As we last heard, the game's content is essentially done, with the project now in Valve's rigorous playtesting and tweaking period. Though the playable undead were sadly MIA for this year's E3 showing, I was surprised to see just how much the game had changed in a little over a month since I last got my hands on it.

Faliszek also clarified that, as with previous builds, characters will be assigned to players randomly upon joining a game. And as expected, the two-player split-screen multiplayer mode remains restricted to the Xbox 360 version of Left 4 Dead and will not appear on the PC. Other changes to this latest build appear to be the usual steps towards a polished presentation come the game's eventual release. One substantial change is the visual effects enacted when "slimed" by the lumbering, bloated Boomer—where previous builds merely employed a semi-transparent texture over the player's field of view, the new visual effects obscure and warp your vision, making it much more difficult to tell the difference between friendlies and the teeming horde.