Meanwhile, the entire genre is a natural fit for the modern service game landscape. The game already has a cast of characters that fans love who could be perfect fits for inherent strengths or meaningful upgrades. Those features would have been right at home in a hypothetical Left 4 Dead 2.0. Random loot, customizable weapon loadouts, characters with unique abilities, and upgrade systems don’t exist in Left 4 Dead 2, but they’ve become genre staples in the games that followed. Almost every game in the recent crop of Left 4 Dead-likes - both those that are already out, like Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and Deep Rock Galactic, and those that are on the way, like The Anacrusis, Redfall, and even Back 4 Blood, which is developed by Turtle Rock Studios, the studio behind the original Left 4 Dead - is full of RPG mechanics that add spice to the gameplay loop but don’t really change it. The other games in the genre know it, too. The balance between more relaxed moments of swatting away stray zombies and chatting with your friends, punctuated by chaotic high-tension shootouts against an encroaching horde, is about as fun and satisfying a loop as any game can manage. With its semi-random levels, great arcade-style shooting, excellent writing, and the improvements to the AI in the form of Director 2.0, Left 4 Dead 2’s in-game loop is nearly perfect in a way that the original didn’t quite manage. In many ways, Left 4 Dead 2 is just an incremental upgrade of its predecessor, but maybe that’s because the original game only needed a few additions to become something really special.

Sure, it had new levels, the addition of melee weapons, better enemy AI, and more enemy types, but at a glance, it didn’t look much different from the original Left 4 Dead.Īnd in truth, some of those complaints weren’t exactly wrong. When Left 4 Dead 2 was first released, many fans bristled at the fact that it was coming just a year after the original game.

But even after a decade of innovations that other developers could bring to the genre, its best version might still be Left 4 Dead 2 with a few minor upgrades. At E3 2021, and in the weeks after, studios and publishers have announced nearly half a dozen games inspired by Valve’s co-op shooter. Nearly 12 years after the release of Left 4 Dead 2, the genre it popularized has crossed back into the spotlight.

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