Whatever the reason, the rest of the panel echoed surprise at L4D2 being in the group of five finalists for Game of the Year at the VGA's. When Modern Warfare 2 came up, though, those same points didn't come up despite their being equally valid. It's interesting to me how the perceived expectations for these two games varied.

And for the record, Left 4 Dead 2 definitely stands up as a full-fledged sequel to me. The environmental effects add a lot of tension and fit in extremely well. The enhanced in mission objectives that require a little more than just flipping a lever make it more important than ever to work together as a team. And already I've had scores of OMG how'd we survive that moments and plenty of that's a wipe's too.

During our break from gaming (aka work) we grabbed a couple stories:

• Zombie MMO Announced by WoW Veterans
• Blizzard Has Realized That They Announce Games Too Early
• Study Examines Video Game War Crimes
• Former Pandemic Employees Go Out Office Space Style
• Zombieriffic Trailer for Borderlands DLC

Remember back when the government was concerned for national security over the computing potential of the PS2? Well, the US Air Force is buying 2,200 PS3's to go with the 336 it already owns for a supercomputing research program.

Israel is back in the military tech news, developing a cell phone text message incoming missile alert system. Think there'll be an app for that?

Thanksgiving PSA: How to cook a turkey.

And then there's this man driving a bull around in his car. How do you follow that?