Left 4 Dead is a cooperative shooter. You play one of four survivors fighting hoards of “infected.” There are four stories, each with five chapters, detailing the survivors escaping from a variety of zombie-movie standards, such as fighting through a hospital to a helicopter pickup on the roof, or getting to the airport to get on the last plane out of the city. You can play with friends online, or with two people locally, but what really shines is Versus mode, where half the players are survivors, and the other half play zombies. You spawn near the survivors, and basically grief them as they fight their way through the level. One nice touch is that the coop campaign and the versus campaign are the same – the only difference is whether a human player is controlling some of the zombies. It’s incredibly easy to pick up, has virtually no commitment needed (a campaign can be played in an hour), and yet has enough strategy to make it worth playing over and over. I absolutely love this game, and it has supplanted all other games at our LAN parties, includingHalo 3. This is the game that will sell you on playing with friends over xbox live, and convince you to get a gold account, if you haven’t already.