Left 4 Dead: Survival Mode

Left 4 Dead launched a new update yesterday including the new "Survival Mode" and a new Lighthouse map.  Survival mode consists of the four survivors fighting off TONS of infected and special zombies. The survivors start in a map void of infected.  Gas cans, propane tanks, medkits, pills, and ammo are scattered about the map to aid the coming onslaught.  Like the crescendo points in the regular campaigns, the horde is triggered by flipping a switch... and they just keep coming.

I played last night (well into the wee hours of the morn) and I was really quite impressed.  Survival mode has a whole different feel to it than versus or the campaigns.  I checked the official L4D blog and here is how they described the new mode:

Our goals for Survival Mode are to deliver a mode of play distinct from Campaign or Versus, have games that regularly last under ten minutes, and emphasize competition with team play through leaderboards.

I found that games went really quick in Survival Mode and after each game a new tactic or theory was constructed.  We solely focused our efforts on the new Lighthouse map and although much pre-planning went into fighting the horde, we were eventually overcome.  The map has a ton of deceitful concealment points but almost all of them are surrounded by weak walls that fell before the first horde was gone.  The top of the lighthouse seemed to provide the best platform, but left us very open to Smokers which drug us off into the bushes.

The above video shows an earlier build of the Lighthouse map (a few minor changes came with the update).  There are also a ton of new achievements and we tried to get bronze (survive 4 minutes) last night, but we simply couldn't do it.  I played with a buddy and 2 bots and although we held off the horde they constantly let us down :)  If you are on Steam, send me a tweet and we'll kill some zombies together.