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Add in the derelict scenery and methodical level design, and the game becomes more immersive than even a good film.

The gameplay itself necessitates cooperation with and even reliance on your teammates, be they across the globe or on the couch next to you. “Left 4 Dead” hooked me instantly because it doesn’t technically force players to work together, but you’d be insane not to. No matter how skillful a gamer is in “Left 4 Dead,” you’re bound to end up pinned down, incapacitated by hordes of zombies and the mutated “special infected.” When this happens, you need help from another survivor, or you’ll perish. Valve also is responsible for “Half-Life,” “Portal,” “Team Fortress” and “Counter-Strike,” among others. You’re free to do what you want they simply design game environments to be so oppressive, you will probably end up doing what’s expected. Valve Corp., the Bellevue-based developer responsible for “Left 4 Dead,” has often touted its focus on player agency. OK, technically you can try – you just won’t make it out alive. Instead, “Left 4 Dead” told a simple story: What if four survivors, immune to a super-spreader virus akin to rabies that rendered 99% of humanity mindlessly violent, had to escape from civilization? But unlike other games in its genre, “Left 4 Dead” presents an interesting wrinkle – you can’t go it alone. It was not the mindless bloodbath I was anticipating, nor did it present the trope-riddled “the real monsters are the humans” narrative we’ve all come to expect from other zombie-related media. Regardless, I gave “Left 4 Dead” a spin shortly after its release in 2008, and it subverted all my expectations. It’s difficult to overstate my lack of enthusiasm for zombies, which seemed to infect every facet of pop culture in the late 2000s and early ‘10s.

That game is “Left 4 Dead 2,” a cooperative first-person shooter that tasks players with overcoming hordes of zombies. 24, my favorite game received its first major update in nearly eight years.