Dead Center is cronologically the first of five campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2, and takes place during the day.  It begins on the ‘chocolate helicopter’ roof found in the leaked trailer/demo introduction video.  From there, the survivors need to fight they way through a small city and/or a small shopping complex, which includes a grocery, a gun shop and a toy store.  Maybe the shopping complex IS the mall.

In any case, the survivors will reach the mall’s main building.  Although a map of this building is provided in and around it, the AI Director 2.0 will block certain corridors in each playthrough.  As another example of how the mall is affected by such witchcraft, some of the escalators inside could be working (or not) as well.

In addition the mall contains a gauntlet crescendo in which at some point the survivors need to break through some shop windows.  A burglar alarm will sound as soon as the windows break, so they have to reach the alarm before they become overwhelmed.

Before/at the time of the outbreak the mall had a blue sports car (as driven by the well known Jimmy Gibbs Jr.) on display.  In Dead Center, this is the rescue vehicle – void of both driver and fuel.  It looks like the survivors will need to gather up fuel cans in a similar way to Scavenge Mode, and use them to fill the car – it would be interesting to see how this plays out.  Once they have enough fuel, they can use the car to escape the mall.  Eventually they’ll be blocked by abandoned vehicles on a highway, setting the scene for Dark Carnival.

There’s no word on what the Uncommon Common are in this campaign, but I suspect that they will be the fireproof Hazmat Zombies, who were first introduced at E3.  Also included in the campaign are, apparently, explosive ammunition and laser sights.  I don’t think these add-ons are exclusive to this campaign, but I believe this is their first appearance overall.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Left 4 Dead 2 will unleash 10 million zombies via Steam on November 17th in the USA, and on November 18th in Europe.  This may sound bad for us European folk but there’s a plus side: I think the game gets unlocked at about 5 GMT that day.  By the time this game is unlocked in America, people living there would have to think about going to sleep.  Then we get to play it while they’re still sleeping, and probably clock in more gameplay time in the process – we get to have more L4D 2 action than America.  In short, Europe gets to roll.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Sources: HLPortal (a German website which I have difficulty understanding) and the Steam Forums (which I have as much difficulty understanding).