Is anyone else having problems with L4D2 since the last update?

For some reason i can start the game fine, join lobby, load the map, but once it loads the 'intro camera' which pans to your player view seems to be show you unusual places such as under/outside the map, and passes through geometry. I normally get no more than 3 seconds after gaining control of my character until the game quits to desktop, no errors, computer is still responsive as if the game was never running..

Any ideas?.I ran verification/defrag, nothing really helps, im sensing a bad update!

Everything seems fine to me, although I didn't try joining a lobby first. There are still about a billion posts about crashing to the desktop on the valve forums that are unsolved.

Do you get any error messages in the console before it crashes?