New interview from Valve's Doug Lombardi: 

Nothing in the way of new info really, I just found the Miyamoto quote interesting. 

Also there is a badass new gameplay video...just try to imagine yourself taking part in this fight without hitting your buddies.  This game is going to be hectic! 

PS - I hope they spend a lot of time tuning the 360 controls because its going to be a biatch to aim quickly and precisely with a m&kb, I would hate to try with a anologue stick.

Bah, nobody has anything to say about this? Don't be bums, comment people!

 the famous "delayed game can be good game but a bad game is always bad" i dont remember the exact words.

I can't wait for this game. There aren't enough good co-op games, and I'm really glad Valve is working on one. I'm a bit worried about the auto-adjusting difficulty, because every game I've played that's used that has done it badly. But I'm confident that Valve will iron it out pretty well in their relentless testing sessions.

I completely shared your worry on this point(bolded).

The big thing that has eased my mind was that they aren't increasing or decreasing difficulty through more damage, less health, etc...but through increase/decrease in enemy frequency etc...

But more importantly their AI director has to be in tune with the players for him to do his job correctly anyways. Specifically, he has to properly read their tension level, know their ammo/health situation, etc, etc... and those are all things built into just the AI director which is a core part of the game (something valve does quite well).

If the AI director was bad at those things I think given all of the hands-on previews there have been we would have heard something about it by now. I really think they've nailed the AI Director, and by virtue of that they can't help but nail the difficulty scaling.

Just in case I'm wrong, I hope they provide an option to turn it off.

That's disappointing considering the talent and effort that went into it but frankly Left 4 Dead looks like Serious Sam with upgraded graphics. I am so over zombie blasting. Can't they come up with any really original ideas.

It's a shame you don't see why this game is awesome.

It's not the zombies that make it good, though that is one part. Tell me how many good zombie shooters there have been, after all. It's that it's 4 player co-op, and that the game is strictly designed around co-op. It's not an option like Halo 3, Haze, or most other shooters that build a game and make co-op the same game only harder to accomodate for more players. There really haven't been many good co-op games, and putting it online with Valve is about the best thing you could do.

Add to that being a super-zombie, which will make for a really creative, new experience, and I'm sure Valve will get that right, there's plenty of tweaking to be done there. And also add the AI Director, which will make the game infinitely replayable, as well as make custom maps just as good as the official ones.

Also, he quoted Miyamoto incorrectly.  It's not "a delayed game comes out eventually, a bad game is bad forever" or whatever he said, it's "a delayed game is good eventually, a bad game is bad forever" which makes more sense of course.

So have you played the game?

I'm just wondering since the most common thing people say about the game after playing it is that you can't understand what the gameplay is like until you play through at least one full map.

Aside from the fact that I doubt you've played it and thus don't "get it", the game has tons of originality to it. Have you even been paying attention?

edit, Ben pointed out some of the stuff you missed.

If you genuinely missed this stuff I think you should read up on the game at LeftDead411.com (see Ben's signature) they have a lot of great info and can give a good sense of what the game is like...or at least I think I somewhat "get it". But even then people who have done the hands on have said they thought so too but were rudely awakened that they in fact did not.

I can't think of any game that required four people to work together with such precision that they would have to time their reloads, cover for each other, and in general work as a team in SWAT like precision in order to just survive. The fun of the game is found in discovering that what you thought was difficult becomes easy when you feel you must do it to survive. The game is all about making you feel like you can't let your buddies down because if you do it could kill not just you but everyone...thats what builds immersion, thats what makes the concept behind this game great.

Just found a new gameplay video:

I can't seem to get full screen to work on it, but if you want to watch it full screen you can here:

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/18853

Cool clip, gah this game is gonna rock.

edit:  Ok, I watched that last vid in full now...dang I need this game.  It got pretty freaking intense right when they got to the safe room...crazy.  I would not want to be the guy with 10% health getting swarmed by 20 infected.