Summary
The originalLeft 4 Deadis one of the most influential PvE FPS games of all time, spawning its own subgenre of games as well as laying the blueprint for many PvE shooters. FromDestinytoOverwatch’s PvE events the ‘DNA’ ofLeft 4 Deadcan be felt throughout the cooperative shooter genre.
As a result of the original and its sequel’s success, as well as the current hiatus of the franchise, there are a lot of games that are trying to fill that space. While there are many iterations inside the genre, this list has a mix of both the best and most popular attempts at emulatingLeft 4 Dead.
Remnant 2is the sequel toRemnant: From the Ashes, and follows the same style of moment-to-moment gameplay. It’s aSoulslikelooter shooter with hordes of enemies. The game has long-term progression unlikeLeft 4 Dead, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is similar: load into a map with a group, and get to the other end without dying, going up against the bosses and mini-bosses that come the player’s way.
The game’s levels are procedurally generated out of handcrafted tiles, giving them more replayability than typicalLeft 4 Deadwithout sacrificing art style and cohesion. It should be noted though that this game requires a commitment to these progression systems, as the game gets continuously harder as players progress. Thankfully, co-op is extremely easy to take advantage of, and there is even a dedicated healing role for those especially cooperatively inclined.
Deep Rock Galacticis like ifLeft 4 Deadwas crossed with a party game. One minute it’s shotgunning bugs as they climb on the caverns above players, next it’s kicking barrels into hoops and drinking beer. The coolest part of the game is that outside of mission-critical objectives, the world is 100%destructible.
This makes all of the mining and explosive work not only super responsive but also super deliberate, working completely in 3D to accomplish tasks. It’s super lighthearted and has probably the best community that one can currently join. If players have triedSea of Thievesand like the social aspect of that, give it a shot.
GTFOtakesLeft 4 Dead’s formula, slows it down, and turns up the horror.GTFOis first and foremost a cooperative stealth game. Health and ammo are so rare that every combat exchange inches players closer to resource exhaustion and death, making melee takedowns critical to success.
The game is incredibly freaky and not at all for the faint of heart; think of a more subtly disturbingDead Spacein first person. The game is fun, but it should be noted that it is one of the harder games on this list and isn’t really feasible to play solo. For those with gamer friends, however, it is an incredibly effectivehorror game in groupsand is worth a try.
Back 4 Bloodis probably the closest players will get to the coreLeft 4 Deadexperience, but it is also one of the more controversial titles on the list. This is due to the game’s extreme difficulty spikes and an overall punishing campaign structure that discourages drop-in drop-out coop.
It is by far the hardest game on this list, and probably the least fair, but also the most in-depth in terms of its buildcrafting. This comes in the form of theroguelike Card systemthat allows players to accrue buffs that persist through their run. These cards are serious game changers, allowing players to double down on the different playstyles like melee, explosives, or healing.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktideis the 40k successor to Game Workshop’sVermintideseries (more on them later), combining the melee-based combat they’ve perfected with the multitude of firearms from theWarhammer: 40kuniverse. It’s also a more ambitious game, sporting more underlying systems than its predecessors, for better and for worse.
The game also comes with a big visual improvement over its predecessors, bringing quality akin to the modernStar Wars: Battlefrontgames to the underbelly of Tertium. For fans of the universe, it’s interesting to see so much of it up close and is an easy recommendation on that alone.
World War Z: Aftermathis the overhauled version of the originalWorld War Z, and probably the most casual entry on this list. Based primarily on the movie the zombies inWorld War Zare fast and intelligent, using one another to scale walls like ants and storm barricades.
The gameplay, likeLeft 4 Dead, has its special zombies and setpiece moments, but overall the game places a lot of emphasis on the common horde. This game can place a lot of zombies on screen without a hitch and takes advantage of that constantly leading to some impressive visuals.
This game is the closest game toLeft 4 Deadin terms of concise vision and simplicity. It plays exactly how one would imagine a fantasyspinoffwould work; sporting a more robust melee framework, magic, and 14th-century weaponry.
There are RPG elements, like gear score and weapons with perks, but much of this is used simply to gate the harder difficulties as opposed to being core to the gameplay. It’s fun to jump into, but on higher difficulties, it can be one of the hardest and most satisfying PvE FPS experiences.
