Stranded in the swamps and townships the south, you control the fate of four survivors, Nick, Rochelle, Coach and Ellis. Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 has you battling your way through hordes of common zombies and special infected and only staying alive with the help of a surplus of weapons, ammunition and much needed health packs. Once again goal is the same - survive long enough to make it to the next safe house, or helicopter and move forward in the game.

Director Roland Emmerich's movies are usually hit or miss, usually in trying to explain just what is going on to try and suspend your disbelief. It also looks like he's looking to become King of the Disaster Movie. His other film which froze everything north of the equator, The Day After Tomorrow, was just a warm up...no pun intended...for this one.

But when you forget that there's supposed to be a story behind all of the snazzy CG that he uses to wreck his worlds with, it's almost as fun as watching Sean Connery and Natalie Wood nearly drown in chocolate milk in 1979's, Meteor.

They wanted to do more for the fans, but at the time, no one was sure just how well the game would actually do to justify going all out with a full blown CE. Just offering what they could was a surprise in and of itself (as well as turning those Big Daddy statuettes into something of a collector's item) to everyone anticipating it.

But Bioshock was a huge success and now it almost looks as if they've been given a blank check to pull out all of the stops for the sequel's CE.

Looking at it, I could go for the hardcover art-book, but the other items are also interesting for those wanting to dress up their homes as if they were living in Rapture. Also included are three retro, 60's-styled posters, a CD containing the orchestral score and get this...a vinyl LP with the same score with its own album sleeve. Now you can laugh at everyone else that had thrown out their turntables for little platters of overpriced, shiny plastic!

But the price is just a wee over what I had expected to spend for this fan pack. The console version is going for about $100 (the PC version is ten dollars less) on Gamestop and Amazon, and here's what it looks like courtesy of the official site:

It's nearly winter here. The trees are mostly bare, cold winds rustle dried leaves, and everyone is getting ready to deal with the ice and snow that it inevitably brings. Around these parts, it's a yearly ritual that brings both pain and joy to our particular corner of the world.

Demon's Souls comes off as the season of winter pressed onto a blu-ray disc with the freezing rain, white outs, and ditched cars stuck on the side of the road that help define it. It's usually below freezing and salted ice forms up on your mudflaps like barnacles before breaking away to leave behind a surprise for the person following you, just as an eighteen wheeler did for you a few miles earlier. Many loathe it with the kind of hate that would defrost their cars on their way in to work.

But it's also the favorite time of the year for others that love snowball fights, ski trips, snowmen, and warming up with a mug of cocoa. I loved it when I heard that my school was one of those closed, usually because the roads had gotten so bad or that the same water main that had broken the year before had done the same thing again. But in our small world, it was a temporary reprieve, and Demon's Souls is filled with just enough of these to find joy within its brutal season of gameplay.

"Dragon Age" sets its roots in familiar swords-and-sorcery territory, but Bioware's always-great writing and wonderful design set the game apart from its genre competitors. You'll enter a world in a time of crisis, and you'll have to get your hands dirty to have any hope of making things right.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a one night stand of flying bullets, explosions and cool moments. It pushes you forward with guns blazing, hoping to God you don't stop to realize how confusing it all is.

Because for all of Modern Warfare 2's awesome action -- and it is indeed deserving of whatever superlatives you can throw at it -- the game also suffers from a disorienting absence of sense in its storytelling. You do things, but you don't know why. All you know is that it all looks badass in HD.

Despite having one of the biggest launches in history and collecting over $300 million in one day, PC gamers are still upset over the feeling of being shortchanged on features, not that it's going to tarnish the runaway success that MW2 is currently experiencing. This also sent Activision's stock price surging allowing its controversial CEO, Bobby Kotick, to exercise his stock options netting him a cool $20 million plus in the aftermath.

And now that Amazon has officially opened its rating system, PC players have let their version have it. Surprisingly, several of the top entries lambasting the title make excellent points on why they don't like it. Some sound as if they have even played it. There's even a new petition out, although I doubt its success after the first one was basically ignored.

It's hard not to think that MW2's massive economic success has closed the door on whatever the PC crowd wants to bend Infinity Ward's ear over with the game at this point. As upset as many are, it is a business and with that much money in tow along with the millions of sales made in one day for consoles alone, any complaints about dedicated servers will be marginalized.

Still, I've already seen posts talking about a tool that unlocks the console and several commands unavailable on the stock version of the title, allowing ways to kick players from games or change the field of view among others. On some days with Xbox Live, I wish I had the option to vote-kick certain players from a game, if only because of the sewage usually streaming across my headset when I take it off mute just to get a sampling of what it's like to hear everything.

It's only one game, though id is also considering to not include dedicated server support for their upcoming apocalyptic game, Rage. Whether others follow suit on the PC front remains to be seen, but it is clear that with MW2, Infinity Ward and Activision won't be losing any sleep over dedicated servers.

Update 11.16.09: Those tools I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it appears that they work. Mind you, this isn't the only thing that they're meant for, but it does show off the kind of weirdness that having the freedom to tweak the online experience allows for. Ah, moon gravity...brings back the good ol' days of beaching a destroyer halfway up Normandy in Battlefield 1942. Now if only they can get more players into the game...

Also, it's not just one person doing this. Everyone on the server is affected by the rules set up by the admin, so its moon boots and unlimited ammo for everyone!

Dominic Diaz of Highland waits outside the San Bernardino Best Buy for the midnight release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Lines wrap around the Best Buy in San Bernardino during the Midnight release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Some pictures have shown up on a message board by a poster named 'Tom Morello' that purportedly show some of the weapons and HUD from Bungie's upcoming Halo Reach. The poster allegedly took the pictures at Microsoft headquarters. Follow the link to see the pictures and make up your own mind as to their validity

By Derrick Hopkins
Editor, deadpixellive.com/special contributor to Tech-Out

The Nurburgring is a 13-mile-long race track in located Nurburg, Germany. Nicknamed the "Green Hell", it was built in 1927, has 72 corners, constant elevation changes and is considered one of the most dangerous race tracks ever constructed. And for about $15, anyone can drive on it.

A lot of games have included the Nurburgring on their list of locales to simulate. The latest is "Forza Motorsport 3," which claims to be the most "realistic racing experience ever." "Forza 3" gives Xbox 360 owners the option of taking on the Nurburgring and dozens of other tracks in a collection of SUVs, exotic sportscars and purpose-built racers.

My brother and I had flown to Germany for the express purpose of driving on the legendary track. And we'd do it in a rented Mercedes C230 sedan.

Cool guns have become as much a part of gaming's fabric as health packs and life meters. Whether it's a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle or a machine gun that fires heat-seeking bullets, many gamers have their favorite brands of fire-spitting, death-spewing hardware. For some, it's even an obsession.

That's where the true power of Gearbox's Borderlands lies. It's the "Guns & Ammo" of gaming, appealing to our inner firearms enthusiast. Not only does it stroke our urge to search for, collect and play with new toys that go bang, it gives us the ultimate playground. Sure there's a plot and a story, but who cares when you have a high-powered rifle that shoots electric rounds?

This morning, Disney announced that they were creating Disney Epic Mickey, an action platformer for the Wii that's looking to give the vaunted mouse some new life. Mickey travels to a place called the Cartoon Wasteland -- a place for Disney creations that have either retired or faded into obscurity. The caretaker of the wasteland is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was Walt Disney's first star ... until Mickey came along. Naturally, this leads to issues when Mickey stumbles into the wasteland and ruins the land's sense of balance. Now, it's up to Mickey to provide damage control.

Here's a snippet about gameplay from Disney:

Players use the Wii Remote to wield magical paint and thinner to re-shape the world around them. Paint's creativity and thinner's damaging effect give the player robust tools and empowers them to make choices about how they move through the world. Each player's decisions to use paint, thinner or both dynamically changes the world with consequences that affect the environment, interactions with other characters, and even Mickey's appearance and abilities.

The painting concept immediately brings me right to Okami, an outstanding game from Capcom where you had the ability to "paint" items into the scenery and watch them spring to life -- for instance, if you painted a sun at night, you would immediately make it daytime.

Disney sent over some screens and art for the game, so you can see it after the jump. The game's slated to drop in the fall of 2010.

On that note, and in view of Red's review of the amazing Uncharted 2 (I've played it,too), here's a little example of what I'm talking about. Enjoy!

And don't forget, it's also fun for the whole family!

At least according to "customers" on Amazon.com in the UK.

Today's information saturated world has turned the internet into an open bulletin board allowing anyone with a chip on their shoulder to post their unflattering review of the Transformers in less than three words, accessible to anyone with a browser. But it's not all off the cuff. Some of that anger is also backed by a number of legitimate concerns.

Amazon is no stranger to this kind of internet vengeance. Last year, Turbotax maker, Intuit, raised the price on its flagship product by $15 and started charging users $9.95 for each additional return made on it. Predictably, this made many upset for a variety of well thought out reasons spanning more than three words. People who quickly downrated Turbotax's listing on Amazon to one star.

The good news is that Intuit actually listened and reversed the $9.95 charge.

In another example, self-help author, Cooper Lawrence, had stated on Fox News that Mass Effect had "full digital nudity and sex." which was extremely misleading, sensationalist "SE"XBOX" news header not helping. Mass Effect does have one sex scene, but it happens late in the game and is the kind implied on prime-time television, even for a game rated "M" for Mature (titles like Max Payne 2 or even the original Duke Nukem were a lot more explicit compared to Mass Effect). Of course, to anyone that believes that games are just evil, this is great ammunition...even if it is absolutely wrong.

Gamers quickly protested by hitting her self-help book on Amazon with one-star ratings, indirectly attacking her in the process and questioning the veracity of her own work in their comments. Soon, enough of these were submitted to drive it into the ratings basement until Amazon deleted them, but it did elicit a retraction of sorts from Lawrence a week later.

And now with Infinity Ward's controversial decision to build IW.Net and remove dedicated server support from their latest game, Modern Warfare 2, moving it closer in design to what console players are used to, PC players furious over the changes haven't wasted time in making their anger felt. A petition already passing 100K 'signatures' is still earning more, Infinity Ward's response to the furor has only thrown more gas on the fire by simply looking at the comments, and angry gamers have already found its listing on Amazon's UK storefront.

Interestingly enough, Amazon's storefront over here has wisely opted not to open up the ratings for the any version of Modern Warfare 2 yet. It's probably hard not to wonder why.

UPDATE 9.25.09: It looks like Amazon.UK have removed the PC title's star rating (although the screenshot above shows what it had appeared as), likely because the reviews rating it aren't from people that have actually played the game. The Xbox 360 version, though, has a five star rating according to one poster. The petition is still going strong, though, now surpassing 150K signatures. Not bad for one week.