Left 4 Dead 2: The Last Stand is live and free to play for the weekend
The big community-made update adds a new campaign, Survival mode maps, and a huge number of fixes and tweaks.
Left 4 Dead 2: The Last Stand, the community-made update to Valve's multiplayer zombie shooter that's been adopted as official, is now live, and to celebrate the big moment Valve has made the game free to play for the weekend.
The Last Stand features a new campaign based on the original survival map, but this time around you can actually escape to safety—if you can blast your way through hordes of the infected. There are also 26 new Survival mode maps, four new Scavenge Mode arenas, a pair of new melee weapons—the shovel and the pitchfork, and for my money the shovel is the way to go because the pitchfork is going to get stuck on something the first time you use it—and 30 new achievements.
Less visible improvements include new animations, the restoration of unused dialog, the addition of common infected models from the original Left 4 Dead (with gore!), new Rocketdude and Tank Run mutations, UI improvements, and "a ton of bug and exploit fixes." If you'd like to dive into the details, the full patch notes are available here.
To ensure everyone has a chance to see what the big update is all about, Left 4 Dead 2 is free to play on Steam until September 27, and if you like it and want to carry on with the zombie-blasting shenanigans, it's also on sale for 80 percent off—that's just $2—until September 28.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
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