Left 4 Dead 2's Dark Carnival unveiled

By Tom Bramwell Published 4 September, 2009

Jockey infected! Clowns! Electric guitar!

Valve today revealed the third of five campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2, Dark Carnival, and Eurogamer popped round to the firm's Bellevue office to try it out.

We'll have a comprehensive work-up of what we saw soon, but in the meantime you probably want to check out the first screenshots of Dark Carnival, and hear about things like the new special infected, the Jockey.

The Jockey's a right pain in the neck, appearing out of nowhere and hopping onto one of the survivors' backs. He or she then loses control of movement, allowing the Jockey to steer the pair into dangerous territory, where other infected can pile on the damage.

It's particularly frustrating for the survivors when one of their number is caught straggling, because the Jockey can ride them further and further away from the main group, potentially costing the team even more vital time, health and ammo than, say, a Hunter could by pinning a wayward player.

Dark Carnival itself ("You must be this tall... TO DIE!") begins on a highway, as the survivors inch through and around abandoned cars in the direction of the Ferris wheel and candy stripes on the horizon.

Following a few close shaves and a descent down a slippery hillside (which the AI director saw fit to spice up with a tank - thanks for that), the survivors work through a two-storey motel complex, with roomed-up infected bashing chunks out of every door they pass to try and get at them, and then make their way into the carnival itself, full of infected-packed tents and stalls.

'Left 4 Dead 2's Dark Carnival unveiled' Screenshot 1

Dark Carnival joins The Parish and Swamp Fever on the L4D2 campaign list. I snuck a look at the others on the campaign menu when no one was looking, but am too polite to report on them. But: hot.

There's a new uncommon common infected to fight - you may remember the hazmat-wearing CEDA infected and riot police with Kevlar from previous reveals - dressed as a clown, who calls other infected over to him. At this stage there's also an Achievement for honking his nose, although these are subject to change.

Valve said that some of the parlor games at the carnival will actually work in the final version, and drew our attention to quirky touches like the peanut man cutouts (he has a nutty nemesis - moustachio) before we hit the climactic point of the two-stage Dark Carnival demo: the merry-go-round crescendo moment.

Waving our katanas, axes and the new electric guitar melee weapons around happily, we set this off, and discovered the goal was to run around it to reach the off switch and stem the growing (and indeed infinite) tide of infected that attack you as you try to do so. Again, the director felt the need to help out by depositing a Witch in our path. Whacking her with the guitar was an error.

There's a lot more to talk about - like the way the Jockey works with other special infected including the other new boys, the Spitter and the Charger, and the simple, immeasurable brilliance of adding proper gibs and limb-loss to the game's existing technical base - but we'll save that for the full preview, coming soon.

There was one other touch to note right at the end though - the classic between-level music you get as you swing the saferoom door closed has been spiced up for Left 4 Dead 2, with a different twist on it for each new campaign.

Check out our previous Left 4 Dead 2 hands-on for more. The game's out for PC and Xbox 360 on 20th November, but launching for Steam on 17th November.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Man_s #1 2 years ago

    Can't wait. :)

  • PrivateFloyd #2 2 years ago

    "At this stage there's also an Achievement for honking his nose, although these are subject to change."

    this is all kinds of awesome.

    More comedy achievements please!!!!
    Edited by 1 at 04/09/09 @ 05:16

  • Cpt_McOneball #3 2 years ago

    How do you stop a clown from laughing?


    Hit him with an axe.

  • Toothball #4 2 years ago

    This all sounds quite exciting.

  • JusticeMoses #5 2 years ago

    How could anyone not want this? I really can not wait for this to come out!

  • StooMonster #6 2 years ago

    Sounds fantastic.

    Still intrigued as to how they are going to merge the L4D1 and L4D2 communities, but sure Valve will have an excellent solution (at least on PC, can't see anything happening on Xbox 360 on that front).

  • videogangs #7 2 years ago

    Stylistically this looks the absolute nuts. But then again I was never in the irrational hater category to begin with :-)

  • Vortex808 #8 2 years ago

    "At this stage there's also an Achievement for honking his nose, although these are subject to change."

    Sorry, but this just makes me love valve that little bit more. I really hope it makes it through to the final version. Daft achievements FTW- at least it might be slightly easier to get than launching that annoying gnome into space in HL2! I gave up on that about half-way there..........
    Edited by 1 at 04/09/09 @ 10:04

  • PlugMonkey #9 2 years ago

    L4D's achievements are ace. The 'cr0wned' achievement alone has led to countless scenes of hilarity in games I've played.

  • Tomo #10 2 years ago

    Excitement. Rising.

    Argh!

  • sneetch #11 2 years ago

    @PlugMonkey
    L4D's achievements are ace. The 'cr0wned' achievement alone has led to countless scenes of hilarity in games I've played.

    I've never seen it done successfully but I have had loads of laughs with people trying to do it. Especially on versus. :)

  • TOOTR #12 2 years ago

    *yawn*

    So not interested in this.

    You see I decided to boycott this as soon as it was announced because quite simply it was coming out too soon and Valve had broken their promises.

    So please stop with the articles about what great new features it has - you're wasting your time and will not change my prescient mind or those of the remaining, um, 72 people who haven't changed their mind about the boycott.

    /November is too far away. Now! Now! We want it NOW!

  • agparrot #13 2 years ago

    Well, I know the inclusion of clowns will make at least one forum member very happy.

    I must try and find his Hitman: Blood Money clown massacre, that was awesome.

  • cwk27 #14 2 years ago

    I fecking hate clowns. I don't think it a coincidence that they made the one in the screen shot look like Pennywise from IT.

    Now the game has two of my most feared things... Zombies and Clowns.
    Edited by 1 at 04/09/09 @ 12:37

  • organica #15 2 years ago

    My previous post from the original announcement:

    "If this involves clown zombies I'm going to shit myself with both pleasure and fear."

    Cleanup on aisle four, please.

  • TheTingler #16 2 years ago

    I notice that the box art has changed so the zombie's no longer sticking two fingers up at us...

  • FogHeart #17 2 years ago

    Kind of glad these things never found their way to L4D. I want the first one to be all horror and no comedy. I can't imagine frying pans and clown noses you honk appearing in a game that finds its movie parallel in 28 Day's Later.

    So if the games are to be different in style and theme, they have valid reasons to be seperate games. I do hope that when L4D2 is released that Valve concentrate on making uncommon common infected for L4D, and maybe ammo types. For maps we have about four full-length custom maps that are close to commercial quality with a couple more coming any minute now, so I'm cool without new campaigns. But Valve STILL hasn't done anything of significance about the first title.
    Edited by 1 at 04/09/09 @ 13:33

  • PlugMonkey #18 2 years ago

    They already have valid reason to be separate games. L4D2 features new characters, new enemies, new weapons, new environments and new gameplay mechanics. What more do people want from a sequel? Does Gears of War do more than that? Call of Duty?

    The only complaint seems to be that it's coming sooner rather than later. Presumably if Valve just sat on it for a year, the naysayers would all become ecstatically happy with it. :/

  • FogHeart #19 2 years ago

    "...new characters, new enemies, new weapons..."

    (sigh) I wish I could dig out the link to the youtube vid where Doug says, shortly after its release, that they will be adding to L4D using exactly these words but firewall policy at work etc etc

    All I want is maybe some uncommon common infected and ammo types. It ain't much compared to what TF2 has had since its release. Is it so bad that the more popular game gets a bit more attention?

  • Bremenacht #20 2 years ago

    Electric guitar melee!

    C'mon Valve - add banjos to the swamp campaign. You know it makes sense.

  • PlugMonkey #21 2 years ago

    I wish you could find it as well. I'd like to hear that.

    I wouldn't be at all surprised if L4D2 started as an add on and simply spiralled out of control in terms of scope and budget. Faced with the choice of axing features or doing something more ambitious and turning it into a fully fledged sequel, they chose the latter.

    Personally, I'm fine with that. I'd rather have more content even if it does mean forking over 30 notes. And it's not exactly out of character for Valve to take the more ambitious route. I'm sure it would have been much easier for them to churn out a few map packs at a fiver a go than work their arses off to get a full sequel out in a year.

    I suppose the one universal truth of life is that whatever you decide to do, someone on the internet will bitch about it.

  • TOOTR #22 2 years ago

    @ Plugmonkey - +1 I am in complete agreement with you.

    Maybe I am being harsh on the 'boycotters' though because although they came across to me as moaning misery guts at least they tried to direct their passion in a co-ordinated directon, And who knows, maybe Valve have put extra effort into L4D2 as a result?

    It'll soon be water under the bridge - the game is shaping up to be awesome from all reports.



  • bioreit #23 2 years ago

    @ Fogheart

    "It ain't much compared to what TF2 has had since its release"

    Actually, you're wrong. Cannot remember exactly which comments thread it was on, but one EG regular pointed out that L4D had more new things far quicker than TF2 had at the same point in its lifetime - and he was correct. I'll dig it out at some point and quote/link to it, but loads of people were wheeling out the "but TF2 has more content added", but completely forgot the fact that TF2 has been out for far, far longer than L4D1.

    It's all relative, baby.

  • Demikaze #24 2 years ago

    @Plugmonkey

    A great point. We don't know how the genesis of the game came about. Perhaps it was just DLC and then idea after idea after idea flooded in. I, for one, welcome the tide and prepare to be drowned.