Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, today announced the availability of the Left 4 Dead 2 demo to all PC gamers and all Xbox Live Gold Members.

The Left 4 Dead 2 demo features gameplay taken from "The Parish" campaign, set in the New Orleans French Quarter. Playable by 1 to 4 players over local or Internet connections on both the Xbox 360 and PC (with two-player split screen available on the Xbox 360), the demo features all the new boss infected zombies and many of the new melee weapons included in the full product.

Coming exclusively to Xbox 360 and PC, L4D2 promises to set a new benchmark for co-operative action games. Set for release on November 17, the title adds melee combat to enable deeper co-operative gameplay, with items such as a chainsaws, frying pans, axes, baseball bats, and more.

Adding new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original, featuring more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, new Survival maps, and the new competitive game mode, Scavenge, all available at launch.

Go to www.l4d.com for more info.