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!

I bought the game and had a ridiculous number of problems. In fact I havent played it since the first day because it was so bad. Apparently MANY people if not all have had horrible issues with the game since release you can see that on their forums here. Many people have posted legitimate issues and have had very rude remarks back from the developer such as

“Grow up enough to read the manual and figure out that items are not picked up as if it were an FPS. Frame rate problems on some machines are being investigated. As for the rest…gfy pleb baby…gfy”

“someday monkey will make a post that’s NOT self-referentially dramatic and the shock will be terrible for me.”

“after a weekend of dealing with the bitching of people running into the clearly endless void in a ten dollar game, you will have to excuse me if my opinion on the sense and sense of humor of the average gamers has been lowered somewhat.”

“Lena, so far it seems you are a lil imagination challenged, given your mulitiple “not getting it” posts…”

“The irony is that when we did SotS we literally bent ourselves into pretzels making sure it had low system requirements and the reward was “where are your fancy lighting and shadows?”

This time we put in the fancy lighting and shadows and suddenly we are system requirement nazis…”

I have more examples with screenshots of course but theres no use in going through them all, just visit the forums and you can see for yourself.

Here are the facts

The game is horribly laggy on most systems, and many of those running top of the line hardware, Im in fact running a 4870 and the performance is horrible.

The AI is the worst I’ve seen in any “commercial game” comes close to Paintbrawler.

The zombies look absolutely terrible.

I was holding back because I thought the game had “potential” but honestly I don’t pay for potential. I don’t buy a bunch of flower when I want a sandwich because it has the “potential” to become bread. I want what I pay for and this certainly is not worth $10. Many IPhone apps are better than this and sell for less.

Apparently the devs think zombie fans are fools and are willing to just blow $10 and get a very subpar incomplete bug fest. I for one will not be buying from Kerberos ever again, more so for the unprofessional comments I have seen on their forums. I am looking forward to seeing the major sites and magazines agree with the users about how bad this game really is.

Bottom line save your money.

Technical

So I get the game running, and crank everything up, I mean I can handle Crysis maxed out, and any Source engine game, so why would this game tax my system? I was mistaken. Initially the game ran fine outside there was a stutter in the beginning which is forgivable I understand alot of games load resources on the fly. The rest of the portion getting to my base ran fine. I really started to experience problems once I went inside other buildings on my first mission. This made the game pretty much unplayable for me.

Gameplay

First thing I tried to do was rebind my keys… well you can’t rebind your keys, so I was stuck using WASD which I know is the norm, but Im an old school arrow/numpad kind of guy.

So I continued on to making my character. The game has many skills to choose from which makes customizing your characters abilities fun, although it would of been cool to customize your actual character. Maybe that will come at a later date its not a show stopper by any means. I finished up my character which was a soldier, with an added first aid bonus. I then set out to find my base. I saw my first group of zombies which ran at me, I hurriedly ran past them and assumed the whole group was chasing me so I decided to wait before looking back. Once i did look back however none were behind me.. was a bit of a bummer. As I continued on my way I noticed the zombies get stuck REALLY easily. They take a straight path towards you, the developers seemed to have really skimped on AI. So when they began to chase me I would just position a light pole, box, ect. in between our paths and not have to worry about that zombie any more.

Finally I made it to my base and cleared out the 2 zombies and found a tactical shotgun. I give the makers credit for actually showing all of your equipment on your character, something a lot of games do not do. I really like the inventory system as well, its pretty close to the system that STALKER and Diablo use, im partial to these systems. I then ended my day and on the next day took on my first mission to find more weapons. I ended up in a firehouse where the zombies would just be stuck at the top of the stairs on a railing. (I could also see zombies trying to get me from outside by clipping the back wall thus verifying to me the zombies just take a straight path towards the character) I couldn’t shoot them either even though the railing was only waist high. This also really showed the cameras shortcomings. It was extremely hard for me to aim when next to a wall, my character had the tendency to look the other way. This is where I quit however, the game was stuttering to a point of unplayability. When I hit escape however the game was instantly smooth. So I believe it might have something to do with the AI.

Also there is no multiplayer. This game I think would of gone a lot further with the zombie community if it had even 2 player coop included.

Sound

Zombie sounds are there, weapon sounds are there, but there are some things missing like footsteps, and reloading sounds. Minor issues but its weird watching your guy load a shotgun but yet hearing nothing click.

Graphics

The game looks decent overall. The buildings and streets are nice, and the main character is modeled nicely, you can tell alot of time was spent on the main character. The zombies however didn’t look so good. Textures and models were very bland, although there is a great variety in zombie types.

Final Thoughts

Its nice to get another zombie game especially for $10, but it would of been even nicer to get a more optimized complete one. I think the developers rushed this one out the door much too fast in order to capatilize on Halloween. Without multiplayer and the major optimization issues I wont be playing this much right now. Once the first patch or two are released however I will definitly come back and give this another go. If you are looking for a zombie game with a bit more depth than the current ones out there I suggest this title, but I suggest waiting for at least the first patch to be released. If this game ran perfect had some better AI and a better camera I wouldn’t of had a problem paying $30-$40 for this game.

Im going to with hold an actual “score” right now and try to play it some more and wait for at least the first patch. I know Im not painting a pretty picture at all for Fort Zombie but I really WANT to like it, and I see it has huge potential for being great.  Its just going to take at least a patch or two.

New York, October 30, 2009 – Assemble your party from the survivors you can find. Equip them and send them out to find weapons, ammo and food, to help with the survival effort. Seek out military and emergency vehicles, the best sources for hardware and vital ammunition. Select from an assortment of handguns, shotguns, rifles and assault-weapons or pick-up an ever reliable fire-axe. Then shoot, swing and bash your way through an endless sea of undead.

This Halloween, internationally recognized developers Kerberos Productions offer up a chance to kill zombies and time with the release of lite RPG/action title Fort Zombie.

Watch the release trailer

Communicated through a gap in a boarded-up window of their fortified Vancouver studio, the devs at Kerberos Productions had this to say: “Every time we blew the arm off a zombie bowler or whacked an undead business man with a shovel, we regretted that we could only talk about it with the zombie fans and gamers on our messageboards. After months of holding back these ghouls by ourselves, we’re thrilled that gamers finally get to aim-for-the-head themselves and we look forward to welcoming more zombie survivors to our boards over the coming weeks!”

Fort Zombie is available for purchase exclusively through all major digital distribution channels for the hauntingly low suggested retail price of $9.99 and €9.99. Join the discussion on: http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum or follow @FortZombie on Twitter.

The End is Near.

New York, October 26, 2009 - From an apocalyptic world full of undead, Kerberos Studios prepare for a weekend of horror as lite action/RPG title – FORT ZOMBIE is confirmed for a Halloween release.

Though the screams have died down and the immediate terror may have past, the sea of undead lurch forever forwards. Closer and closer they come. Make ready! For it is time to make a break from your latest hiding place. Grab whatever weapons you can find. Run and fight through the mass of undead. Make your way towards the last place of safety on Earth. Seek out precious caches of weapons, food and fuel, while rounding up the few people that remain. Rally them into a unit and begin the fight of your life.

Check out the brand new in-game trailer released here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGX2dZrfan0

Fort Zombie will be available on October 30, for purchase exclusively through all major digital distribution channels for the hauntingly low suggested retail price of $9.99 and €9.99. For more information, please visit: www.fortzombie.com or follow @FortZombie on Twitter

The End is Near.