For all the talk of petitions and boycotts over Left 4 Dead 2's sooner-than-expected release, the game doesn't seem to be suffering much. A Valve representative tells Eurogamer that pre-orders for the sequel are currently double that of the original's pre-order figures from the same time last year . Although that sounds impressive, it's possible to see some spin in there -- Left 4 Dead didn't really have its big coming-out party until E3 2008, which technically wouldn't occur for another two weeks from now. Couple that with general sequel buzz and you might have your inflated pre-order figure.

Nitpicks aside, Valve has already stated that it plans to continue supporting Left 4 Dead with more content. The company expects to announce more DLC near the end of summer and has expressed that people will understand the big L4D picture within a year. Assuming it hasn't announced Left 4 Dead 3 by then, of course.

Apologies for the late post however work, baby, wife and parents have been dominating my life!

Thanks to Jelliot who kindly stepped in for me to run last weeks event at short notice. Hopefully I will be back to form next week, fingers crossed!

Anyway on to the important news we have another new player of the week based on performance with none of our previous winners able to reclaim their crown...

This weeks winner is............

Dimetrious Prime!

Well done mate :)

Hi Guys

The Battlefield Heroes BETA is now open to everyone!

http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/

Battlefield Heroes is a free online shooter based loosely around a cartoony WW2. As in Battlefield 2 you choose a class and level up gaining access to new equipment and abilities however the core game of driving vehicals and shooting baddies is available right from the start.

Its an incredibly fun game and as previously stated COMPLETELY FREE!

Come join me on the side of the Royal Gaurd, my name is Tokey2000

Was a tough one today with a lot of the group unavailable due to attending a post exam piss up however we managed to get a game going and a pretty good one at that too!

Special thanks to Johnny Spent who kept it all running smoothly as yet again Baby, Wife and now Parents as well had to take priority for me. Hopefully I'll be able to get on next week!

The conclusion of the game also gives us a new player of the week! Congratulations to Dreath whos superb counter attacking play has earned him this weeks acclaim!

Dont forget everybody that there is another event scheduled tomorrow where hopefully the drunken teens will be in attendance, for more info on that check out the calendar and bug Jelliot for details :)

Finally im in the process of working out some sort of player seeding scheme in an attempt to add some more balance to the vs matches. Im currently toying with the idea of a voluntary, self assessed rating out of 10 which will be kept in a table and used to compare you against other players in the group. This way when it comes to assigning teams we can ensure that they are moderately skill balanced.

I think it needs some more time of us all playing together and I need to consider some of the ins and outs of it, if you have any thoughts on this drop me a line.

Well it seems that the first of our weekly events got of with a big bang with an unprecedented 18 group members taking part in 2 games run in parallel which makes this the biggest event the group has hosted to date!

Initial feedback on both games has been good so thanks to both Whoop and Minnow who got things organised, hopefully next time I'll be able to be involved myself.

As part of the regular event I will be looking to highlight a player of the week and based on feedback from todays games I would like to give this weeks honour to:

Lord Jellington whos team work and skillful survivor and infected based play set him apart from the rest congrats Jelly :)

Next week I will be looking for someone to strip him of his crown!

Heres hoping that next week is even bigger! Thanks for playing everyone.

If you have any suggestions as to how we can make this even better please feel free to drop me a line.