The Turtle Rock developed, Valve purchased, source based shooter, Left 4 Dead, has been delayed until November of 2008. Originally promised for a November 2007 release date, the game has already been pushed back several times since it was first shown as an Atari 2600 game back in the late 80's. Yes, that is a joke; I made it because I am sad.

Valve’s purchase of Turtle Rock was a good sign for anyone following Left 4 Dead and hoping for a quality game, but a bad sign for anyone wanting it to come out within the next millennium. If we are to look at Valve’s usual record with getting games out in a timely fashion we will be lucky to be playing Left 4 Dead before an actual zombie-related apocalypse occurs. Oh well, at least we will have something to do in the bunkers while we get our daily stim-packs and rations.

Valve's Doug Lombardi had some nice things to say about the game and explained the delay in a believable fashion when interviewed by Shacknews late last week:

“So the game is pretty much playable all the way through right now. And as we've done with most of our games, we get to a point where, it's playable all the way through, there are some [minor] issues that we need to work on, and we try to add more time to the schedule to have as many people as possible play the game, to make sure that it's approachable to players of all skills.” 

The game sounds close to being finished and if Valve needed the money we would probably see it on store shelves before the end of next month, but the company has always subscribed to the “when it’s done” school of game development and hasn't let us down yet. My suggestion is to throw Dead Rising back into your Xbox 360 to ease the pain, and be happy that Left 4 Dead will likely rock your face off whenever it does come out.

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