In 2008, developer Valve published Left 4 Dead, a cooperative multiplayer game where groups of four players moved through post-apocalyptic cities, fending off hordes of zombies controlled by an "AI director." There were only half a dozen maps, but the AI switched up where and what kind of enemies appeared at different times to heighten the drama. It was never the same game twice. A year later, Valve released a sequel, but it hasn’t touched Left 4 Dead since.It was a unique experience. It was impossible to cut through the zombie hordes alone and teams that didn’t work well together failed. Left 4 Dead 2 is one of my favorite multiplayer games of all time, and almost 10 years after it first came out I’ve still to find anything that scratched the same itch, though many games tried. Then I found Warhammer: Vermintide and its superior sequel Warhammer: Vermintide II, which was just released last week.On paper, Vermintide II shouldn’t work, but after playing it for hours I feel like it's the sequel Left 4 Dead 2 deserves. It’s a multiplayer game set in the niche, grimdark Warhammer universe, where four people have to cooperate while slaying mobs with swords and axes. It’s fast, frantic, and frequently overwhelming. One minute my party and I were descending an empty hillside towards a burning city, the next we were surrounded by dozens of angry rat people and rot bloods, each trying to take a pound of flesh.The biggest difference between Left 4 Dead and Vermintide II is that the former is a first-person shooter, and the latter is played from a first-person perspective, but is all about attacking enemies with swords, axes, and other melee weapons. Every character has a ranged attack, but ammo is limited, so the vast majority of the time I'm hacking away at rat men at close range.Vermintide II’s weapons connect with a sickening crunch. A well-aimed sword blow to a rat’s head will decapitate it. While dual-wielding swords, I once lopped off the arm of axe-wielding Chaos warrior. He staggered back, then raised his remaining arm and charged. Bodies don’t fly about like ragdolls, but limbs do.There are dozens different types of weapons that all handle differently and do different kinds of damage. Dual-wielding daggers made me feel like a lawnmower cutting through blood and bone. A two-handed sword with wide, slow, and calculated sweeps kept the enemies knocked over and far away from my team. Each class has dozens of weapon types, some unique to them, and each weapon feels different when pushed against an enemy. If I got bored, I switched weapons.To spice up the old Left 4 Dead formula further, Vermintide has five different characters with three different classes each. Each class plays differently—the Waystalker Elf gets on the frontline and dishes out fast damage hard and hitting ranged strikes while the Shade Elf sneaks around enemies and delivers punishing backstabs. These abilities and weapons are earned with a color-coded, random drop loot system that has become so popular in video games since Left 4 Dead came out.There's a reason that so many games have loot today. Wanting to see the new, blue-tier sword I got in action made me want to play another round, at the end of which I got another drop I wanted to test. It might be a common trick at this point, but it still tricks the hell out of me, and makes Vermintide II's levels more enticing to replay than Left 4 Dead's. I'm always down to play a map again because can always get a new treat.Last week, Valve's CEO Gabe Newell said that the company is going to start shipping games again. Maybe once it finishes its upcoming collectible card game, Artifact, it will get around to making Left 4 Dead 3. But the possibility that it never will is not as disappointing as it used to be because Vermintide II picked up Left 4 Dead's ideas and successfully ran with them.Warhammer: Vermintide II is out on Steam for $30.
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