Kill or be killed. Rather, kill for as long as you can, but you're going to die eventually.

Valve continues to impress me.  The company delivers updates to games its released for free.   For Team Fortress 2, those updates come in the form of class changes, new game modes, new maps and other various goodies.  For its Left 4 Dead players, Valve’s done it again.

The Survival mode was released this past Tuesday to the PC and Xbox 360 as a free update.  What’s amazing to me, is that almost any other company would have charged for an update of this quality.  In fact, most do.  I look to Fallout 3 as a great example of a game that’s charged for updates, but Valve goes the other route.  It adds a new game mode and releases new maps for free.

The patch actually has more to offer than just a new game mode too.

It doesn't take long for things to get out of hand on a Survival map.

First, the patch notes then more analysis.

Survival Mode

• New gameplay Mode
• 16 maps including Last Stand
• Leaderboards
• 7 new achievements

Versus Changes

• 2 new versus campaigns
• Fixed a case where versus team score would continue to be recalculated after the score panel was displayed
• Fixed an issue with recalculating the versus score health
  

  Eventually the special zombies, tanks and hordes will overtake you. It's inevitable.

  bonus for a player when they are rescued from being incapacitated

• Fixed being able to start a swing as an infected, then teleport to the survivors and have the claw swing hit a survivor
• Fixed a case where teleporting to the survivors would not reset the ability timer
• Fixed an exploit where you could load the chamber of a weapon with bullets by holding down the melee key
• Fixed a case where it was not possible to join a game while it was in a finale
• Fixed a rare case where listen servers would speed up the game over time
• Removed convars related to melee fatigue
• 

  If you're keeping good pace in your killing, there are points throughout the round where you'll have a lull and no zombies are assaulting you.

  Fixed a case where infected players would get a respawn time on their initial spawn into a map

Server Changes

• Made ms_force_dedicated_server not require cheats
• Add a message when queuing a heartbeat
• Simplified setting of game mode
• Removed convars director no human zombies and director holdout mode
• Added mp_gamemode [coop,versus,survival]

General

• Added lobby join and leave messages

Youll need to kill hordes efficiently, or the zombie hordes will overtake you.

It’s truly a fantastic experience. Survival mode brings with it a certain level of intensity.  You will be killing zombies until they kill you.  There are lulls where your group can scamper to the ammo pile from your entrenched position, but you’d better be quick about it.

Before the patch was released,  I wrote about an interview that some of the designers had given.  From that, Kerry Davis and Scott Dalton said Survival mode will be more than just trapping players in a small part of a map, unleashing the hordes and recording the longest time.  Davis and Dalton did write about the rate at which the difficulty curve increases.

You'll keep killing until you can't kill anymore.

“If the curve ramps up too sharply, we find that teams of all skill levels tend to hit a wall at the same time,” they wrote.  “There isn’t enough variation in the times to separate great teams from average ones. If the curve is too flat, then average teams will have a good experience, but really good teams can grind on long enough to cross the line from having fun to just getting worn out.”

After having played through a number of the included maps, they’ve done a good job with the pacing.  Managing to kill off the last of a horde of zombies before getting saved by an ally from an incoming boomer before the tank barges through a wall into your room to destroy you is a common experience.

No matter what, everyone dies...

Some maps are definitely easier than others, but that’s not through the fault of the designers.  The Survival is a refreshing change of pace in Left 4 Dead.  It fits with the campaign co-op and versus modes.

There are also some cool features of the Survival mode, like a leaderboard that shows you who’s lasted the longest on each map.  I dare say my 33:54.87 on drains will not be bested, but that’s probably because they released a patch yesterday that fixed a problem with tanks not spawning.  If you’ll notice on the final picture, we killed 2000+ zombies, but only a few tanks.

I’ve attached thost patch notes below.  If you’ve got any questions or comments, feel free to hit up the section below or check out my twitter page.

While you’re here, you should know that there’s a sale going on for the weekend that makes Valve’s Orange Box a mere $10.  That averages out to less than $2 a title, and is better money spent than any other form of entertainment.  The box includes one of the most original titles I’ve ever played, Portal, and a fantastic game in Team Fortress 2. (I’ve written about it before.)

Other Survival Mode Changes

• Darkened the Lighthouse background movie and increased the contrast with the user interface elements
• Chapter selection is now available when creating a Survival lobby
• Single player coop now works correctly after playing Survival online
• The correct game mode will be set when playing back a demo
• Changed holdout server spew to be development only
• Stats are no longer updated while viewing a demo
• Correctly update the leaderboard based on the player’s personal time, not the team best time
• Show the player’s best time in the scoreboard
• Removed Survival exploits from The Terminal, Last Stand, The Crane, The Boathouse and The Warehouse
• Fixed tanks sometimes not spawning after 15-20 minutes (Yeah, that one helped us out for a while.)