Valve upheld its penchant for generosity today with the release of the first Left 4 Dead DLC, called the Survival Pack. Before I describe it, remember that the pack is free on both Xbox 360 and PC, so you may just want to stop reading right now and go grab it.
OK, if you're still here, this pack makes a few nice additions to L4D's already excellent core game. It gets the Death Toll and Dead Air campaigns up and running in Versus mode, so you can play as the zombie infected side (without resorting to any weird hacks on the PC, natch). More importantly, there's a whole new mode in there called Survival, which has you and the other survivors holed up in a central location with ludicrous numbers of enemies running at you from all sides. And I don't use the word "ludicrous" lightly. Just take a look.
At least there's a ton of ammo and health packs strewn all around the building, but then again, you have to actually reach them to use them. Based on the few games I played online, it's common to only last two or three minutes tops in Survival, though the game starts doling out award medals at the 4- and 7-minute marks.
Survival mode works on 15 of the individual maps taken from the campaigns in the shipping game, and there's a small new map included in this pack called Last Stand, which you can see in the video. There's a lighthouse attached to that garage, which I would have liked to show you--but, well, you see what happens when you dare to step outside.
On top of all that, look for seven new achievements in the pack too. Not too shabby for a free update, huh?
UPDATE: The achievements as outlined in Valve's post are in fact only for the PC version. The Xbox 360 game still has an even 1,000 points.