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Less than four hours to go until Left 4 Dead goes live at the stroke of midnight (EST) on Steam, and that means the Valve Launch Box will be dragged out of its off-season home in Gabe Newell’s tool shed.

What does the Launch Box do? When its keys and levers are turned and pulled in sequence, it emits clouds of dry ice, fires off klaxon noises, and finally, when you press the red button, releases games. And, because it’s kept in Gabe Newell’s tool shed and nobody ever bothers to check it for bee hives, bees. (If there’s one thing that makes those things angrier than klaxon noises, it’s dry ice!)

Like the release of the Orange Box this past October, the entire staff will be here tonight to celebrate. Unlike with the Orange Box release, we’re hoping, the entire staff will not be attacked by as many bees.

Good news on the Valve Launch Box test run! There was an electrical fire, and all the bees burned to death. The bad news: several employees also perished in the fire and the game will be delayed.

Just kidding! About the game. There were some burning deaths. But the game’s coming out!

We’ve said too much. Who wants to see our second TV commercial?

Perhaps more than any year that’s come before it, 2008 could be called The Year of Living Cooperatively. This holiday season has seen the release of many excellent co-op games on every gaming platform, from Gears of War 2 to Call of Duty: World at War to Resistance 2. While all of those games are great examples of where co-op gaming could be headed in the future, for the last few months our eyes have been focused squarely on Valve’s Left 4 Dead. Instead of just shoehorning a second player into a traditional single-player campaign, Left 4 Dead has been specifically built for co-op play from the ground up, and the resulting product is one of the most intense, enjoyable gaming experiences to date. It gets better with every human player that’s added, to the point that playing with three of your friends is close to gaming nirvana.

The basic premise of Left 4 Dead puts four characters in the middle of the worst horror-film scenario: surrounded by hordes of “infected” and running for their lives to a rescue point. The actual origin of the infected is never clarified, nor is it that crucial; what matters is that at every turn, there’s a chance that a few dozen zombies might come charging at you at full speed, looking to claw you apart. Then there’s the threat of a few special “boss” zombies that appear now and then to really make a mess of things. And so you need to team up with three chums to fight through city streets, office buildings, highways, farms and sewers to keep from becoming zombie chow.

As of midnight EST, the PC version of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s zombie thriller, is now available via Steam to gamers around the globe. The title will be available for the PC and Xbox 360 at retail stores on Tuesday, November 18 in North America, and worldwide on Friday, November 21.

Versus mode is being released with two movies: No Mercy and Blood Harvest, with more hopefully to come in future updates.

The structure of the game is simple. Team A begins the map on the Survivor team and Team B starts out on the Infected team. The players run through the first map of the movie and the Survivors try to reach the safe room with as much health and as many Survivors as possible. The Infected do whatever they can to stop them. After this round is over, a score is given to the Survivors based on their performance and the teams switch sides. The map starts over, with Team B now playing as Survivors and Team A on the Infected side. Team B now tries to outperform and outscore Team A. After this round is over, the teams move on to the second part of the movie.

The scoring system is a little complicated at first. After the Survivors reach the safe room or the Infected kill off them off, a score is given to the Survivors. The score calculates the average distance traveled by the Survivors (total of the distance traveled by each Survivor as a percentage, divided by 4) and adds this to how much real health they have at the end (after applying held health kits, pills don’t count since they’re only temporary health). This number is then multiplied by the number of Survivors alive. This is multiplied again by a difficulty modifier given to each portion of the map. These seem to be anywhere from x1 to x2. In a full game, each team will finish with five different scores, which are then totaled together. The team with the most points wins.

[(Average Distance Traveled) + (Health Score)] * (Number of Survivors in Safe Room) * (Map Modifier)

As an example, if four Survivors make it through to the safe room with full health (+100 health each) and it’s on a finale with x2 difficulty rating, the total score would be (100+100*4)*4*2 = score of 4,000 points for that map.

Versus mode has no difficulty setting. Instead, the regular Infected take a backseat (perform the same as Normal difficulty level in campaign mode) and the bosses play an even greater role, allowing the difficulty to be controlled by the skill of the players. The basic Infected are still important and keep the Survivors occupied, but the bosses will be the main threat. One of the benefits of having two separate modes is that playing against player-controlled bosses can be balanced independently from AI bosses. It works out really well.