From eurogamer: How Left4Dead changed my life for the better
The way friendly-fire is always on, encouraging you to acknowledge and respect the space occupied by other players, and using set-pieces like those final mission base defences to encourage you to form a plan and work together, always ensuring you know where the other players are and what they are doing.
Left4Dead brings players together by constantly trying to pull them apart, to pick off stragglers in the group using the tongue of a well-placed Smoker or the claws of a Hunter, or simply by throwing a horde of sprinting, chattering Infected at you at the moment when you’re least expecting it. In fact, it’s probably that first horde, the sheer number of those pale, exceptionally well-animated bodies charging at you when you realise this is a game you do not want to play alone.
I have struggled to find a game better than Left4Dead 2. It has to have a mix of teamwork as well as a strong multiplayer element. It has to have short episodic content as well as some enjoyable narrative and story flow. The levels have to make sense while, at the same time, giving you some clear-cut paths to get through. And it has to be fun. Epic win-type fun. You have to have the opportunity to hit the final goal, heart-pounding and you also have to have the opportunity to have victory snatched from you in a heart-rending moment.
With Left4Dead 2 I get all of this and the last time I got a feeling like this was playing UT2004 multiplayer (especially Capture the Flag in Hall of the Giants) and the original HALO: Combat Evolved (again, Capture the Flag).
But it’s ageing badly in the way games age. There are sufficient exploits out there that a fair game is hard to find. There aren’t many servers that aren’t ridden with stupid mods. The community is definitely dying.
One of the comments:
God I loved L4D so much, everything in this article is spot on. You had to play together, any vigilantism or lone shennanigans ended with a smoker attack in a lonely corner. It meant you always had to look out for each other and those last frantic moments at the end of each level as you desperately made a push for the chopper have been some of my finest gaming moments. It was all so gloriously unpredictable, every game was different.
Precisely.
But I’m on the hunt for a replacement. I’m looking to kick L4D2 as a habit and find a new game to obsess upon. I can’t keep on playing dead games.