No word on price for the PC, but due to Microsoft’s policies, you can expect there to be some cost for the Xbox 360.

Valve’s official press release follows:

“The Passing” Brings L4D1 Survivors Down South

December 14, 2009 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the first game add-on for its co-operative zombie thriller, Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2), is in development and targeted for release in early 2010.

Dubbed “The Passing,” the first game add-on for L4D2 brings the original Left 4 Dead (L4D1) Survivors down south for a meeting with the L4D2 cast, while delivering new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay for the PC and Xbox 360.

Targeted for release in early spring, “The Passing” takes place just after the Dead Center campaign of L4D2. Set in a small town in rural Georgia, players assume the role of the L4D2 Survivors as they meet with the L4D1 characters.

In addition to the new co-operative campaign and associated narrative, “The Passing” will include new arenas for Survival, Versus and Scavenge mode and introduce a new co-operative challenge mode of play. The Passing will also include a new “uncommon common” zombie class, melee weapon, and firearm.

“The Passing will become the most important campaign in the Left 4 Dead story, as all the Survivors are being called together in one campaign,” said Doug Lombardi, VP of marketing at Valve. “It will also be a huge offering of new gameplay content, with something new for every game mode plus a new uncommon common and weaponry.”

Exclusively available for the Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 sets a new benchmark for co-operative action games. The title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaws, frying pans, axes, baseball bats, and more.

With the AI Director 2.0, L4D’s dynamic gameplay is taken to the next level by giving the Director the ability to procedurally change weather effects, world objects, and pathways in addition to tailoring the enemy population, effects, and sounds to match the players’ performance. The result is a unique game session custom fitted to provide a satisfying and uniquely challenging experience each time the game is played.

Finally, with new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original, featuring more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, new Survival maps, and the new competitive game mode, Scavenge.

Left 4 Dead 2: The Passing is targeted for release in early spring for the PC and Xbox 360. Pricing will be announced closer to launch.

For more information, please visit www.l4d.com

Rebel Without a Pulse

From the Executive Producer of Halo, comes Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse. You play as Stubbs, an undead antihero who takes on a futuristic city using nothing but his own carcass and the weapons of his possessed enemies. This third-person action game uses the Halo engine and integrates tongue-in-cheek humor and a strong storyline with innovative combat.

In death, Stubbs has finally achieved the success and power he never had in life – and he sees no reason to stop until all of Punchbowl, Pennyslvania is his. Of course, billionaire playboy industrialist Andrew Monday has other ideas. The tension mounts until the city explodes in a full-scale human vs. zombie war.

Features:

• Be the Zombie in an epic battle between the living and the dead.
• Take over Punchbowl, an immersive, futuristic city built with the Halo engine.
• Convert bitter enemies into a horde of zombie allies by eating their brains.
• Use your body as a weapon: explosive gut grenades, toxic zombie sputum, a severed hand that can crawl through tight spaces and possess the living, and unholy flatulence.
• Possess unsuspecting humans and use their weapons against their friends.
• Use zombie strength to smash down doors and maul any human who gets in your way.
• Original soundtrack features 13 songs from various artists including, Ben Kweller, Death Cab for Cutie, Cake, The Walkmen, Phantom Planet and more!

Several the new assets and features since L4D1 are shown, including the Charger’s attack. We also get to see how terrifyingly effective the Jockey’s attack, which gives him some movement control over a Survivor’s character, can be.

I know the Spitter was added for balance reasons, to help prevent Shiva stacking, but it is hard to tell from footage if it will be useful and fun to play in Versus outside of that very limited role. I also noticed in the second video the Spitter model is completely different than the frightening female model previously shown. I’m not sure if this means there are multiple models available, or if it has been changed.

The undead will walk the Earth this fall, as Paradox Interactive today kicked off PAX 2009 with the unveiling of Fort Zombie. Tackle hordes of zombies in this lite action/RPG title that will be available through all major digital distribution channels.

In Fort Zombie, players will find themselves trapped in the small town of Piety, Indiana. Faced with no other choice but to find shelter from an impending wave of zombies migrating from a nearby metropolis, players will be challenged to choose a building to be their fort throughout the entire campaign. By effectively focusing efforts on building up this structure in between scouring the town for supplies and searching out and training survivors, players will have a shot at surviving the massive zombie onslaught.

For the few remaining citizens of Piety, each new day brings more fear. Only the most prepared citizens of Piety will stand a chance against the zombie infestation. Choose from a variety of daily tasks and efficiently build up your character’s stats and skills as you battle blood-thirsty invaders and attempt to avoid total infestation. Most importantly, you must build up your fort for anyone to have any hope of surviving the last, big stand-off against the coming undead swarm.

This fall, stay alive and be prepared for the fight of your life in Fort Zombie!

Monks in lost souls

Under development since 2005, They Hunger: Lost Souls is a first-person action game powered by the Valve Source engine. The fourth title of the highly successful and popular franchise is being developed by Black Widow Games and will features a completely new horror-survival adventure.

In North-Eastern Europe during the early 1960′s, strange anomalies culminate with dead corpses rising from their graves. As a tourist recovering from a tragic accident, you seek shelter in an ancient monastery overrun by bloodthirsty zombies, and become involved in an escalating cascade of calamities.