There’s a special bonus for those of you keen enough to pre-order the PC version of Left 4 Dead 2 via the Steam download network – early access to a multiplayer demo. Very nice.

The demo itself hasn’t been dated yet, although it’s safe to assume it’ll arrive a tidy distance in advance of the full game’s release on Tuesday, November 17th. Those who do not immediately avail themselves of this nifty pre-order offer – the fools – will be able to access the multiplayer demo at a later date.

So it’s all going to plan for Left 4 Dead 2 – by all accounts pre-orders are already double what they were for its predecessor. The flipside of that is some disgruntlement in the wider L4D2 community, where some believe that this second iteration has been hurriedly produced in favour of promised downloadable content for the original game.

That may or may not be the case. However, with the sequel boasting a much larger single-player campaign, expanded co-op and versus gameplay options, terrifying boss zombies, plus chainsaws, frying pans and other new weapons to despatch ‘em with... well, we’ll probably forgive the developers Valve for having their hands full.

One final thing to convince any remaining fence-sitters – Valve is hinting that there will be free weekends with the full game on Steam after the retail launch. Is there no end to their generosity? Apparently not...