I downloaded and played around a little bit with the new Left 4 Dead demo on Xbox Live this afternoon, and here’s some early thoughts:

1. Maybe I missed something, but it seems that the demo is only playable in a live matchmaking mode. While it does allow you to see and play the actual game, it would have been nice to be able to get a better handle on operating the game first instead of just diving right in. For instance, I still have no clue how to heal myself or others, so I just ended up dying a whole bunch and having to watch everyone else play. I would have liked to have seen a short out-of-game tutorial rather than the in-game suggestions that randomly pop up right as you’re being attacked by monsters, aka the most inopportune time ever.

2. Controller options. It took me four or five tries to finally find the option for inverted play, which is my preferred style. I still don’t know how I found the inverted option, since the controller menu is pretty much just a giant diagram of all the button layouts and the presets for each different config.

3. The graphics are really good- the short film before the game was incredible. With what limited play I was able to see on the demo, the game doesn’t look fantastically different than the first- but if the short is any indication, I could be very very wrong about this. I hope I am.