@spiffre

I think your points are very well considered, and should be looked at by the Valve team next go-round. If you read Gabe Newell's piece in this Edge, you'll see that he's very interested in making games that focus more on how people play than throwing more monsters at you.

Your point about strategies and characters being too similar are exactly what I thought when playing through the demo. I'm not a great FPS player, so I'd probably rather grab two medkits. Or, another strategy might make me the teams healer, so I could stay in the back (or center, on some levels) of the team, and heal around as people took damage.

It might be cool to give each character a strength and weakness as well. Maybe Louis would have AI-assisted targeting, as he's a better shot, but might not be able to see through walls to other players, as he's new to the group and unfamiliar with their styles. Or Bill could have some sort of mini map, since he's older and wiser, and might have better knowledge of the city, but maybe he moves more slowly, as a result of an old injury. All character-driven traits and attributes that might lend themselves to the procedural narrative that Newell talks about in his article.

I think that these kinds of critiques are necessary for the improvement of the field. A game can be tons of fun and still have things that would improve it.