Dolla Dolla your making me look like a lazy asshole.

Apologies. You could copy my post and put it in the OP, and none would be the wiser

Now your making me look like a dumbass.

Man, we are two very different creatures. The first thing about this game that has bothered me is the emphasis on cinematic qualities.

Why on earth would I want the corners of my screen darkened? I'm here to win, not to watch a movie.

It is to immerse you in the experience, make you feel more anxiety.

This game is looking like 27 different kinds of awesome.

I have to get better internet and go online NOW!

Also, 360? It hopefully will be a quality title on the 360, and if that's your option, definitely get this game.

But I will continue to highly recommend the PC version of Valve games over console options...they're very scalable (work well on older PCs), and they're simply designed best for a keyboard and mouse, as well as Steam's features...including a Matchmaking service they plan on rolling out with Left 4 Dead. It'll be a feature that matches you with people of similar skill and experience, and they'll roll back this feature into many other games, like TF2 and CS...it'll be very helpful.

But other than that, the main reason to go PC is that they'll support PC the most with patches and updates. If you want the exclusive "shopping mall" level that you just KNOW is going to be released a couple months after the game comes out, you'll be SOL on the consoles, unless things change.

As for the cinematic qualities, I have no problem with them; it's their artistic choice. Film grain in Mass Effect kinda bothered me, but if it works in Left 4 Dead I'll keep it. I liked what I saw in these videos, other than maybe a little too much black and white...the colors should come back a little I would think.

I don't care about immersion. I want to win. Anything that even remotely gets in the way of winning (such as obscuring a portion of my screen for dramatic effect) is not something I want.

Others are welcome to different preferences, of course, but Half Life mods have always been about competition (Counter Strike, TFC, DoD, TF2) and not "immersion" or photorealism. Valve's multiplayer games are about skill -- or at least, they usually are. We'll see with this one.

Congratulations for Valve, they are implementing something that Live has had since the original XBox, and sadly, voice communication is not quite as ubiquitous on pc(edit: hardly at all) as it is on Live, which seems like something that will be very useful for the co-op play.  Keyboard and mouse is better though, and I have never cared for mods because the vast, vast majority are shoddy shit.

Such as Counter Strike? Team Fortress? Come on.

That's like saying XBLA isn't worth my time because there is so much crap on the service. Some of the most competitive, skill oriented games in existance are not only mods, but mods of Valve's game. Counter Strike remains the pre-eminent professional gaming circuit by a pretty wide margin.

And yeah, you're nuts if you think voice recognition isn't ubiquitous on PC. I'm not sure what games you're playing, but I just played a few rounds of Natural Selection, and I'd estimate that 2/3-3/4 of the players had mics (as HL indicates who has a mic and who does not in the score tab).