Left4Dead Suvival mode info

[stb1swat]

The new Survivor mode is...somewhat less than i expected, but at the same times its way better. Basically you're open up from all sides and it never starts out easy. Right from the start its madness, and its never about surviving to live, but surviving to beat your best time. It implements a timer that shouldn't reach into the hours because valve's own best time was like...10 minutes. Due to the extremely short life-spans of each survival game...this is going to be very frustrating or very addictive.
There are 12 survivor maps of which 11 are rehashed versions of the campaign and 1 is a new map called "lighthouse". The latter is claimed to be the most difficult; some of the key points of the map are a lighthouse and a rock cliff... apparently that means something...

Here are the videos:
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/818215...preparing.html
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/818215...use_clip1.html
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/818215...use_clip2.html
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/818215...vivormode.html

So what's in it for you? Well, beside the intense action, there are all sorts of personal records you can accumulate. The most obvious one is trying to get a best time for each of the 12 Survival levels in the game. There are extra incentives as well. You can earn bronze, silver, and gold medals if you survive long enough. Though the medal times for each map will be tailored for each map, right now the basic idea is that you need to survive for at least four minutes to get bronze, six minutes to get silver, and eight minutes to get gold. (In our play session, the best we ever got was within a minute of earning silver.) Of course, online leaderboards will also let you compare your times with those of our friends for bragging rights.

As soon as your group is wiped out, you get the match results and then the entire thing resets. Basically, once you start playing you can do round after round easily, which eats up the time. Survival mode is playable on 12 levels, 11 of which are taken and modified from the existing four campaigns. We played in Dead Air's airport terminal, Blood Harvest's farm house level, and No Mercy's hospital level. There is one entirely brand-new level in the DLC called Lighthouse which the designers say may be the toughest level of them all.

Full article

 

[aaronkupen]

This isn't really something I'm into. I think they should have just concentrated on enhancing what was already in the game rather than put a kind of "time trial" into the game.

 

[Gabb]

well its good at least that they make survival mode hard and therefore reduce the times put in. It would be pretty boring if it started out so easy that you would have to waste a good 30 mins just beating easy levels.

 

[synergy]

Sounds pretty fun actually. It really depends on how hard it really is.

 

[stainer711]

Any word on when this comes out? I hope the SDK comes out close to the release of this.

 

[Gabb]

Any word on when this comes out? I hope the SDK comes out close to the release of this.

in a n4g link somewhere theres an article that states its coming out before the collectors edition on april 21st ( too lazy to look for the link, just take my word for it )

 

[stb1swat]

This will be good for those of us who liked the game. People should note that with the arrival of the SKD in the DLC they're also getting new, full size campaign maps. There are a few maps already finished and awaiting finalization from the updated SDK, and one of them is modeled after the Dawn of the Dead movie that takes survivors to a mall, into the mall, and into a city park.

EDIT
more vids with a greater description of the maps
Left 4 Dead Survival Pack - hands-on, Left 4 Dead PC Previews | GamesRadar