🧟Left 4 Dead 2
The genre's grandfather. Four survivors, one horde, infinite campaigns.
Valve's 2009 4-player co-op zombie shooter. Director AI paces every campaign, infected specials turn a stroll into a panic, the Workshop has kept it alive for 15+ years. Still the canonical voice-chat-first co-op shooter.
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Quickstart
How to actually play this with friends — written by Claude.## Set it up - Install via Steam; host a campaign from the main menu and set it to Normal or Advanced depending on your group's shooter experience - Browse the Steam Workshop for community campaigns once you've cleared the originals — 15+ years of content means there's always another night's worth - Assign someone to watch the health/ammo pickups on-screen; the Director AI is stingier than it looks and running dry mid-horde is a fast way to wipe
## Your first session - Run the first campaign, Dead Center, on Normal to learn the Director's pacing before anything harder - Stick together at chokepoints and call out special infected by name ("Hunter left!", "Smoker got someone") — solo pushes get picked off - Always grab a teammate who's been pinned or incapped immediately; a downed player on a timer is the fastest way a clean run turns into a restart
## Group size advice - Four is the intended squad — every special infected encounter is tuned around a full team covering each other - Two or three still works but expect the horde to hit harder per-survivor - The Workshop's community campaigns keep this relevant for a group that's already cleared the base game





