Played it some, pretty fun. Worried about the coop-mode being too short in retail. Took about an hour to play through the demo map a few times. How much time does that mean we will spend in retail?

Yeah its very addictive. Heavenfall, people asked the same question with TF2 when it was released. And that only had 3 maps on release(or something like that).

Think of all the new things they can add to add longevity. And user made maps etc. New characters? achievement packs, new weapons.

The random location of zombies and zombie bosses add a lot of replayability and tension. A lot of oh shit! moments which i think makes this one special. In fact....i think this is going to be game of the year.

There should be a ton of replayability. I've spent several hours on the 2 levels available playing with my buddies, and it hasn't gotten old yet. It sounds like there are 4 campaigns with 5 scenarios, for a total of about 20 maps on launch. I can see a lot of potential for user generated content, especially considering the amount of dynamic sounds automatically used when certain events trigger, like reloading or spotting a boss zombie. I'm looking forward to it.

The demo is only actually 1.5 maps, as the second map is 1 map cut in half.  I think there is 20 maps in the final game so playing through all of the maps is gonna take you a hell of a lot of hours to go through all of it once.

The whole premise of the game though is how much it will be different each time you play as the 'AI Director' will change how intense it is being by how well you are doing and each time I play I get different combinations of bosses.  I've spent well over 20 hours playing now and still looking forward to playing tonight, that's on a small fraction of the game, I'm deffinately going to get my moneys worth.

If you are going to play through only once and have no desire to complete it on expert and see what the Director throws at you next time then it might not be worth it for you.

They've mentioned they do in fact plan to add maps and possibly even weapons, but even better is that one of the first things they want to get done after release is setting it up so people can freely mod their own maps.

I played it for hours last night.  Only time it fails is when you get a bad team.  If you have friends or find people on Steam that have a brain, you're set for some huge fun.  It won't mean much to those that haven't played yet, but I just have to brag that just a little while ago I joined a game and we kicked a griefer who was shooting us.

With 3 players, we got to the first safe house only taking around 20 damage each and had spare health kits.  It was awesome.  And as any L4D post should end:

Do not startle the Witch!

Meh, it's starting to sound tempting, but I have a huge game overload right now: EndWar, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, X3: Terran Conflict, Far Cry 2, Demigod beta... and 3-4 hours a night to play.

Annatar11 quits job.

You dont have to...The game kicks ass even at release. Pure goodness of great gameplay. What i meant was extending it out.

Now that's a bit of a stretch considering most of them are different genres

Haha, we were playing a "hardcore" expert game (if you die, you don't get saved) and we got one witch and then a tank after. The Witch oneshotted one of our guys, from 100 to dead instantly.

This game is definately worth buying for its quality at release. I was just making the statement above that paying for a game based on what it MIGHT release, is something I don't do.

Counter-Strike has a great deal of variety and replayability. I must admit that despite the fun I have had with this, Left4Dead just doesn`t promise that. Environmental interactivity seems pretty low for a scrounge-for-supplies survival game (the comparatively budget-titled Land (?) Of The Dead had more), only 4 types of enemies, and only 4 sets *is* very thin. And the randomized/governing controller A.I. doesn`t seem to me to be that compensatory - not to the extent I could envision myself playing for as long as I played Counter-Strike or BF 2.

I like it, but it needs more levels, enemies, levels, levels, and levels. Did I mention more levels? Especially for what I presume is going to be full retail price.

Not to mention...I think versus mode will be very popular. I think it may be the main thing most people play when its out. Versus mode has even more replayability.

Well I've been playing with randoms using the matchmaking system and I've made several friends already that I play with regularly.  I've put in well over 20 hours play on the demos 1.5 levels of the full games 20 levels.  I'm not worried about the replayability other than what WarlokLord said about their being few enemies which is true.  It promises to keep me playing for a very long time.

I think the real replayability will be the versus mode, it's going to be so popular to be the griefer side and then switch and see if the other team are better at griefing than you.

This is actually a pretty good shooter. This is coming from a guy who hates shooters.