In the fifteen years since my younger brother, David, and I first booted up Wolfenstein 3D on the family 486, we’ve become bona-fide first-person shooter experts. This isn’t to say that we’re FPS players exclusively—I keep a copy of Fallout 2 installed on my laptop, and David is perpetually on the lookout for a game “that’s as good as Age of Empires.” As a general rule, though, we spend most of our screen time peering over the barrel of a virtual gun. Of course, half the fun of two siblings wielding a portable arsenal is the opportunity to discharge it alongside each other. Over the past decade we’ve honed our ability to lay down covering fire, set up ambushes, and act like rampaging buddy cops across battlefields ranging from bombed-out European villages to floating space castles. Of course, wanton destruction as always more fun with a friend, but for us, it’s also quality family time.
And that’s what makes Valve Software’s Left 4 Dead 2 our current game of choice.