L4D Defense Squad time!
So, a lot of L4D's appeal is that it looks meddling fantastic. That's not generally a great metric to measure games by, but given the genre and how incredibly atmospheric everything is, I think it's a big plus for L4D. Expert with friends is crazy-hard and crazy-fun.
And that's just co-op. If L4D was just co-op it wouldn't be half the game it is. Versus is where it's all at-- and not pub versus, either. 95% of pub versus games are absolute excrement. I've been in a bunch of high-level clan PUGs, though, and they're really fantastic. The infected side is all about setting up and executing the perfect ambush, or finding tiny holes in the survivor's formation or play that lets you pull one of them... then pounce, pounce, game over. Surviving is much more fun, imo (partially because I suck at being a hunter). Constant communication, predicting the infecteds' moves, and trying to balance item-hunting with progressing is required to even have a hope of getting through a level alive. The competitive scene is kind of reeling from the huge changes valve keeps pushing out, but given the popularity of the game I've no doubt that it'll rebound bigtime once everything stabilizes. The scoring system is perfect too, because once they find some way to balance item spawns a bit more (they're already almost fine-- from time to time one team lucks out and gets like 5 pills and 3 healthpacks in a level while the other gets none of either) there'll be no such thing as imbalance in a match. Survival can be fun for a quick causal game among friends, of course.
Anyway, I like L4D because it's a competitive SP game. I'm sure this game is fantastic as well, but don't tell me L4D is worse (That's not what you said, I know
) when you haven't even dug into it yet.