the number of zombies the survivors have killed, and how much ammo they have, and then make decisions?

MB: Exactly.

MPC: What are the exact variables that the Director monitors?

MB: Well I can’t give you a full set of them. But it’s things like you just mentioned. It’s things like whether you’ve been hit recently, how often have you been hit, how many zombies do you see, how many zombies are running at you, and how many zombies you’ve killed recently.

MPC: All the way down to your level of accuracy or not so much?

MB: Not so much accuracy. It checks to see when you killed that zombie if he was way out in the distance wandering and not so much a threat or if he was in your face and hitting you -- that’s a little more intense. So its metrics like that. The Director’s doing that to make sure that there’s high peaks and valleys because if they’re all valleys you quit because it’s boring and if it’s all peaks you get stressed out and you quit anyway. So we want you to have the same kind of excitement as a rollercoaster ride. And of course the Director makes sure everything is procedural so you can never predict when or where the zombies are coming from.

MPC: Cool. What’s this we hear about the game having two modes?

MB: We tried for a long time to sort of have this holistic mode that did everything. You could play as a survivor or you can play as the infected and it all just worked. But we basically found that we were reaching diminishing returns and we could serve the game better by splitting it into two modes. It’s essentially PVP and PVE. There’s pure co-op mode where we could focus on the survivor’s experience against the AI controlled infected to make sure that they have the best dramatic experience that they can have. And then we have the Versus mode which is survivors versus four player-controlled zombies and you can take over the Tank, Boomer, Hunter and Smoker. So the basic thing is that when you join Versus mode you’re signing up for a tough experience.

MPC: You know what’s coming.

MB: Yeah. If I’m going to play Versus mode I know it’s going to be rough but I also know and its going to be awesome. As opposed to if I just want to play a co-op game with my friends and kill zombies and you know you’ll be able to avoid jerks.

MPC: So it’s purely a user preference and difficulty expectations or is the Director algorithm any different?

MB: The biggest thing is user expectation so you know what you’re signing up for. At the same time we’re able to relax some of the really tough constraints like Boss Infected spawn times and things like that that were really difficult before.

MPC: When we join a Versus server and two of our friends sign up, are we playing as a group or does it keep shuffling people around? Is there some sort of mechanism to control how often I’m a zombie and how often I’m a survivor?

MB: Some of that is still in flux but we are spending a lot of effort on matchmaking so it’s really easy to find and connect with your friends. The way that we’ve been doing the Versus mode is that the four zombies win by eating the four survivors., who win by escaping. After each round, the teams just swap and either you play again on that campaign or you go to the next campaign. It’s a total revenge thing.

MPC: So its attack versus defend.

MB: Yeah.

MPC: In your playtests do you find that one side wins more frequently?

MB: That’s where it gets interesting. I’m confident that we’ve got the game mechanics reasonably well-balanced so it comes down to the skills of the players. Just like in Counter-Strike, if you have a clan playing on the T’s and a bunch of random people from the net playing on CT’s, they’re going to get owned.

MPC: What’s the kind of play time to get through a level. I know it varies wildly depending on skill levels but are we looking at something like 30 minutes or an hour? Is it more like a WoW raid or is it like a pickup game of TF2?

MB: I would say more a WoW raid. If the team knows what they’re doing they can get through a campaign in about 45 min but that varies wildly. I mean we’ve had like company-wide play tests where some people took 2.5 to 3 hours, because if the survivors all die they roll back in time to the safe house checkpoint and at the (health and ammo) state they were at too. Some people had to retry sections of the map, especially the finale, since it can take some folks a few times to get through.

But that said, we also have AI controlled survivor bots as well so you can play alone and the rest of your teammates will be controlled by the AI. The nice thing about that is friends can drop in or out at any time and be replaced by a bot (or replace one).

MPC: Will the game run on dedicated servers or will it be an Xbox style local host? What do we need to have set up to get the best experience for us and 3 to 7 of our friends?

MB: All I can say right now is we’re investigating some really cool stuff with servers and hosting. Making it easy is a primary focus. Making it clear for you to jump in and play with the optimal experience right out of the box.

MPC: Because we might not necessarily be playing a pick-up game TF2 where you can jump into any server and have fun by ourselves. We want to play with our friends and not necessarily want to pay 10 bucks or 20 bucks a month for an 8-person server.

MB: Yes definitely. You should not have to pay 8 or 10 bucks a month to play on a server to have a good experience.

MPC: We saw at the end of a mission there are rankings and you get feedback from the game. Can you talk about that and maybe a little bit about the Steam achievements?

MB: Yeah well we’re going to have a full set of achievements for both the PC and the Xbox 360. If you look at what TF2 is doing with their achievements you’ll have a pretty good idea at the kind of things we’re going to do for Left4Dead.

MPC: Any hints as to what the achievements might award?

MB: Well I will say that we are definitely going to focus more on altruistic and teamwork sort of achievements so you’d be recognized for the kinds of things we want you to be doing in the game. But there’s also going to be some other ones that are tough to do. I can guarantee you there’s going to be an achievement of starting and escaping a scenario without getting hit by an infected.

MPC: So that’s an achievement you might have to farm.

MB: It’s going to be tough, especially since we also have dynamic levels which are kind of unique for a multiplayer game. We’re figuring that out how this is going to play into the achievement system.

MB: The feedback system we originally had was this really deep system of awards and merits and all this other stuff. There was a lot of data there but through play testing we found that people just didn’t care about that data. It was kind of information overload, and more importantly, it was kind of obscuring the salient things we really wanted people to notice.

MPC: Like if you shot friend in the face 20 times.

MB: Yeah so we want to highlight the good things and we want to encourage teamplay. But, for example, instead of a friendly fire demerit the game will mention things like least damage to friends and that’ll be a ranking. So you can look at yourself and if you’re at the bottom of the list, that’s bad.

MPC: Yeah we wouldn’t want you on our team again.

MB: Right and it rotates through those rankings. It tries to pick a handful of the most interesting things that happened to show you. Like most headshots.

MPC: Kind of like at the end of a Rock Band round.

MB: Exactly. In fact, the game does rate your team with 5 stars as well. In essence what we’re trying to do is give the team valuable feedback and we try to boil it down to “you did really well,” “you did ok,” or “you should try different tactics next time.”

MPC: Where does the difficulty kind of cap out? If we sit down with our mom and grandmother then obviously it’s going come in pretty easy. What happens when I sit down with guys who are at the top of the world? Are we just going to get infinite spawn of zombies?

MB: The fundamental thing that’s going to drive that in the coop mode is the difficulty setting you choose. There is sort of a bottom difficulty, and the director can only compensate so much. But on the top end so we have Normal, which is basically the introductory experience. We have Hard which is just a good solid experience for seasoned players. There’s also Expert difficulty which is for pretty hardcore folks.

And then we have Impossible difficulty because it never fails. I remember Counter-Strike bots in particular. It didn’t matter how hard I made those bots I kept getting emails saying “dude they’re too easy.” So Impossible is the mode for bragging rights. And what basically changes between those modes is how much damage you take from the various attacks. So the mobs don’t necessarily get bigger.

MPC: How much more damage they deal as well?

MB: How much damage they deal to you fundamentally. Some of them do change, like the tank. The tank gets tougher. He can absorb more damage. But at the same time he can deal more damage. Like on Impossible he hits you once and you know you’re done.

MPC: Like in a real-world zombie scenario, when they have their arms on you that’s not going to end well.

MB: No, you know if I reached across the table and clocked you as hard as I could that would hurt a lot

MPC: Definitely. You’re much bigger than we are. We don’t want any of that.

MPC: How about the new weapons that you’re showing off today?

MB: So the biggest tweak is the pipe bomb. The pipe bomb before was very realistic, so it exploded like a real pipe bomb would. But in terms of gameplay mechanics, especially with this game, it wasn’t actually very functional. There are so many zombies that are coming at you from all directions that having one even fairly big explosion didn’t help in a lot of cases. So what we did is we McGuyvered it a bit. Now, there’s like a labeled battery strap on the bomb with a beeper and the beeper sound just drives the zombies nuts. They have to chase the sound. So you can pull out the pipe bomb and set it off and it starts beeping faster and faster and all the zombies in the area chase down the pipe bomb like a dog chasing a bone. They kick it around and after about six seconds the beeper keeps getting faster until it explodes. But of course it’s completely surrounded by zombies at that point. So it becomes very tactically interesting. You can use it to get out of trouble. Like if one guy is dead and two are incapacitated and you’re going over to heal them, there’s probably a huge hoard coming at you. But if you have a pipe bomb you can use it and throw it far away and it’ll just basically absorb that hoard and you get a “Get out of jail free” card.

MPC: Can one of the player-controlled Boss infected kick the bomb back at you to send the hoard in your direction?

MB: We’re still experimenting with exactly how the Boss infected can react to the pipe bomb.

MPC: And then the other big change we’ve seen today is the look. All of the characters have been redesigned and the game has new post-processing effects. Can you talk about that?

MB: As you know at the first of the year valve acquired Turtle Rock studios so now we’re Valve South and the biggest thing that the acquisition brought is just a ton of new resources. A lot of our game design assumptions changed. Before this time there were basically 12 of us building this game and we were leveraging as much as we realistically could using props that we had built for Counter-Strike. But now we have all this additional talent with Valve as a whole. Everyone sat back and said ‘This game is really fun. People really dig this game. Lets give this game its own look.’

What happened was a re-evaluation of our development and a whole bunch of effort going into giving the game its own unique art style. We are able to do things that we couldn’t do before like changing the low-level Source Engine assets because we had our hands full in just making the game itself. But now, we’re Valve! So now we have much more interesting shadows and flash lights and we have the vignette-style post-processing and the color correction.

MPC: So what is the “look” that you’re going for?

MB: What we’re trying to do is make you feel like you’re in a horror movie. It’s a very cinematic feeling. Something that we’ve noticed just with the game in general is that people tend to like just to watch; they like to be spectators. Because it’s kind of like watching that horror movie where you want to shout ‘No, don’t, No! don’t go in there!’ We’ve really pushed for that in the vocalization – the way survivors talk to each other. We also wanted to make it look as filmic looking as possible.

It’s a challenge because there’s this single-player narrative element and structure, but it’s also a multiplayer game that is meant to be played over and over again.

MPC: Any details about the actual story behind the zombie infection? Is that something that will be revealed through the acts?

MB: We’re trying some experimental things with the story but we’re keeping it vague right now. The idea is as you play the game more and more the kind of things the survivors say will give you little hints and tidbits of the story. So you may have played the game for a long time and then Bill says something off hand that you’ve never heard before. We have plans in the future to continue to add to this world a lot.

MPC: Will the game be moddable?

MB: That will be interesting to see how that works out. In some ways the game is really moddable in that you can make a map and you won’t have to populate it because the director does that for you. You basically generate what we call a navigation mesh and you decorate a few areas indicating where the players start, where the safe room is located, and where the finale will take place. The Director will go through and populate it all for you. And the director is there and available to be messed with but of course all it knows is how to make a zombie game so it’s not a completely malleable piece of AI that could say make My Pretty Pony or something.

MPC: My Pretty Pony would be pretty weird.

E3 2008: A Ton of New Screenshots From Left4Dead and Spore!

Norman Chan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:59:40 -0500

Just for you, because you're awesome: new screenshots from two of our most highly-anticipated PC games of the year. Spore and Left4Dead look much more polished and graphically improved since we've last seen them. In the case of Left4Dead, all the character models have been revamped as well. The L4D screens don't actually show the new character design. For a peek at those, you'll have to hit up our liveblog of the EA press conferenc e.

Hit the next page for the Spore screens!

Make sure to check out our E3 2008 EA press conference liveblog for more game details and images.

Follow our E3 2008 coverage here!