I experienced one minor consequence of watching Paranormal Activity. While I was trying to sleep, I kept jumping at any small noise I heard around the house. Didn't make for a good night's sleep.

I played the Left 4 Dead 2 demo last night. I also played it right before going to work. It was longer than I expected. The demo allows people to play two stages of one campaign. I think the demo for the first game only had one stage to play. Of the new infected, the Spitter and the Charger are the most badass. The Spitter spits out green bile that harm the survivors. They also leave a pool of green goo when you shoot them. The Charger just plows into like a linebacker from Hell. Then it grabs the nearest survivor and keeps pummeling him on the ground until he's dead. Most of the returning special infected have been given a slight makeover. While playing this morning, I got a closeup of the new Smoker and he's much uglier than he was in the first game. The Witch also walks around now. I guess she got sick of sitting around, crying and decicded to be more proactive. We also have zombies in riot gear that you can only kill by shooting them in the back or hitting them.

I tried almost all the firearms and all the melee weapons. The melee weapons are hit or miss, no pun intended. The police baton is kinda slow. I was eager to use the guitar to do a Pete Townshend impression with the zombies, but it doesn't seem to be too accurate and  you miss the zombies about half the time. The machete was neat to use, especially since killing the zombies with it causes blood to splash on the screen. The pan is kinda neat too.

Last night, I played as Coach (The big black guy) and this morning, I played as Nick (The guy in the Miami Vice suit). How do the new characters stack up? I haven't quite warmed up to them as much as the original cast. Maybe I need to play more. Or maybe their personalities come out more when you play a full campaign. They didn't seem quite as talkative and their dialogue wasn't quite as funny and snarky. Maybe it's a demo thing and this will be smoothed out in the actual game.