Yeah, I think Forza Horizon 5 was the only one of those ‘hey, it’s coming this fall!’ moments we got (for newly announced stuff, at least). With Starfield specifically, I remember thinking ‘didn’t Bethesda announce Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 at the respective E3s just a few months before they came out?’ And now…

Redfall’s definitely my ‘most curious about’ of the new announcements, followed closely by ‘the Anacrusis’; ‘Contraband’ seems like it... might be interesting, just in terms of setting? But we literally know nothing else about it. And ‘Replaced’ wins for ‘coolest looking game that I’ll probably buy and then hate,…

That’s an entirely valid point - but it tends to ignore the fact that neither Starfield nor Redfall were existing IPs. As of yet, Microsoft hasn’t ‘denied’ Playstation users access to any franchises they could play previously. My initial read on those Phil Spencer comments from last fall was that Bethesda would likely…

I definitely think the best-case scenario here is if one or two of these games goes the ‘just pick up and play’ route of Left4Dead, and if another one or two goes the ‘full progression/loot system’ route that hews closer to a Vermintide 2. Something for everyone! (For that matter, I wouldn’t complain if one of them -…

I’d still rank the Left4Dead series a hair higher on my ‘best franchises ever’ list, mostly on how much I enjoyed it at the time (and on the originality factor of being the first), but if I was to play one of the two right now? Yeah, it’d be Vermintide 2, no question. (And that’s coming from somebody who’s played…

And it may be that ‘playing with randos’ is what made the difference between my experience and yours; I played the L4D games exclusively with the same two co-op partners, and we never, ever, ever played Versus. (We don’t play PvP as a general rule.) So pretty quickly, we figured out our strategies, and more or less…

Hey, different people like different things; as much as I did enjoy Deep Rock Galactic, its progression never really ‘worked’ for me at all (at least, after I’d unlocked the guns). It just felt too inconsequential. And the concept of ‘in-match’ progression just brings to mind... what was that Gearbox game, that…

Weirdly enough, Killing Floor didn’t work for me at all; I think because it didn’t have that sense of forward momentum, maybe? Which is probably the same reason games with various iterations of ‘horde mode’ never really clicked for me.

I get what you’re saying, but I think of Left4Dead more as ‘surprisingly hard to replicate’ than a ‘one hit wonder’. It’s the sort of thing that, if you boil it down to its essence, seems like it should be really easy to duplicate in different settings, but takes significantly more alchemy to actually pull off. (In…

Outriders is actually an interesting case, to me: if the entire game was more like the endgame, which is much more about forward momentum/much less about narrative, I’d be more inclined to put it in the ‘Left4Dead-alike’ camp. Which kind of makes me realize how much environmental storytelling (vs cut-scenes,…

God, yes. I wouldn’t necessarily agree that the bigger-budget games are ‘bland’ - off the top of my head, Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild, and ‘name your favorite Arkane game’ all come to mind from the last generation - but I do think there are fantastic looking side-scrollers out there, especially if you like…

Yeah, as somebody who’s been on the opposite side of that wait with ‘Hades’ (seriously, guys, were you holding that back until the GamePass deal was ironed out, or what?!) it’s always really, really annoying.

Fantastic games; I’m kinda jealous you get to play them for the first time!

While I’d agree that ‘Left4Dead-alike’ has more to it as a ‘genre’ than just ‘four players and shoot hordes of bad guys’, I do think there’s room in the formula for RPG systems, character classes, and loadouts; Vermintide springs to mind as something that’s very much inspired by Left4Dead, especially in terms of that…

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s to Deep Rock Galactic’s credit that it strays so far from the formula - it feels much more original than any of the others ‘inspired’ by Left4Dead. It’s just so different in terms of ‘what you do’ and ‘how you do it’ that it doesn’t immediately jump to mind, for me.

I played the absolute hell out of both Left4Dead and Left4Dead 2 back in the day, so I don’t want to give the impression that it bothered me back then... but that was before nearly every game, from shooters to sports-’em-ups, had RPG systems and over-arching progression. (Playing them almost exclusively in co-op…

They’ve finally added a category in the Xbox store... if you go to the ‘Games’ hub, first. (Seriously, Microsoft... be better at this. Just be better.)

I quite liked the Vermintide games, for what it’s worth. (I also quite liked Deep Rock Galactic, but it strays so far from the Left4Dead formula I don’t typically think of it as being in the same ‘sub-genre’, unless you count all cooperative co-op games as a genre.)

Yeah, even if it’s not 100% ‘immersive sim’ (for whatever that actually means), Arkane’s design work is so strong I’m excited for their take on a co-op experience. I’d love to share some of my love for their games with my co-op buddies, who generally play far fewer single player games than I do (and thus haven’t ever…

See, I’m the exact opposite; the thing that always stops me from going back to Left4Dead (for more than a nostalgic, ‘oh yeah, I remember that!’ run or two) is the lack of any kind of progression system. (Well, that and a lack of ADS gunplay.) At this point, the ‘RPG-ification’ of games is so complete it just feels…