You don't want it to get infected

I'm not really much of a PC gamer, but I just had to give this a mention as it concerns one of my favorite titles of the holiday season - Left 4 Dead. As you may know, the premiere zombie horror game of 2008 didn't even feature any zombies; they were "infected" à la 28 Days Later. This made them easier to deal with in some ways, like the fact that they didn't require a head-shot to put down, but tougher in other ways, like their speed and agility.

Well, for one modder, who goes by the name Doku, this wasn't good enough. Hordes of infected just couldn't cut it, so he decided to change things a little bit and add some "realism". Download his mod and you'll find yourself playing a very different Left 4 Dead. First off, everyone is slower, zombies and survivors. You have no flashlight, and must take down all enemies with a shot to the head. Thankfully, you have a laser sighting on your gun now, but no on-screen crosshairs otherwise. Oh, and you won't be finding ammo or health packs in safe rooms anymore; you'll have to search for them.

One other big change is the lack of special infected, except for tweaked tanks for the finales. Now, the game can be tackled by a single person without the fear of being constantly jumped by a hunter or smoker. But why would you be alone anyway? Wouldn't your AI teammates be with you? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that: You have no AI teammates anymore. Whether you can still invite real people to join you isn't mentioned, but the mod seems to be focused on turning Left 4 Dead from an arcadey co-op shooter into a single player survival horror.

There's a whole bunch of other little changes and tweaks that seem to have the singular goal of making things more difficult, and you can read the whole list here, as well as download the mod. This should give PC gamers something to do while we all wait for Valve's official DLC. Meanwhile, check out this video of the mod in action. I swear you'll never take your flashlight for granted again!