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I spent my late highschool years skipping class to play Left 4 Dead 2 in an internet café. 15 years later, I still consider it the best zombie shooter ever. Maybe it's the memorable cast of characters, a handful of which have gone on to find homes in games like Dead by Daylight or Dying Light. Perhaps it's the variety of enemies to approach with a decidedly chaotic spray and pray attitude – or, in the case of a Witch, utter silence. The goofy screen names my friends and I would pick for ourselves definitely had something to do with my own enjoyment of it, and to this day, I still find juvenile glee in setting my L4D2 screen name as stinkynoodle or bumfluff.
But at the end of the day, nostalgia aside, the game is about more than that. Rather, it's about less. Left 4 Dead 2 a no nonsense zombie FPS that is all about fun, all of the time, and needs no bells and whistles to prove why it deserves to stand the test of time.
Here 4 good
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If you'd have told 16 year old me back in 2011 that I'd still be playing Left 4 Dead 2 in my late twenties, I'd have believed you without question. There's something about this co-op shooter that, no matter which of its myriad campaigns and maps you're working with, carries an enduring charm that still has no sign of fading.
Loading in for my first match in years, selecting the trusty Bill Overbeck as my playable character, I'm immediately transported through time. I'm back at internet café Station 7 – known simply as S7 to myself and the rest of South Island School's older teen population – when I really should have been in class. Smoking indoors had been outlawed for a few years by this point, but that never stopped Hong Kong's dutiful netizens from lighting up between stressful rounds of Call of Duty. My friends and I have no such inclination, however. We are here to waft cigarette smoke out of our eyes, occupy a whole row of PCs at the back of the room, and play a few rounds of Left 4 Dead 2 before piling into a taxi to make it to assembly. Cue losing an afternoon to the oncoming hordes, a constant swaparoo of guns as we crowd around ammo stashes during the last stage of the Dark Carnival campaign, punching our way through the rabid undead and laughing as ragdoll physics send them tumbling off the stage as pyrotechnics alert the rescue helicopter of our presence.
That's a very specific memory, but ask anyone who played L4D2 at any point in the last 15 years, and you'll no doubt hear another personal anecdote. A part of me was wondering if nostalgia is the only thing that has me still thinking fondly of Valve's 2009 offering. Launching hot on the heels of Tripwire Interactive's Killing Floor, a mod-turned-game in its own right, Left 4 Dead served to expand the horde shooter experience and make it more interesting. I'm talking mods, game modes, and a greater wealth of tools to play with in general. The sequel pushed those boundaries further, leaning into its co-op features and a brash sense of goofy, hack n' slash chaos (bullets included) to deliver one of the most enjoyable multiplayer experiences I've had the pleasure of playing. But there have been plenty of games since then to vie for the crown of zombie shooter royalty – World War Z, Days Gone, and Warhammer 40k: Darktide to name a few. With the huge success that Helldivers 2 and Space Marine 2 have seen this year alone, it's clear that an appetite for fast and furious horde shooter gunplay still rumbles in our bellies.
And yet, I still hold a candle for Left 4 Dead 2. It's no longer the freshest thing on the menu when it comes to the best FPS games, but as it nears its 16th birthday, L4D2 is still up there for many a zombie-slaying fanatic. Why? Because its formula of cool guns, cool maps, and cool characters is so simple and effective, it doesn't need much else to justify what makes it a good time. That's not to say Back 4 Blood should be dismissed – the incorporation of deck building mechanics fleshes out each character's respective abilities and proficiencies, and it does capture the movement and flow of a typical L4D2 safe room to safe room crawl. Back 4 Blood is cool and all, but there's only so much spirit a spiritual successor can emulate – especially when the spirit of Left 4 Dead 2 is still alive, kicking, and screaming in 2024.
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