Can't say this mash-up ever occurred to me, though, in hindsight, it seems sort of obvious. Four people from four different backgrounds trying to conquer a gauntlet to ensure their future survival. Whether they're up against flying monkeys or zombies, the challenge before them is still epic.

The image above was created for the "Character of the Week" contest on Concept Art and was collected by Super Punch in a much more viewable format. Hardly any of the "Oz" re-imaginings are video game related, but they're all extremely impressive and make me upset that the recent SyFy re-imagining was so terrible.

Here's the full shot of the poster, which really sells the "Left 4 Oz" motif.

On the non-spoilery side of some new "Left 4 Dead" reveals, the upcoming "Left 4 Dead 2" DLC episode "Nobody Survives Forever" will directly relate to some upcoming "L4D1" DLC, and a comic book with bridge both stories. On the significantly more spoilery side of "NSF," however, you'll have to click on past the jump where I've placed the rest of the info, just in case some readers don't want to know about it.

"You'll run into 'Left 4 Dead 1' characters after they've just had this happen," Valve writer Chet Faliszek told GameTrailers TV. "After this we'll release 'Left 4 Dead 1' DLC, in which one of you will have to do what happens, and one of you will die."

Faliszek didn't name the fated party member, but he did say that the story between the unreleased DLC releases will be laid out in comic book form -- though it won't factor in choices and alternatives that show up in-game.

"And we'll actually have a comic book coming out between the two," he said. "It explains the idealized version of how it works out."

It sounds like you may have be able to choose who bites the bullet in the end, but should you choose to by the DLC, you'll be able to find out for yourself.

Do you like the linked DLC strategy for "L4D2" and "L4D1" that Valve is planning? Would you rather they stuck to 2? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Other services will be unavailable as well, including Steam Community, downloading games from Steam, and purchasing games from the Steam store.

Valve will be updating the news post located here with any further details as they become available. As you'd expect, they're promising to "make this downtime as short as possible," but the downtime is sure to once again bring out the anti-Steam crowd who will cite this as the reason that physical media is superior to digital downloads.

Detailing the two major aspects of the update in a post on their official blog, the L4D2 team explained how both the bots and auto-spawning tweaks are intended to smooth out issues with the Versus mode. The bots will "help out the Infected when they are down a man or two," the post explains, and "will also make 1v1 Versus a bit more fun."

As for tweaking the auto-spawning in the finale events of Versus mode, Valve says one thing they've been experimenting with is disabling them altogether -- and crunched some numbers to show why. "Across all finales in Left 4 Dead 2 currently, a single survivor has a 34.56% chance of escaping," the post reads. "That includes the Concert Finale in 'Dark Carnival,' which boasts close to a 50% escape rate (and yes, a fix for everyone's favorite cheese spot is coming). Remove the Concert Finale, and we see the average drop to 29.61%."

As we noted originally, the game runs as a resolution of 256x240 with 16 colors and a 4 sound channel soundtrack. It includes all five of the special infected from the first Left 4 Dead (all seen in the video above, with the exception of the tank which doesn't show up until later), the four campaigns' five maps, and each of the four playable characters.

Keep in mind that the goal, as Ruth notes, was "to create the game Left 4 Dead in a way that I feel it would have been handled back in 1986. The idea was NOT to remake it exactly like the Valve original." Among the complaints sure to be leveled at the game is a lack of four player support, which Ruth says the game is capable of handling but wouldn't be true his goal -- there just weren't a lot of games that had support for four players back then.

Anyone having trouble deciding on a holiday greeting card to send out to their Xbox Live friend list this season should an easier search thanks to Valve expansion into the stationary market. "Left 4 Dead," "Left 4 Dead 2" and "Team Fortress 2" each have their own set available, featuring artwork by Alexandria Neonakis.

The cards run $15.95 for a pack of 10 with envelopes and are available through The Valve Store.

If Neonakis' name sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen her home-grown creations in the past, which have included "Katamari Damacy" and "World of Warcraft" cards posted on her website. Valve seems to have recognized her talent and employed her thusly.

Images on the notes range from zombies adorned in Christmas tree lights to snipers dressed like snowmen, but all of them have Neonakis' signature feel of classic illustration with a touch of fannish appreciation. They're pretty much exactly what you'd want to send to any online friends that you primarily associate with over Steam or XBL.

According to the site, pre-orders entered now should ship at the end of November, so move quickly if you want to receive them in time to fill out and distribute for December.

What do you think of Valve's new line of holiday greeting cards? Which games would you like to see get a similar treatment? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

The patch will automatically be applied the next time you load up your Steam client. Hopefully, with this bit of housekeeping out of the way, Valve can now get around to releasing the SDK for the game so gamers no longer have to engage in multi-step processes to mod it.

A full list of fixes for this patch can be seen below.

Since Valve has yet to release the SDK for Left 4 Dead 2, the process of modding the game is a little more in-depth than usual. You can find a full tutorial of how to make the process work on L4DMods.com (via Kotaku), but be aware it'll involve a lot of manually editing file names and transporting certain files from one directory to another. And even then, to get it all working you're going to need to fiddle with the command console in Left 4 Dead 2 (although honestly, that'll probably be the easiest part of this process).

So what do you get for all of your troubles? The option to play through No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air, and Blood Harvest from the first game, with the new infected and the new baseball bat melee weapon from the second. Oh, and you're also going to need to deal with a number of known bugs and issues...