I played through The Sacrifice before running through it with my regular Left 4 Dead group (sorry guys). When a zombie apocalypse FPS promises to roll credits after you go out in a blaze of glory, it’s worth some investigation. Games have been inching away from death as a punishment and toward death as a mechanic, and their progress and mistakes are fascinating.

Left 4 Dead 2 does the sequel thing right. It takes the pseudo-random design that made the first game so replayable, expands it, and does so without sacrificing the original game’s feel. Add that to the franchise’s multiplayer excellence and a new narrative emphasis, and the only thing deeper than the smart FPS gameplay is the pool of zombie gore.

In a move you’d expect from the Umbrella Corporation, Valve is trying to merge two zombie concepts into one multi-headed brain-devouring chimera. Marketing VP Doug Lombardi told totalvideogames.com that Valve was “trying to work out the details” to make it possible for fans of the first game to play alongside their sequel-adopting counterparts. This decision [...]