Valve has announced they will release a new campaign for Left 4 Dead in September. But a lot of us aren't happy. Some have suggested it's just a bone thrown to the folks upset that Left 4 Dead 2 is a whole other title instead of added content for the core game. Some are irked that it's just a small timed campaign you have to finish in less that thirty minutes. Xbox L4Ders might not be happy that they have to pay for it while PC L4Ders get it for free. But none of those things bothers me.

After the jump, find out why I'm not happy about the new Left 4 Dead campaign.

When you bought Left 4 Dead, you got four campaigns: Death Toll, Blood Harvest, Dead Air, and No Mercy. Each one comes with a nifty loading screen in the form of a movie poster, complete with a pithy tag line. Like so:

The name of each level is generally a pun. For instance, the phase "dead air" means silence over a broadcast (because of a zombie apocalypse?), but the pun is that the level is an airport infested with the undead. Death Toll is my favorite because the significance of the title is a reveal. At first, it just sounds like you're going to have to pay a toll to death. Grim enough. There's probably even a bridge or something along the way. But later in the map, you come across someone holed up in a church. Not only does he refuse to let you in, he rings the bells to summon the zombies so you'll get killed. It's the titular death toll!

Blood Harvest doesn't really mean anything, but it's a farm and there's gore. Good enough, I suppose. It's not going to win the Booker prize, but it'll do. No Mercy is the weakest of the bunch, since it's a riff on the name of the hospital you're playing in. It turns out there is, in fact, Mercy. But the tagline takes up the slack for the grossly inaccurate title. "Curing the infection...one bullet at a time" is deliciously cheesy. Although the best tag line is Dead Air's: "Their flight just got delayed...permanently". Beautiful!

So what does Valve have in store for us next? What's the name of this campaign we'll get in September?

Crash Course.

Uh, okay, let's look at this. Maybe the helicopter on the poster crashed at the site of a short training session? Hmm. that doesn't really work. A short training session is a terrible idea for a zombie level. Actually, I presume the name has to do with the campaign's time limit. You have to complete it in under thirty minutes. Hence, Crash Course. Get it? You have to play it quickly and it starts at a crashed helicopter. It's a bit of a stretch, and it's missing the crucial reference to zombies, gore, or death. I'm not happy, Valve. Not one little bit.

So let's go to the tag line. Maybe it'll take up the slack like it did for No Mercy. "Crashing will be the easiest thing they do today." Okay, the idea is that killing zombies is difficult, particularly in Left 4 Dead where the zombies come with a complement of tanks, witches, hunters, and whatnot.

But when you think about it, crashing isn't really that hard. In fact, when it comes to flying a helicopter, I suspect crashing is easier than actually flying. I have no flight training whatsoever, and I guarantee I can crash a helicopter without breaking a sweat or even looking up anything in the manual. So if crashing will be the easiest thing they do today, that really says nothing whatsoever about the rest of their day. That's like me saying breathing is the easiest thing I do today. It leaves far too much descriptive leeway for the rest of my day.

This is really weak, Valve. Until you come up with better names for your campaigns, I'm going to go sign my name to whatever Valve boycott I can find.