Another question I have is how hard it's going to be to install on multiple PCs. My daughter and I will play this on our LAN, but I'll be damned before I buy two copies.
You could probably trick steam. Kill the internet, login into the same steam account in offline mode and try that. Otherwise Steam's DRM is pretty strict.
It unlocks on steam even if you buy the boxed copy. You don't have a choice AFAIK. You should still be able to trick steam with offline mode.
i got it from gamestop. you can try to get non steam version of the game. It should come with non steam server to host the game. In some cases you can use Hamachi to run it on lan. I know non steam CS comes with server. As for the game online play, lags just kills the game.
Well damnit! I'll try to do the offline mode I guess. And if that doesn't work I'll make the girl cough up for her own copy.
I think it's worth the 50 bucks. My friends and I played the last level of the first campaign for 2 hours straight last night. I never got frustrated or bored even though we failed the level close to 30 times in a row on advanced difficulty. BTW, there are reports of offline mode working on multiple computers with Team Fortress 2, so I don't see why it would be any different with L4D.
