But, as we wrap up our playtime, David Ellis notices a mysterious option in the menu as we wait for a new match to start: "Realism mode." I ask Faliszek, and he coyly comments, "that's a special modifier that we forgot to hide for this demo." We then ask Valve VP of Marketing Doug Lombardi, and he quips that it's something for the super hardcore player, and slightly elaborates, "Take Portal for example: We had our best internal players who could blow through that game in about 30 minutes, but within weeks of launching it we had people on YouTube beating [the testers'] times by 10 minutes or more. Realism is for those players.
Sounds interesting and I'm sure it'll be a good way to prolong the life of the new game. You can check out the full article for more L4D2 info.