Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb has announced that, starting today, enhanced versions of four more Xbox One Backward Compatible titles will be playable on Xbox One X: Valve classics Half-Life 2: The Orange Box, Portal: Still Alive, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2.

"Xbox 360 games enhanced for Xbox One X run at a higher resolution and 9X the original pixel count," Hyrb's post states.

Without altering the game's original code, enhanced titles "showcase the very best version possible with the existing assets."

With these additions, there are now 21 enhanced Xbox 360 titles playable on Xbox One X, including Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, and Red Dead Redemption.

While these four new additions may not all be created equal, it is hard to deny the impact they have had on their respective genres, and enhanced versions are certainly a boon for those that have sprung for the more powerful Xbox One.

To close, if you have not played Half-Life 2: Go!

If your group of friends is anything like mine, getting them all to both agree to and pay for a particular game is harder than herding feral cats. Maybe you're in a similar situation or maybe you're just on the prowl for some good multiplayer games to play in Steam Remote Play. Whatever the case, we've compiled a sizable list to help you out.

The good thing about Remote Play is that only one player in the group needs to own the game; the rest can try it out for free — at least in its current beta period. 

Let's choo choo on through, and hopefully, find you and your friend(s) a game you can play.

Terraria

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

You'll see this game mentioned on just about every list of co-op games. This co-op sandbox-adventure has loads of content for any group of friends to go to town on. Terraria has stayed on the top played Steam games for 7 years for good reason.

Grim Dawn

Price: $24.99
Steam Store link

If you're looking to scratch your ARPG itch, you could do a lot worse than Grim Dawn. Even without the expansion, you can find dozens of hours of whackin' and lootin' in Grim Dawn. If you're not too keen on its darker aesthetic but do want an ARPG, the next option may be more down your alley.

Torchlight 2

Price: $19.99
Steam Store link

It may be older than Grim Dawn, but Torchlight 2 still has a lot of staying power if you've never given the game a chance. There is more content to be found in Grim Dawn but Torchlight 2 has a robust array of mods available, including content, quality of life, and classes. This is still a solid buy today in 2018, and it can be modded for up to 8-player multiplayer.

Castle Crashers

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

Another staple co-op game sure to be on pretty much every co-op list, Castle Crashers is the poster boy for co-op beat'em ups. This is an easy one for all ages and kill levels to get into and have fun with.

BattleBlock Theater

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

Another game from The Behemoth, the same studio behind Castle Crashers. BattleBlock Theater's campaign is completely co-op and it also features a healthy selection of hectic PvP modes, for when you want to prove your better than your friends once and for all.

Rocket League

Price: $19.99
Steam Store link

Before you say, "Ugh, no. Too mainstream," take a breath and consider Rocket League as a co-op game with a low barrier of entry and a whole lot of speed. Rocket League may not be your first choice, but it's an easy game to get a group of people to agree to hop onto for a quick round.

Risk of Rain

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

Risk of Rain is a co-op game with an unquenchable bloodlust. Though not for everyone due to its extreme difficulty, Risk of Rain is an easy buy for roguelite fans or groups of friends who hate life. It's a hard game and it will knock you down a peg with ease, whether you've got 1 hour or 300 hours worth of gameplay logged.

Risk of Rain 2 is pretty good, too. It's currently $19.99 on Steam. 

Beat Hazard

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

This one always seems to slip through the cracks since it's been blessing Steam with its presence for eight years now, but despite its age, Beat Hazard continues to be a recommended purchase for co-op play, providing you and your friend(s) are good at shmups. Beat Hazard lets you use your own music or one of many radio stations to generate enemies, which is what makes this one so unique.

Ultimate Chicken Horse

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

Playing this game with a group of friends is an exercise in sadism. You and up to three other friends will be tasked with creating and completing the stages in Ultimate Chicken Horse, and you can bet at least one (or even all) of you will make them nearly impossible to beat, in the name of being the better platformer player. Ridiculously fun and honestly not as enraging as it sounds.

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

An outlier among the other games in this collection, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes only requires one person to buy the game. There's a reason for that: Only one player is allowed to see the screen at a time, so only one can directly defuse the bomb. The other players must tell the defuser what to do based on the instructions in the manual.

If it sounds a little convoluted, that's because it is by design. Can you and your friends defuse a bomb? Maybe, maybe not. But you can certainly yell at each other trying.

Don't Starve Together

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

Don't Starve has stood as one of the more accessible survival games over the years, and the multiplayer expansion Don't Starve Together may be an even more enjoyable game than the base with the Reign of Giants expansion. Together contains both, plus the ability to die in the forest with your friends. If — as in my case — you tried the original game but didn't enjoy it much, you may still find this fun.

Left 4 Dead 2

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

You may be dissuaded from picking Left 4 Dead 2 up based on its age. It's been out for 11 years now, it seems like everyone's been through the game. Why bother? If you haven't played it yet, this is your reminder to pick up L4D2 to play with your friends. It's still fun to this day, but it's best played with friends. Any community for a decade-old game is bound to be elitist and this game is no exception.

PAYDAY 2

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

If you don't play PAYDAY 2, it's possible the only thing you've heard about it was the hubbub about microtransactions a few years back. It's been a long time since then though, and the game is a solid heister. You don't need to play the first game to dive right into this one and, provided your group can cooperate, there are hours upon hours of heists for you to tackle.

Dungeon of The Endless

Price: $11.99
Steam Store link

How about something a little different? Amplitude's Endless universe has expanded this way and that, with "that" being Dungeon of the Endless, a pseudo-tower defense roguelike. In this, players must hoard resources and expand based on the ever-increasing threats of the depth of the dungeon. A single round in this game can take several hours and it is very hard, but if your group's into roguelikes you could do a lot worse.

Borderlands 2

Price: $19.99
Steam Store link

Borderlands 2 is another old staple that still holds up today, especially multiplayer. Pushing through this game with friends is satisfying as firefights are intense and the weapon system is a ARPG-style lootfest. Not many games age as well as this one -- you can come back years later and still have a ton of fun.

Golf With Your Friends

Price: $7.99
Steam Store link

If you just want a game to pay a little attention to while chatting, this is an easy choice. Golf With Your Friends isn't exactly rolling in content variety and only contains 7 levels with 18 holes, but things are kept fresh through golf ball shapes and game modes. A very easy game to just sit back and play while having a couple beers and a laugh.

Human: Fall Flat

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

How about something a little less-in-your-face about its silliness? We've got some pretty quirky games listed here, but they're all a bit more obvious about it than the cooperative physics-based puzzle solving found in Human: Fall Flat. The one downside here is that there are not a lot of stages, but it's a good deal at this price. 

Project Zomboid

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

Don't let this game's graphics and the year it entered Steam Early Access fool you: Project Zomboid is a fleshed-out survival sandbox with hundreds of potential hours of gameplay, with continued support from its developer as it slowly shambles toward full release. If you and your group can accept the high learning curve, you can have a great time with this game.

Portal 2

Price: $9.99
Steam Store link

The Portal games are famous for a lot of reasons and one of those reasons is (Spoilers!) the stellar co-op campaign. If you haven't played Portal 2 and you want a game to play with a friend, you may as well throw the $2 at Valve and see what all the hubbub is about.

Barony

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

An other roguelike to add to the pile, Barony is the closest to a traditional roguelike of any of the games listed here. It looks old, it feels old, and it plays like an old game. That's perfectly fine: You'll be hard-pressed to find another game that takes the classic roguelike formula, turns it 3D and realtime, and allows for online co-op. This one's pretty niche but you're in for a good time if you're comfortable with classic roguelikes.

Endless Legend

Price: $29.99
Steam Store link

Though Endless Space is currently also on sale, I would recommend Endless Legend over it for its similarities to the Civilization series and its overall fun factor. This is a more traditional-style 4X game. Expand, form alliances, wage wars -- it's up to you. A worthy strategy addition to most gaming groups on a budget.

Resident Evil 5

Price: $19.99
Steam Store link

You don't hear much about Resident Evil 5 or 6 for a few reasons, but none of those reasons equate to them not being fun with friends. Resident Evil 5 is often overlooked in favor of 6 for co-op play because it retains the semi-tank controls found in its predecessor, but if you and a friend can adjust to that control style this is an intense and worthwhile co-op action game.

Resident Evil 6

Price: $29.99
Steam Store link

Like its predecessor, Resident Evil 6 is best played with a friend. Unlike its predecessor, it's got more modern, fluid controls and a whole lot of QTEs. This one is over-the-top in about every regard, to the extent I can't help but find it silly each playthrough. If you like classic Resi games, go with 5. If you can't deal with the antiquated controls, go with 6. The decision is as simple as that.

7 Days to Die

Price: $24.99
Steam Store link

One of the first titles in the survival game wave that paved the way for games such as Rust and ARK: Survival Evolved, 7 Days to Die still stands as one of the most played games on Steam and is just as fun now as when it came out. As with the two mentioned, 7 Days to Die allows you a great deal of freedom in your efforts to survive. Break, use, and do whatever you want to ensure your survival in a world overrun by over 50 types of zombies.

Orcs Must Die! 2

Price: $14.99
Steam Store link

The original Orcs Must Die! set off a chain reaction of action-tower defense clones, some good and some bad, but none really hold up to the sequel. Orcs Must Die! 2 is an improvement over the first game in almost every way, and has the added bonus of online multiplayer. It's easy to get into, easy to wrap your head around, and easy to spend too many hours in.

Tabletop Simulator

Price: $19.99
Steam Store link

This is a bit of a strange one since Tabletop Simulator itself isn't a game, but a mini-platform for tabletop gaming. The amount of games available via Tabletop Simulator are nearly endless, making this a fantastic purchase for any static group of friends who have trouble deciding on what to play or want to play board games without having to pick up after themselves.

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These are definitely not all of the co-op games you can get for relatively cheap on Steam, but these are some I can personally recommend. I hope you've found at least one game you find worthy of your Steam library.

The Halloween season is a wonderful time. Leaves are changing colors. The air starts to feel colder. The nights are longer. It's all just fantastic. And to top it all off, Halloween itself is a holiday centered around the concept of fear. Just the thought of that is amazing on its own. Other holidays focus on love, honor, purity, and other happy and fluffy stuff. But Halloween is different. It's special.

Halloween is a great time for video games too. Horror games are a pretty big part of the industry. Entire franchises and companies depend on them. Games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill have become household names. We all know them. We've all seen them. However, not all of us have played them.

It can be fun to be scared. Unfortunately, it's not fun for everyone. A lot of people hate it with a passion and avoid it at all cost. However, it's not fair that they have to miss out on the Halloween festivities. To fix that, we've made a list of games that represent the season without scaring your pants off. Don't worry, scaredy cats, these games are safe to play.

Costume Quest

Costume Quest is a clear choice. The game was one of Double Fine's best titles before they started scamming money from their fans. It takes place on Halloween. Players take control of a group of trick-or-treaters as they get into all kinds of hi-jinks. There's no scary catch here. It's good, clean fun.

One of the things that makes Costume Quest unique is that it is really imaginative. It has a turn based combat system that's simple to use, but it focuses on an interesting concept. During the fights, the kids take on the persona they are dressed as. What was a low-budget knight costume turns into a sparkling set of real armor. And, of course, unique abilities come with the costumes as well.

Costume Quest is a fun, Halloween-themed game with a lot of promise. It has that holiday feel without the terror. There are elements of exploration, quirky story, and funny dialog. Basically, the exact opposite of horror.

Bioshock 2

Now we get into some games that turn up the scare factor. The original Bioshock is a creepy and unsettling experience. Players took control of a lone man as he struggles his way through horrific experiences at the bottom of the ocean. Though it isn't specifically a horror game, it has a lot of frightening moments and a tense atmosphere. One of the most horrifying moments is going up against hulking enemies in emotionless, deep sea diving suits.

What makes the second one different is that players actually take control of one of those hulking, diving suit wearing, monstrosities. This change shifts the entire dynamic. Instead of being a fragile guy surrounded by danger, you pretty much have nothing to fear. You are the thing to fear. This way, you can safely experience all the creepiness that the city of Rapture offers without being scared out of your wits.

With the fear taken out, players are free to experience all the really cool aspects of the Bioshock world. The plasmid powers and collection of weapons are fun to play with. But the biggest plus is getting a first hand look at the intricate lore of Rapture without being distracted by all of that pants-wetting.

Left 4 Dead 2

This time, the name of the game is cooperation. It's much harder to be terrified when you're sharing the experience with your good friends. The Left 4 Dead franchise pits up to four players against hordes of the undead. However, the zombies spend less time spooking you than they do running at you stark raving mad.

Left 4 Dead is absolutely a shooter before it's any kind of horror title. It has spooky music and tense situations, but nothing really terrifying happens. A creature or two may pop up to attack you, but it doesn't ever make you jump. And again, especially if you're playing with friends, it's hard to get all anxious while surrounded by three other allies helping you out.

Pick Left 4 Dead 2 over the original. On top of having more complex levels and weaponry, it fully includes the first game's missions anyway. So you don't miss anything going for the sequel instead of the first title.

Gone Home

Gone Home is a special case. First of all, the less you know about it, the better. The mystery of the game is what holds your attention. Players take control of a college student who visits home to find it completely abandoned. The first piece of evidence you find is a cryptic note apologizing. The entire atmosphere and tone of the game is haunting and alluring at the same time.

What makes Gone Home a great game for scaredy cats is that there are no cheap scares or anything like that. The game is centered around the mystery of what happened and where everybody has gone. Also, you are free to explore at your own pace. When things get a bit too tense, feel free to stop and take a breath. But you won't have trouble picking up and moving on, because the game itself is phenomenal.

Blizzard Games

I know this is a game company and not a single game, but hear me out. Blizzard is really big on including holiday events in their games. Regardless of your game of choice, there is likely some kind of Halloween celebration going on. So whether your preference lies in MOBAs, MMOs, or team-based FPSs, you'll find some Halloween content waiting for you.

Heroes of the Storm has their Hallow's End event complete with character skins. World of Warcraft also has their own Hallow's End celebration. WoW takes things to a whole new level, though. The whole of Azeroth changes to support a huge, seasonal celebration. Players can find themselves bobbing for apples, trick-or-treating, and taking part in all kinds of Halloween events.

This year, Overwatch joins the party. Being its first year, it is uncertain what the season will bring. However, the Summer Games brought a new game mode and Olympic-themed loot boxes. These included unique skins and other goodies that could only be earned during the event. And, of course, they all had something to do with the Olympic theme. Surely, something similar awaits Halloween. Regardless of your taste, Blizzard has a scare-free Halloween experience waiting for you.

When you sit down and really look, there are plenty of Halloween games for scaredy cats. It's true that fear junkies have the monopoly on the games out there, but there are plenty of options out there for all of us. And who knows? Maybe playing enough of these games will give you the courage to play something scary next year. Probably not, but maybe.

Honorable Mention: Ronald McDonald from McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure

Why did McDonald’s make their mascot a clown? Has anyone ever actually liked clowns? They’re not cool and they certainly do not make me crave a hamburger.

Every sprite of Ronald in this game confirms that he is a soulless demon. He scared me as a kid and he scares me now.

Seriously...WTF is he doing.

You don’t even need to spruce up this costume to be scary. Once you put on the makeup, you’re already nightmare fuel.

Nobody likes clowns. So, take that dislike and twist it into pure fear this Halloween with these spooky, scary costumes. Do you have a scariest clown in gaming? Add them in the comments and tell us why you’re so scared of them -- or how you plan to scare others in their costume. Happy Halloween!

The Joker from the Batman: Arkham Series

Of course, I’m putting Gotham’s Clown Prince on this list. He worked hard for his title -- and, by the gods, he deserves it. The man is terrifying. While I wouldn’t say he’s the scariest Batman villain, he could definitely make a kid wet themselves if he opened the door on Halloween.

The Joker makes a few video game appearances, but his costume is almost always the same. He is the easiest one on this list because he is such an iconic pop culture figure. Which is great, because you aren’t just limited to the Suicide Squad costume. You can have a much better one -- so be careful and wise about your Joker costume selection.

Sweet Tooth/Needles Kane from Twisted Metal

Which clown drives an ice cream truck called Sweet Tooth? It’s Marcus “Needles” Kane! Admittedly, I don’t know much about this guy, but there’s no way I could leave him off this list. I mean, look at him. His freaking mask is on fire! And there’s something to be said about someone who re-purposed an ice cream truck to be a combat vehicle.

Mr. Needles Kane has a few costumes to choose from. The easiest seem to be from Twisted Metal 2 and Twisted Metal: Black.

For his Twisted Metal 2 costume, you can use an old-timey clown suit. For his Twisted Metal: Black costume, you can ditch your shirt (or get a tank top), get a pair of white pants, and use pink fabric paint to draw on the polka dots.

As for an authentic mask, while they do exist, unless you feel like dropping $50 and up on one, I just suggest just finding a horror clown mask that shows some teeth with red hair to symbolize the fire.

Zombie Clowns from Left 4 Dead 2

Zombies are lame. Especially during the Halloween season. They’re on TV; they’re in movies. Every city and every college campus has a zombie walk, which, to be honest, isn’t much different from a normal day on campus. So, how do you spice up this tired, old costume idea? Make it a clown, of course.

The Zombie Clowns appear in the Dark Carnival campaign of Left 4 Dead 2. They are some of the most annoying special infected in the game because their squeaky shoes attract other Infected to your location, which could actually be a fun idea for a group costume.

As far as making the actual costume goes, the clown pants in L4D2 come in different colors, so any clown costume with overalls would do. Use any old white tank top, some clown makeup and fake blood, and you’re ready to go! If you really want to make the costume convincing, here’s a scar makeup tutorial, too.

With Halloween fast approaching, people are trying to get their costumes together. If you want to be the scariest person at all of your Halloween events this year, why not be a clown? Because, let’s face it, they ain’t right. Name one cool clown. That’s right; you can’t.

Video games are no strangers to these suckers either. Many games have featured some of the scariest clowns in history. So, why not try to recreate their terrifying look to scare all of your friends and those kids down the street? Here are some looks you can try. 

Well, there you have it: all the nipple and dong you could ever want for your gaming experience.

What do you think of the nude mod phenomena, and have you tried out any reskins, texture packs, or full sex conversion mods?

What new nude mods did we miss that you'd recommend we check out for any current or older PC games?

Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Despite a lot of searching, I haven't actually seen any working nude mods for 2015's Rise Of The Tomb Rider, rather just links to malware and image mockups, and honestly I'm sort of glad about that.

While there's a long and storied history of Lara Croft nude mods (going all the way back 15 years or more to a black and white magazine ad that was turned topless), the new Tomb Raider reboots went out of their way to make Lara an actual person and not a huge-boobed sex object, so lets try to keep it that way just a wee bit longer, shall we?

Dishonored – See Through Outfits

Before anyone gets all up in arms, don't worry: it's not little Emily who gets the nude treatment (although that will probably change in the upcoming Dishonored 2, since the all-grown up princess will be a playable character).

Rather, this reskinning pack here modifies the various maids and tavern wenches that Corvo comes across so they have much skimpier outfits. It's nice to have some eye candy from time to time while assassinating your way to proving you aren't an assassin.

Dead Space – Sexy Ads

My eyes sort of glazed over and I had a bit of a seizure when I first saw this while searching for nude mods.

Even more of jarring juxtoposition of sex and violence than in Left 4 Dead 2, these mods put boobies in the bleak, horrific future of Dead Space.

I guess maybe you want a little levity and joy while disfigured necromorphs tear you apart and various environmental hazards repeatedly kill Isaac in truly disturbing ways?

Neverwinter Nights 2 Nude Dudes

As it turns out, it's not just the guys who are into perving up their games with nude ladies, and there's plenty of opportunity for (non-futa) male package action if you know where to look.

Neverwinter Nights 2 in particular has several male-focused nudity mods, including one that changes all the base character frames so they can be fully nude and always feature erect penises.

I sort of like the half-orc one actually, and if he was running at me full speed while screaming bloody murder, I'm not sure whether I'd be more scared of the two-handed great axe or the two-handed “lower sword.”

Left 4 Dead 2 – Rochelle Nude Mod

I'm going to be honest: this one actually seems more than a little pointless to me. Do we really need Rochelle to be naked while gunning down zombies? Wouldn't this be more of a distraction than a helpful mod?

If you really need sex and violence to collide though, have at it here – just remember not to pick Rochelle as your character, since this one's a first person shooter, and that would pretty well defeat the purpose.

Finding this has really got me all hot and bothered for something else though: knowing just when in the heck we're finally getting a Left 4 Dead 3!

I spent a whole lotta nights with my brother in law mowing through hordes of fast moving zombies while co-oping on the Xbox 360, and it would be great to get that experience again on the current gen consoles.

Minecraft Texture Packs

This is perhaps even more odd than Stardew Valley nude mods. I mean seriously - I want you to take a good, long, hard look at that (slightly censored) image above.

Somebody took a picture of a penis, blockified it, and turned it into a Minecraft texture pack, so that he or she could see a disjointed, pixelated schlong running around the screen while building a blocky utopia.

Why? What drove this mystery person? I can't imagine its arousing, especially when pictures of actual, non-block penises are so readily available. Is it the novelty? How long does it take before block dong isn't amusing anymore in Minecraft?

Someone needs to perform a study on what drives the phenomena, and who jumps on the bandwagon and keeps it going. If you are one of those people who badly needs to be tested and studied for science, well, grab some nude skins, like the naked guy base or naked girl with long hair.

Stardew Valley Nude Portraits

Rule 34 allows for no exceptions and takes no prisoners. Remember how we uncovered the baffling existence of Neko Atsume porn?

Absolutely no game is safe, no matter how cutesy or innocuous it may seem (in fact, that might be half the lure in making it pervy to begin with).

I suppose even 16-bit farmers deserve to have a little sexy time when they're done growing crops. After all, farming is hard work. With these Stardew Valley mods you can now give various female characters either more cleavage in their portraits... or go full nude.

Witcher 3 – Wild Nudity Project

Did you feel Witcher 3 didn't haven enough nudity to begin with? Now you don't have to wait for the actual sex scenes to get the jumbly bits bouncing around!

The Wild Nudity Project has put a lot of work into making most of the major female characters in the game nude all the time, even during dialog, combat, or just wandering around town.

They even went out of their way to get color-appropriate pubic hair. You don't have to leave anything to imagination now (or actually put any work into seducing the ladies, I suppose).

Skyrim Futa Mods

Gamers around the world have just gone absolutely nuts (tee hee) with nudifying Skyrim over the last few years, and hentai fans will be pleased to know several intrepid modders have added futanari action for all the female characters.

That's right, you can now populate the world of Tamriel with girls who also have constantly-erect boy bits. There's at least two fully functional futa mods already out there: the Androgynous Futanari mod and the Schlongs Of Skyrim mod.

My main question is: when will they be functional as weapons for sword fights?

Skyrim: When Worlds Collide

There are already plenty of Skyrim nude - and even full sex - mods covering nearly every conceivable situation (including giving vaginas to horses for some reason).

If you want something a little different and don't mind breaking the immersion of a fantasy world, now you can bring in character designs from other games to the Elder Scrolls universe.

The various clothing options from fighting games are now starting to get big, like this one that lets you utilize Miharu's beach outfit from Tekken Tag Tournament 2. It's not fully nude, but that's OK, because there's already a million of those mods.

There's more fan service reskins arriving all the time, covering everything from BDSM gear to Playboy bunnies to school girl outfits, all just waiting to be found if you just spend some time scrolling through the mods available.

It's a fact of life: if something exists, somebody has made it pornographic or at least tried to make it a little more on the skimpy and risque side.

We've previously looked at some of the most truly bizarre NSFW games, from the hilarity of Genital Jousting to the social commentary of a penis photography simulator. Now we're going to head into the sexier side of the modding world, with just a few dips into silliness to see how far people are willing to go for nudity.

These are the best NSFW mods now available for a host of PC games that are worth checking out if you need more fan service in your gaming experience.

It should go without saying, if nudity offends you, then go no further. Oh, and for the love of Zeus and all that is holy, definitely don't click a single one of these links if you are at work or anywhere near the little ones.

Want more NSFW mods? Check out the lists below: 

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• Sex and violence: the top 10 best NSFW Skyrim mods
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• Bring out your inner freak with these Skyrim fetish mods
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• NSFW Skyrim mods on the PlayStation 4
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• NSFW mods for Fallout 4 on Xbox One
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• The best NSFW mods for Fallout 4
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• The 10 best NSFW nude mods ever made
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A common issue that plagues friends across the gaming community is the question what should we play? Video games are great, but sometimes they're even better than friends. Whether you're a fan of survival, RPG, puzzles, or shooters, chances are you'll be able to share this fun with a friend.

Here are some of the best games you can play in co-op with friends on the PC. 

1. Portal 2

This comedic sci-fi puzzle adventure is definitely one that gamers can't overlook. As if the single-player storyline wasn't witty or fun enough, they created a co-op mode to share the fun with a friend. 

Solve puzzles with your portal guns and try not to get each other killed as you "compete" for GLaDOS' approval. It's all in the name of science.

Portal 2 is available on Steam for $19.99. Or buy the 2-pack and send the other copy to a friend for $34.98

2. Castle Crashers

Optimized for up to 4 players and cross-platform playing, this game is also a great co-op experience. Choose which character you want (by their armor color or their magical perks associated with them) and set off on a beat-em-up indie adventure.

This game can be cute and terrifying all at once, offers some intense bosses, sweet loot, and quirky additional features that will have you and your friends having a great time. 

Get Castle Crashers on Steam for $14.99. Or get a 4-pack for you and your friends at $44.97.

3. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes

This game offers standard computer support as well as Virtual Reality console support. The recent release got overwhelmingly positive reviews across the board for its indie puzzle bomb-diffusing simulation.

Have one friend be the bomb diffuser, and the other friend be the "expert" with the answers to solving all the puzzles. Neither side can see what the other has, making simple puzzle solving all about communication.

Before there's an explosion joke, grab it on Steam for $14.99.

4. Don't Starve Together

If the single player wasn't difficult enough, try having to get enough food and supplies to last for more than one person. This game is available to as many players as you can fit in a server, and forces you to face horrible beasts, seasons, and everything in between.

Play as all characters (no need to unlock them) and set off on your adventure. Build bases, get supplies, fight enemies, brave the elements, and ultimately, don't starve. Together.

Get your hands on this Early Access game on Steam, with 2-packs and Bundle packages to get extra copies for friends.

5. Left 4 Dead (and Left 4 Dead 2)

There's nothing more multiplayer or co-op than working together against the zombie apocalypse. Get your hands on some pistols, a grenade launcher, chainsaw, or other weapon of choice (hey, maybe it's an electric guitar, we don't judge). Now, smash to the next safe-room until help arrives.

Enjoy some near-death banter with multiple maps and levels from the southern swamps to theme parks. Even a rock concert. 

Get the Left 4 Dead Bundle (includes both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 for all 8 characters and their maps) on Steam for $29.99.

Have a PC game that you and your friends really enjoy playing with multiplayer co-op options? Drop some names in the comments.

Over the past month we have had several articles published on things such as disproportionate characters in video games, characters with questionable clothing, photoshopped characters who have been given so-called realistic body shapes, and complaints about sexualization in video games... But is it really such a problem?

In theory, there is. Most of these articles all centralize around what has become commonly known as “political correctness:” the practice of avoiding behavior and words that could potentially cause insult or discrimination towards a particular social group. While this movement originally orbited the realms of race, sexuality, and gender, it has slowly consumed everything from being overweight to accepting just about everything short of murder – as there’s a good enough reason for it.

So what does this have to do with gaming? A lot, actually. As the internet continues to grow, and social practices in the real world (you know, that place on the other side of your front door?) there has been an increasing presence of political correctness directed toward video game designers… and it can get pretty ridiculous sometimes...

The Problem

I’m going to be upfront about this: I hate political correctness with a passion. I for one dislike it since people have often gone out of the way to make sure they don’t say anything possibly insulting toward me – as I am of mixed race – and it can get pretty tiring. While I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a fan of people insulting me on a regular basis, I can say without regret that it gets exhausting trying to walk on eggshells around people who tend to spontaneously combust if I say the word “black” around African-American people while I’m talking about a coat of paint. Seriously, it’s annoying.

This is not to say that political correctness doesn't have its upsides. It helps people feel included and helps them feel as though they are part of the community instead of an outsider. The PC movement has also done a lot to push toward equality in the social sphere as many of these movements target the unequal treatment of persons of interest in the workplace and elsewhere. When used correctly, it can be a source for positive social change. However, in the world of video game development it can become a serious problem for writers, developers, and art directors for a number of reasons.

Narration and Immersion may be sacrificed for the sake of political correctness...

Games that particularly come to mind are the Assassin's Creed franchise or Red Dead Redemption where the games limit interactions with people of African-American or Asian lineages. In fact, in the latter game there are almost no people of color at all, and none of them are part of either the main storyline or side-quests.

While one would expect to see African-Americans in Red Dead Redemption's setting, the entirety of the game's cast members are limited to Caucasian or Mexican descent with the only black people being random NPCs

While it is difficult to prove that writers intentionally avoid using these practices for the sake of being politically correct, it stands to reason that it is at least on their minds. However, this desire to avoid conflict with groups of interest can harm the variety in storytelling we can have in video games. I'm not saying that the writers should go out of the way to bring up every single historical politically insensitive insult in the book, but it is harmful to historical accuracy and immersion if we can't use politically insensitive words and actions in the proper context.

I suppose that there is always the argument that a video game taking place in historical settings does not need to use certain of-era language to be immersive. In fact, the Assassin's Creed series would be an unintelligable mess without a mass import of subtitles if the directors decided to use of-era pronunciation and language in their games. On top of that, anyone with a basic knowledge of the eras represented by either Red Dead Redemption or Assassin's Creed should know what the political landscape was like regardless. As a result, their inclusion would seem to be nothing more than an excuse to blurt out racist slang.

I would argue, instead, that while these arguments are true, they don't warrant their non-inclusion either. If people are - in fact - knowledgeable of the slang and language of the era, then wouldn't that be more reason to add it? Would it not mean that removing such language for the sake of political correctness is actually insulting to the intelligence of the player? After all, if the player is so enlightened on the subject matter would it not be absurd to become enraged about that which they allegedly know is nothing more than an of-era situation?

All this counter-argument provides is more reason to believe that the PC phenomenon has lost sight of what the true enemy is. In the end, it takes away from the experience, painting a "nicer," more politically-sensitive world than it actually was, and there is no advantage to this for anybody. After all, if we simply pretend the past didn't exist, how can we possibly argue for change in the future?

Aside: Oddly enough, Red Dead Redemption did not seem to have any problem using Mexican derogatory language towards Americans or other people of Caucasiand backgrounds. Might be something worth thinking about...

Developers take a hit too...

One of the widest publicized issues of racial insensitivity in video games revolved around the game Resident Evil 5. When the game was released, some cried out that the game was racist for various reasons. Some of these allegations came from a scene where a blonde woman is dragged away, supposedly raped by a black man, or that the Africans presented in the game who are not visibly infected are portrayed as stereotypically violent. However, both of these accusations are weak at best.

Firstly, as clearly evident by the video above (around the 6:20 mark) the woman who is dragged away was not taken away by a black man. In fact, it was a white one. Secondly, even if it was a black man it does not take much time researching to find out that South Africa has some of the consistently highest rates of rape and violence against women in the world. Thirdly, Western Africa - where the game takes place - holds the highest murder rates in the world (beat only by Central and South America) and holds 3 of the top 6 murder counts.

Despite this, many well-known publishers of gaming news were quick to jump on the poor representation of the African peoples in Resident Evil 5. Eurogamer.net's Dan Whitehead said of the game:

Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

Source: Eurogamer.net

Yeah, so the West African "Majini" are represented as extremely violent and in a state of poverty. But guess what? West Africa is an extremely violent and impoverished part of the continent where war is almost a daily occurance! Anyone who does a quick Google search of West Africa can discover this in seconds, so go figure if a game developer uses that setting for a violent video game.

Of course, it could be argued that this is still a misrepresentation of West Africa since it cannot possibly be in this state of turmoil at all times.

In fact, I for one would like to believe that there are periods of peace in West Africa, despite my own cynicism getting in the way. Despite this, should I be confiscated of my evidences I can still come up with one argument: the game is - likewise - a representation of a single period of time in West Africa. This means that it could simply be representative of West Africa during the worst of times. After all, I'm certain that getting infected by any virus from the Resident Evil franchise would be a low point for any country.

To argue against this would border on ignorant naivety. Should political correctness seek to be been seen as an "enlightened" and "better, more civil way of thinking," it is cases such as this that make me laugh. Why? Because the people are not only lampooning themselves, but also showing how ignorant they are of foreign affairs in general.

It's an ironic ignorance many seem to completely miss, and one that brings more harm to the cause; as a result, those who fight against racism can quickly gain an image of being extremely ignorant of the real world. That - once again - helps nobody.

And then there's the art directors...

By far this is one of the worst hit sectors, and it's usually by social interest groups that target the sexualization and overall presentation of beauty standards of women. This is one of the most extreme sectors as it borders ridiculousness at times. While I certainly cannot speak on behalf of women, I can present some input as to why - in my own opinion - these allegations can get out of hand sometimes, and how they actually can harm the message that they are attempting to present.

The article mentioned at the start of this piece about realistic body shapes talked about a campaign hosted by Bulimia.com: a website that aims to critique society's concepts of beauty in an attempt to stop the spread of psychological and emotional eating disorders. While their cause is noble, their execution has been somewhat ill-executed due to their diction. Why? Because while they claimed that they were using the body image of the average American woman, their conclusion clearly stated:

The difference between the original video game heroines and their more realistic interpretations is hardly subtle. In these images, unfeasible waistlines expand and arms and legs grow wider. Perhaps the changes are especially noticeable since most of these characters are so scarcely dressed.

Source: bulimia.com

This presents the idea that the author had two goals: to present the characters as their interpretation of a "realistic" female body image, and that they believe another issue is the scarcity of clothing. It is in the group's interests to prevent female gamers - particularly younger ones - from playing such games since it could "develop a skewed image of how the female body should look."

Firstly, anyone who gets their impressions of how anyone should look based off of animated characters should be institutionalized. I have never been able to accept this argument since one would think that similar argument could be made as to why a male character shouldn't have skin painted with the ashes of my deceased loved ones, and muscles the size of my head.

I'm looking at you Kratos...

Then there's the fact that the images they presented as "realistic" undermine people who are actually healthy and have the body image presented in the pictures. If their goal is to stop eating disorders, then presenting women with much larger bodies will cause disorders such as binge eating in order to gain weight. Take the following images as examples:

This is bulimia.com's Photoshop comparison (left) and a cosplayer (right)

Once again, while bulimia.com's mission is honorable, their execution is poor. The cosplayer on the right is portraying a picture-perfect image of the character without the use of photoshop, and so to imply that the original image is unrealistic is to claim that the cosplayer's dimensions are equally unrealistic.

While they are doing something good by trying to stop eating disorders, they might not realize that just because something is the average weight in the United States doesn't necessarily mean it's by any means "realistic." After all, averages are based on the sum of the total BMI of the population divided by the population sample. Considering that 68.6% of the United States's population is overweight, that is not something we should be supporting.

However, this is one of the least dramatic examples. What causes a serious problem is when people start taking something simple and making it into a big deal. The case and example? Zero Suit Samus in Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS.

The above image received a great amount of attention from the gaming community. Kotaku poster Luke Plunkett was quick to weigh in, compiling a bunch of characters wearing the same rocket heels, claiming that the boots would "put her at a competitive disadvantage." CCC's Angelo M. D'Argenio even went so far as to claim the rocket boots were "sexist" due to the fact that she could have had a rocket pack or anything other than what he calls "stiletto heels."

While these seem like a valid claims at first, it actually more damaging to the feminist movement than it is helpful. When people who support equality see such posts, many of them become divided, some of them coming off as misogynistic simply because they do not see the problem with it. Why don't they see a problem? Because it's ridiculous. People are arguing about the practicality of space rocket heels in a world where a dinosaur pops out egg bombs, and a baseball bat can launch a talking, spaceship flying fox several kilometers into the air.

 I'm pretty sure the last thing in this terrified Charizard's mind is how those rocket heels in his face sexualize Samus... In fact, I'm pretty sure he looks pretty damn intimidated by Samus's death glare!

While these examples hardly display developers actively avoiding sexualization for the sake of political correctness, Divinity: Original Sin is a prime candidate for getting attacked for its art design.

In a world where most fantasy games portray female warriors as iron-bikini wearing powerhouses, Divinity: Original Sin was picked out as the lone bullying target in the bunch. The advertisement art for the game (pictured above) was changed from the original midriff-bearing Scarlett on the left, to the fully armored one on the right after numerous complaints were made about the game's art direction.

According to an interview with Thierry Van Gyseghem, the art direction's complaints were limited to a small vocal minority until the media caught wind of the game after it launched a Kickstarter campaign. According to Thierry, certain publications who had a more "vigilant political agenda" caused the game to come under heavy scrutiny from their supporters. This scrutiny caused the developers of Divinity: Original Sin to change their game art in an effort to remain in a positive public relations stance.

By definition, censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts. Since the term is typically applied to governments, media outlets, or other such positions of power it is rarely considered that social media and other consumer groups could possibly result in the censorship of a game. However, Thierry went on record as stating that those who oppose his position that he believes that his game was censored should consider the following analogy:

When you own a pizza place and one day the mob enters your little shack, threatens you by saying if I don’t stop selling pepperoni pizza’s they’ll do anything in their power to make sure you go out of business, then what should we call this? Blackmail? Censorship? Harassment? Extortion? or simply a trade embargo?

In the end the story remains the same, you are forced to rethink your actions and it leaves a shadow hanging over your creations. Every artist deals with criticism differently, I feel that inevitably your next piece will already be affected by it, consciously or unconsciously.

Source: blogjob.com

To summarize the full interview, Thierry believes that there are not many legitimate critiques to character design that one can make since they are based upon pure personal preference. The fact that media outlets and social interest groups that stand between the developer and the target consumer can have such a powerful say in game design is - in its own way - a form of censorship.

In my own opinion: video games have character designs based on the world they are set in. Video games revolving around fighting, killing, and other sorts of violence tend to dramatize sexual features since our own imaginations tend to portray strong individuals as attractive. For men this is typically represented by gratuitous amounts of muscle mass and a large crotch bulge, while for women this is usually presented through an overzealous bust, firm rear-end, and a broken back. Similarly, games focused on more realistic or plot-oriented settings tend to have more realistic characters, albeit most of them having Hollywood-styled good looks.

What I'm trying to say here is that this is a symptom of the particular genres, not of the gaming culture as a whole. To limit these over-the-top dramatizations of body images is to limit artistic impressions of the human physique. It doesn't help women - or men - suffering from weight or eating disorders, and it doesn't help the hard laborers in art development for video games either.

So what would you suggest, RR-sama?

At the risk of sounding callous... maybe try just getting over yourself?

I know that sounds harsh, and many people will hate me for it. The problem - as previously stated - seems to be mostly in the United States, a country that suffers from a serious case of Social Media Madness (or as I like to call SMM).

In North American culture we have reached a level of self-obsession, self-importance, and -oddly enough- self-loathing that it borders the level of a psychosis. We constantly seek approval from absolutely everybody, and when we do not receive said approval we lash out. This also happens when we don't get something we want, and the resulting feedback can take many forms, many people quick to claim some sort of unfair prejudice was placed against them before considering any other possibilities.

It's a sort of entitlement that belittles the true enemies of equality, and oppresses people who simply believe that things might not be nearly as bad as people make them out to be.

Seriously guys... your inner Joffery is showing...

We shouldn't be allowing this to affect the realm of storytelling and game design. It limits the scope of experiences we can have, and video games - like other art forms - should be the last bastion of the human imagination where developers can tell the stories they want to tell, and in the way they want to.

By imposing ridiculous levels of scrutiny for the sake of making sure we don't hurt anyone's feelings we are just fostering a culture of irresponsible people who don't want to simply accept that maybe things aren't just sunshine and rainbows. In any case, we should all be able to understand - as thinking individuals - that it is called a "virtual world" for a reason.

But hey, maybe I'm just blowing hot air...

What do you guys think about the landscape of political correctness in video games? Do you think it has gone too far, or maybe not far enough? Do you think people should have a say in how developers decide to make their games? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

With the rise of role-playing games (RPGs) that allow custom character creation, it's easy to make a character of any skin color. However, nothing can replace the permanent status of game characters that are intentionally created a certain way to give stability and finesse to a game's story plot or campaign. African-American characters are on the rise in video game culture, and that's a beautiful thing. Here are the African-American female video game characters who have made an impact in video games both over-the-years and recently.

1. Aveline de Grandpre - Assassin's Creed III: Liberation

Aveline is the leading lady of her own segment of a very popular game series. She's a beautiful, skilled Creole (French and African mixed heritage) woman who hates witnessing injustice, especially when it comes to slaves.

According to the in-depth trailer from the game's official website, Aveline's mother was thrown into slavery when Aveline was little. Since that time, Aveline has seen too much wrong-doing to just idly sit by and watch. The Spanish try to take over her hometown, but she swears her allegiance to the Assassin Brotherhood and plans to take them down herself - a noble cause for a noble woman.

2. Marlene - The Last of Us

She's the leader of the anti-military group, the Fireflies, and she knows Ellie very well. She seeks to use Ellie to create a cure for the plague that has wiped out the human race, but fails to tell Joel and Ellie how that would be possible at the start of the game.

Although she's a non-playable character (NPC) in-game, she's a strong woman who leads the resistance. Her ideals greatly influence Ellie and thus she drives the plot of the game event though she is only seen on-screen a few times. Although her group falls under the military's backlash, her undying devotion to finding a cure for the infection is noteworthy. She had good intentions to save the world and amazingly found and held on to the right resources to do so until the end of the game. She definitely added to the emotional influence of the game as well.

3. Sheva Alomar - Resident Evil 5

She's an agent from the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (B.S.A.A.) and hails from West Africa, according to an informational video on IGN.com. She's tough, she has great mêlée attacks and she's Chris Redfield's partner in-game. Together, they unravel the mystery behind a global bio-organic weapon operation that goes well beyond the Umbrella Corporation.

She runs and fights alongside Chris with confidence and style. She's calm under pressure in the cutscenes, quick to react in case Chris is in trouble and holds a significant leading and supporting role throughout the game. One of the few times she shows emotion is when she receives word that she and Chris have to continue with an outrageously dangerous mission...by themselves.

4. Rochelle - Left for Dead 2

She's not exactly a "femme fatale" among a group of three guys, but don't take her lightly either. According to the official Left for Dead 2 website, Rochelle was a "low-level associate producer" before the zombie apocalypse went down. Now, she's busy surviving to move up in the broadcast journalism ranks if everything goes back to normal.

Rochelle is fast and efficient with weapons when it comes to killing the undead. She knows how to work as a team player and handles herself well among a group of guys, which makes her a top character.

5. Tanya - Mortal Kombat series

She's a brutal woman who knows how to rip apart guys like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Johnny Cage. She comes off as a seductive, harmless woman who loves yellow, but she's the real "femme fatale" of this list. She's had merciless fatalities and has gone through an interesting series of transformations over the course of her Mortal Kombat life only to end in tragedy. Maybe she'll make a cameo appearance in Mortal Kombat X or even be a playable character! After all, Liu Kang did come back as a zombie.

Tanya's deadly fatalities from Mortal Kombat Gold include a "kiss of death" that causes the recipient's limbs to twist and break before the entire mangled body explodes. She's the last person you'd want to kiss or fight against, but she'd be the first person you'd want fighting for your team, which makes her a perfect candidate for this list.

African-American women are rising in the ranks through video games, but still need a bigger presence in story plots and campaigns in general. Aveline, Marlene, Sheva, Rochelle, and Tanya are all perfect examples of how African-American women appear in video games past and present. Hopefully, African-American female characters will continue to keep a presence in future video games to come. They're symbols of strength, perseverance, and courage, and those characteristics are what great game characters are made of.

Amy Hennig got her Bachelor's degree in English literature from Cal University with her eyes set on the film industry, until she took at job as an artist for Atari. While working on the game Electrocop, she decided that games are "a more interesting and pioneering medium than film" and dropped out of film school to begin her gaming career.

She became the lead designer on Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City before she made a name for herself at Crystal Dynamics as the writer, producer, and director of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. She's best known for her work at Naughty Dog on the Uncharted franchise as game director of the original as well as head writer on Among Thieves and Drake's Deception (the last two earned her the Writer's Guild Award for Video Game Writing in 2010 and 2012).

After being reportedly "forced out" of Naughty Dog back in March, she's now working at Visceral Games as the creative director of a currently unknown Star Wars project. If Uncharted 4 takes a dip in quality while a Star Wars game suddenly becomes the new benchmark in storytelling in video games, you'll know why.

Who are some of your favorite women in the game industry? Leave a comment and let us know who deserves to be recognized.

At the age of 12 years old, Corrinne Yu took advantage of the Apple II donated to her junior high school and began programming games. She's credited as an elite programmer on the classic King's Quest series on the Apple II, as well as creating the game engines that would power such games as Borderlands, Halo 4, Quake 2, and others.

Outside of the game industry, she's also programmed for NASA in a key role on America’s Space Shuttle Program at Rockwell International California, making her one of the only people to program both real and virtual spaceships. She's currently working at Naughty Dog, coding animation and graphics for PS4 titles including a remastered edition of The Last of Us.

Kim Swift got her start in games at the Digipen Institute of Technology where she helped code a puzzle game called Narbacular Drop. Kim and her team exhibited the game at a Digipen career fair, where Valve developer Robin Walker invited her and her team to do a presentation of the game for Valve. The team accepted and after their presentation Gabe Newell gave the entire team a job offer to build a new game just like Narbacular Drop.

Kim Swift would become the lead designer on that new game which the world would come to know as Portal. Kim would continue to work on other Valve games such as Left for Dead 1 & 2 before leaving the company in November of 2009 to join Airtight Games.

She created games such as Quantum Conundrum and the Ouya exclusive Soul Fjord before being hired by Amazon last month to help bolster Amazon's new video game development studio. According to Kim's very own LinkedIn page, she's currently "working on secret things for a secret amount of time that no one can know about. Shhhhh."

Robin Hunicke studied "dynamic difficulty adjustment in games" as a graduate student at Northwestern University. During her studies she worked on a mod for Half-Life that adjusted the game's difficulty based on the player's performance before Left 4 Dead's AI Director became a thing.

After a conversation with Will Wright at a conference, she decided to make the jump into the game industry, designing expansion packs for The Sims and becoming the lead designer on MySims. She's best known for her work with thatgamecompany as the Executive Producer for Journey. She's currently the co-founder and CEO of Funomena working on a mostly-unannounced commercial game.

What drives her is her desire to create games that elicit feelings from the player. She recently spoke at Humlab in Sweden about a concept she calls "Feeling-First Games." The short version of it tasks independent developers with building games centered around the desired emotional outcome of the game instead of building games around which mechanics you want to use (is it a shooter, a racing game, etc).

Lets start this list with one of the most well known female voices in indie gaming today, Zoe Quinn.

She's the creator of Depression Quest and a frequent participant of game jams. She's also well-known for being the constant target of harassment that ranges from misspelled attacks to in-depth conspiracy theories. In an industry that would rather cover up and ignore, her willingness to share that harassment in an effort to shed light on the underbelly of the gaming community has made her a respected figure for equality in gaming.

Personally, I'd recommend everyone go play Depression Quest, which is free to play on her website. It wasn't an easy game for me as it brought up memories and feelings from my own struggles with depression back in high school and college.

She's currently working on It's Not Okay, Cupid, a game based on the dating site OK Cupid, and is the narrative designer on Framed.

Travel up Death Mountain and into the Fire Temple with this Left for Dead 2 mod made by NicNack.

The mod is a recreation of the starting level of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The mod lets you go to Link's house for supplies and into the windmill to hear the Song of Storms. The map looks exactly the same as the 3DS version of Ocarina (the only difference being that you can't jump down the well or go into Goron City).

It also includes many of the same secrets and hidden items found in Ocarina of Time. The mod also has many of the same enemies, including a boss fight against Volvagia, and a Zelda soundtrack.

If you watched the video above, it is recommended that you do not play with robots as they will most likely catch on fire and hold you back -- but still a great time with friends!

As an avid Left 4 Dead 2 player and Zelda lover, you can imagine my excitement when I found this mod. I highly recommend this mod to anyone who loves to play Zelda.

Note: This is an ongoing seasonal sale. 

Now that December's end is approaching, I thought I'd take the time to highlight some of the great games that Steam's Holiday Sale has been shooting out at us this year. Note that these are the games I purchased myself, and would actually love if you left some of your own recommendations in the comments below. I'm not much of a PC gamer and just recently jumped on this high-speed Steam train. I game – usually – on my laptop, so these games will more than likely run for any of you interested in a title I mention.  

Bastion

I'm not even quite sure how I found it, but I fell under Bastion's spell pretty early on in the game. You play as “the kid”, a silent protagonist who wakes up to find his world in shambles – literally. Awakening to the sight of his now floating home, he begins to make his way to the Bastion, a safe location that every citizen should report to in times of distress. The streets form under your feet and you soon find your trusty hammer, which will help you fight the ghostly opponents ahead. After reaching the now destroyed Bastion, you confront a stranger who helps you begin your quest to rebuild the town using cores that can be found around the world and reached using skybridges (basically air vents that shoot you up into the sky, bringing you to your desired location).

Bastion is a ton of fun to play. Leveling up is a blast and upgrading items and weapons you've salvaged along the way make for not necessarily an original, but an addictive, formula. The clever narration makes up for the silent protagonist here, and I can't imagine it being the same any other way. Witty narrators have been an element I've quickly grown very fond of, and I'd like to see it in other games. Bastion is available on both the Xbox 360 and Steam, and is highly recommended by me. 

Guacamelee! Gold Edition 

In Guacamelee!, you play as a Mexican farmer named Juan, who, from the looks of him, is not a very happy man. Woken up by a priest from a local church, you soon find yourself getting caught up in an attack on your village.

After heroically trying to save the president of Mexico's daughter, you are zapped by a hellish skeleton named Carlos Calaca, and killed. Coming to a Limbo-esque setting, you equip an ancient and powerful luchadore mask, transforming you into a powerful fighter. It brings you back to the land of the living, and you set off to rescue the president's daughter from the fleshless hands of Carlos Calaca.

I haven't played a terrible amount of Guacamelee!, but I have played enough to know it is great. Being a game that I heard fantastic things about, I jumped when I saw the gold edition of the title drop to $4. I regretted not having a controller to use on my laptop, but I still had fun.

Without a controller, you use various keys to punch and kick your enemies and finish them off by throwing them in any desired direction. Guacamelee! is available on Steam, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and will soon be coming to next-gen consoles with additional content. 

Killing Floor

Of this list, I have spent the majority of my time playing Killing Floor. Although, this does not mean I like it the best. Months ago, I had a much weaker laptop that struggled to run titles like Bastion. Not only did I have a very low-end PC, I didn't consider myself a PC gamer in the slightest. I had Killing Floor gifted to me and, lucky for me, it ran smoothly. Of my twenty-three hours of game time, I've probably only played with other people four or five times, so this is a game that can be enjoyed solo – though I do recommend hooking up with a few buddies at least once.

Killing Floor is a simple game with a simple objective for the player(s): kill zombies. A game can be created by selecting a map, game length, and difficulty. Around this time of year, the developers change out the standard-looking zombies with Christmas-themed modules. Ordinary zombies wear Santa hats and imitate elves. Slower, fatter zombies that spit acidic vomit are now dressed up as Santa Claus. Tall zombies with melee weapons that charge you are now gingerbread men with candy canes, shouting phrases like “I'm delicious!” in a manner that will creep the hell out of you with headphones on late at night. A nice pop to the head shuts them up however, and maybe you'll even activate ZED mode, a slow-motion gun mode that allows you to witness the destructive process of an exploding head.

When you've taken out a wave of infected, you can visit the weapon store. The store sells guns, body armor that serves as a second health bar, ammo, and other useful items such as frag grenades. The weapon store moves after the completion of a wave, so it's always wise to keep a lookout for it as you near the end of a round. When you've survived each of the waves, you've won the game and will likely want to boot another one up. Killing Floor is available on Steam.

Rogue Legacy

When a friend recommended this to me, I checked it out on Steam and was honestly a bit iffy at first. It was intriguing for sure; randomly generated dungeons with a unique set of characters to choose from definitely got me excited. But I couldn't help but think from the gameplay trailer it would be painfully difficult. Surely enough, when I decided to ignore my nervousness and go with my gut – and the trust I had in the recommendation – it was hard. Strangely though, I didn't regret the purchase, I kept playing – a lot.

Death after death I'd choose a new character and jump into a newly designed castle for me to take on, and despite my consecutive and countless deaths, I was having fun. You see, the good thing about the game is that even though you're dying and choosing a new hero to play as, you're still leveling up. And that's something the player will realize after a little while; the game picks up speed tremendously and you feel much more powerful as you progress, even if you are dying over twenty times before reaching level ten, like myself.

As you level up and earn loot, you can upgrade your hero, which will visually develop your own personal castle. I asked the friend that recommended the game to me if it was supposed to be this difficult, or if it was just my poor skill, and he replied simply with, “dying is like, the entire point.” Rogue Legacy is available on Steam.   

Left 4 Dead 2

Valve surprised us when they made their critically acclaimed title, Left 4 Dead 2, available on Steam for free. After I had rushed to install it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the download not only included L4D2, but the original Left 4 Dead content as well. The sweet deal lasted only one day, hopefully long enough for you to grasp it, and ended up stressing out those who bought it at full price. One angry user even threatened to bring the developer to court. More on this at eight.

The first-person zombie-killing shooter comes with numerous campaigns, not necessarily short and not necessarily long sequences, that all feature you and three other players trying to reach an evacuation spot somewhere. As loudly as that screams “repetitive”, the different areas you're thrown into change and are held up nicely by the endlessly fun zombie-killing gameplay.

You're given a nice choice of equipment at each safe house you come across, and are expected to hold out with your chosen items for the entire chapter, so choose your gear wisely. You can't go wrong with a shotgun, pistol, pipe bomb (a bomb that attracts the zombie horde's attention, only to explode when they reach the beeping device), and a medical kit that can heal either an injured ally or you.

There are different types of zombies as well, like: Chargers who, well, charge at you; Tanks, who will bang you up pretty badly if you're not careful; and Witches, who I particularly like. They're crying can be heard from dozens of feet away, and it's important to watch your step and keep your flashlight off when you do reach an area that contains a Witch. Happen to get spotted by a Witch – not fun.

When you reach the end of the campaign, you'll need to survive a final stretch as a helicopter flies over to you. Any players killed or left behind will be mentioned lovingly in the credits. God dang Tanks. Left 4 Dead 2 is available on Steam and the Xbox 360. 

BIT.TRIP RUNNER

I'd been interested in BIT.TRIP RUNNER for a long time before I saw it drop to a dollar. Its gameplay looked like a nice challenge; jumping, sliding, and even kicking your way through numerous levels. And I was not disappointed when I bought it.

The game is divided into three zones, with a number of levels in each. I'm on the brink of the first zone and am itching to play it as I type this. The game starts slow and easy, as most games do, but takes a dramatic turn to the challenges ahead rather quickly.

As you jump, slide, and kick your way along, musical notes play which allow you to keep up with the game's pace and start a tune of your own. This feature – I would imagine – was designed for not only musical entertainment, but to help you. A lot of the game is about trial and error, remembering where you died last to avoid the obstacle next time, and memorizing the tune of the song you're making as you dodge each obstacle helps tremendously.

There are also gold bars to be collected as you dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge (I couldn't resist the Dodgeball reference, I apologize), and if you collect all of them, you unlock a bonus level jam-packed with gold bars for you to gather. BIT.TRIP RUNNER is just one of those games so simple, it's incredibly addictive. It's available on Steam, Wii, and 3DS. 

Spelunky

Being another game, like Rogue Legacy, that features randomly generated playgrounds full of loot, Spelunky caught my attention when I saw it win the community's choice for a price drop. I'd heard great things prior, but again, it looked challenging as heck. Like before, I ignored all doubts and purchased the game. It was $3.74; if it was not to my liking, it was not to my liking, and that would be that. But that same feeling of joy that filled me when I started learning my way around Rogue Legacy returned when I realized how enjoyable Spelunky really was. Pretty darn difficult, but very entertaining.

Playing as an unnamed adventurer, a “spelunker”, you explore underground tunnels filled with gold to collect. Enemies like bats and snakes will attempt to hurt you, but they can be avoided or taken head on with your whip.

Careful, though – run out of hearts and you'll have to start from the beginning. Items like ropes and grenades can be purchased, or found, and used to get to out-of-reach areas. I haven't had the pleasure of experiencing anything tear-jerkingly difficult, but I also haven't spent a terribly long amount of time with the title. Spelunky is available on Steam, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. 

The Binding of Isaac

I bought The Binding of Isaac with its available DLC a long way back, when I had that lower-end PC I was telling you about earlier. It was one of the few games that ran, and a good one at that. Recommended to me by the same person that told me about Rogue Legacy, I bought it willingly. Five dollars is, and always will be, better than a brand new sixty dollar console title, so what the heck, right?

You are Isaac, son to a religious nut of a mother who tries to kill you after she is supposedly commanded by God – who is likely just a wiseass narrator – to sacrifice you. Isaac flees into the basement, now on the run, and must now face the evils that live beneath the ground.

As if I haven't mentioned it enough already, the game is pretty difficult with varying randomized dungeons and boss battles as you progress. Using your own tears as your source of defense, you take on different creatures roaming your basement. The game isn't endless, however it is challenging and hard to beat. I have seven total hours and haven't beaten it a single time. I've come close, though, and that's enough to bring me back for more.

As you play, you can find keys to unlock chests and upgrade Isaac so that his tears are stronger, and his movement is faster. You can even find a companion, like Isaac's cat, that allows you to have multiple lives. Special cards can be found strewn around as well, giving Isaac powers such as “mom's pad,” which can be used to stun or hurt enemies. When you've grown tired of Isaac, there are other characters for you to unlock, too. The Binding of Isaac is available on Steam, and a retail version is also available for PC and Mac, titled The Binding of Isaac: The Most Unholy Edition.

Hotline Miami

My final game on the list is Hotline Miami, a 2D, top-down, brutal shooter that pits you, an unnamed killer, up against mobsters all around the city. The game doesn't always go in chronological order, there are few characters, and it sometimes feels like you're going in a circle – but (at least from my experience) you don't seem to care because the gameplay is so darn fun. 

Pummeling the mob to a sweet soundtrack is undeniably entertaining, and makes for a great time. Using guns and melee weapons, like crowbars and knives, you battle your way through sections of tough gangsters that will kill you in an instant if you're not tactical about where you step first. Although I have gotten lucky and been able to quickly wipe a section clear with several swipes of a crowbar.

At the end of each section you'll be graded on your performance based on things like “boldness” and how long it took you to clear the area. It pushes a player like me to reach for an A and be quick on my feet. As for the story, it seems to still be unraveling where I'm at in the game, which is pretty early on, but so far the gameplay is the aspect pulling me forward. Hotline Miami is available on Steam, PlayStation 3 and Vita. 

Now if you excuse me, I'm gonna get back to my Steam library. Please post a game or two you recommend below in the comments section, and/or let me know if you'd like to know more about one of the games I mentioned above.

Left 4 Dead 2 is my favorite zombie game of all-time. It has a nice mixture of horror, action, multiplayer, and humor. It is what all zombie games should strive for. It is the sequel to Left 4 Dead, my previous favorite zombie game, and was created by Valve.

Story: 7/10

The story of Left 4 Dead 2 is pretty straightforward. A group of four survivors band together to survive the zombie apocalypse in Louisiana. Each level has its own theme and a finale that requires players to do something specific. Each character has a specific one-dimensional personality. This provides for some very comedic moments when they talk to each other.

For example, Ellis is the stereotypical trailer park, white male. He talks in a heavy southern accent and is usually not very intelligent. He does surprise people sometimes, like in the finale of the first campaign, Dead Center. Ellis knows that a famous stock car is located in the mall, but won't have gas in it. He comes up with the idea to find gas to fill the stock car up so that they can drive it out.

Sound: 9/10

Besides the gameplay, the sound is the best part of the game. The music adds perfectly to the feeling of the game at the time. When a Tank appears, the music gets frantic, and when you are not facing many zombies, the music gets eerily quiet. The sounds of the zombies themselves, especially the special infected, are high quality as well. Each sound is unique and expertly crafted to fit into any situation.

My favorite is probably the Witch. It is always bone-chilling to hear the crying of a little girl because you know she is nearby. If she is alerted, she lets out a ear-splitting shriek and the music changes to match your hopelessness.

Gameplay: 9/10

The gameplay is fantastic in the Left 4 Dead series. You play as one of four survivors and go through the campaign with three other players, or NPCs. There are several guns and melee weapons to choose from to combat the zombies. Each campaign level has sub-levels. Each sub-level has a safe room at the end that the survivors must reach to move on to the next part of the game. The last sub-level of each campaign level is the finale, which requires much more than just making it to a safe room.

Along the way you'll have various items to pick up and use to give you an edge against the horde. Pain pills temporarily increase your health if not full, health packs permanently increase your health if not maxed, boomer bio marks a zombie or area that zombies will swarm to, pipe bombs will attract all zombies to its location and explode shortly after, Molotovs will burn zombies, adrenaline shots temporarily increase your movement and attack speed, and defibrillators can bring dead teammates back to life.

Multiplayer: 9/10

The thing that makes Left 4 Dead 2 unique from most zombie games, is the ability to play as the zombies. There are multiple game modes, but the most popular is Versus. In this game mode, two teams of four will take turns playing as survivors and infected. Each member on the infected team is randomly assigned a special infected to play as. The goal for the survivors is the same, make it to the safe room. The infected have to stop the survivors from reaching the safe room. Points are given based on how far each team gets, how many survivors are alive, and how much health they have. Whichever team has the highest score after each has done the finale, wins.

Left 4 Dead 2 has seven special infected multiplayer zombies:

The Hunter, a jumping zombie that pins survivors down.

The Smoker, a tall zombie that uses its long tongue to bind survivors.

The Boomer, a huge zombie that spits or explode on survivors to attract a horde of zombies.

The Spitter, a lanky zombie that spits or explodes into acid that can quickly down survivors.

The Jockey, a small and fast zombie who jumps on survivors to pull them away from the group.

The Charger, a zombie with one huge arm and runs into survivors, slamming them into the ground repeatedly.

The Tank, the biggest and strongest zombie, who slams survivors with its huge arms or throws huge pieces of the ground.

Finally, the Witch is a young woman who stays in one spot and cries, if she is startled, she will run to that survivors and immediately down them. The Witch is not playable, only computer controlled. And, the Tank will only come out at certain points.

Replay Value: 8/10

Left 4 Dead 2 has a high replay value. Special infected don't always come out at the same time or the same type, so there is always surprise there. The multiple game modes, especially Versus, give tons of replay value since you never know how each game will go, or what special infected you will play as. It can still get slightly repetitive when played for long periods of time, but I still always come back to it.

Do you enjoy Left 4 Dead 2? Anything else about the game that I might have left out? Let me know in the comments.

"You owe me for this."

At once intensely private and yet oddly outgoing, Nathan (SideEffex) has been playing anything he could get his hands on since he was five years old. From Super Mario Brothers to Call of Duty and Age of Empires, he’s tried his hand at everything he’s able to.

I first met him while playing Global Agenda, when I was one of the leaders for my agency (read: guild in every other MMOspeak) and hopping through other agency Mumbles to coordinate AVA attack and defense gameplays. My first memories of Nathan are of a huge group discussion about the wherefores of sweaty, saggy tits (...don’t be fooled, these are the conversations that facilitate victorious strength... honest!) and defending him to the rest of my team as not being a douchebag.

He isn’t. (Usually.)

I caught up with him for a few hours after a pell-mell dash from a weekend trip camping out in the wilderness (read: about 40 minutes outside of Toronto) in order to talk about his favorite game.

This proved to slightly harder than I’d thought because it began, with little preamble, like this:

What’s your favorite video game?

“Which one?”

...I don’t know. This is your favorite here.

[there’s a long, thoughtful pause while he muses on the matter]

This is going to be a very short interview, isn’t it?

It’s a hard question to answer. It changes.”

I know what you mean... there’s always something new that you get into for a while, and then you find something else to move onto?

“Yeah, but I guess Left 4 Dead was the one I stuck with the most. Definitely according to Steam [hours played]... but that game’s fallen apart so badly for a long time. There’s no community for it anymore. The only guys on there now are self-absorbed, condescending, and just not worth playing with.”

Why did you stick with it as long as you did? What got you into it?

“I played the demo. The Versus mode (play mode where two teams switch between playing co-op survivors traversing the map and special Infected zombies who try and stop them) was unlike anything else out there. It was a 4-person versus team that needed you to be good at playing both sides to understand how to play properly. It was a challenge, and that’s something I didn’t find a lot in other games.

Plus, for a while, the tournaments were fun. I really liked playing the Infected, it was a really different style of play—it still is a really different style of play. For a while there was a great community, a lot of new mods coming out that were fun and challenging and interesting. Competitive team vs competitive team games also added more challenges, made it all more fun.”

So would you say that a lot of the fun came from the people that were playing, rather than the game itself?

“It was all one thing. The community was great for a while. In the beginning of Left 4 Dead everyone was trying to help each other out... there was a very minimal amount of shit-talking, it was all about getting better at the game. Then after a while it just devolved into a shit-talk fest where everyone just put each other down... maybe about 5-6 months in? When it started getting more competitive, when more mods started coming out, that’s when it started up bad. Shit-talking, cockiness, guys always running their mouths. Granted, I started to get that way too...”

Not so much now though, right?

“Nah. I try to avoid talking altogether in videogames nowadays.”

And the game?

“The game itself is still good, I still really enjoy playing it, especially with people that I know. That became the worst part of it, when you get to the point where you just don’t want to put up with strangers. No one really wants or understands how to play as a team and everyone thinks they know better than the other person. You just don’t get anywhere.”

“And it’s exhausting to try. I know that feeling. Now, the competitive side of things definitely has died down for Left 4 Dead, especially with Valve dropping a lot of the official servers for it. Splitting the attention between Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 probably didn’t help either. I know L4D2 has quite the healthy modding community, but...

L4D predated the Steam Workshop... were there ever any mods made for it? Did Valve ever release a mod kit or development tools?”

“There were some mods that people made, most of them were server editing tools so that you could set up tournaments. You could open up the game file and change certain commands: you could make Tanks spawn (a large rampaging special Infected that hits like a ton of bricks), take away tier 2 weapons, increase Infected spawn time, completely remove med kits from the game... These sorts of things were standard in a tournament game.”

But you were never really involved in that sort of thing right? You just played?

“Yeah, competitively too for a little while.”

What kind of competition circuit ran for that community? It wasn’t just the type of match that you threw together for fun, right? Were there sponsored tournaments?

“There were, most of them supported by the L4D communities. There was nothing as big as, you know, an NVIDIA sponsorship, nothing like the Starcraft sponsorships... but there were events, I know Twitch.tv sponsored one. It’s been a long time since I was into this stuff, I don’t really remember much now. I played in a few of those, but the teams I was in never realy got anywhere. We’d go through a round, maybe two? Low-tier stuff.”

What was that like?

"Challenging."

How so?

“It was time-consuming. It takes a lot to learn to work well together to play as a team. I just got sick of it after a while. I got sick of all the other people. And then L4D2 ruined the competitive part.”

How, everyone jumped ship?

“Kinda. Then there were Steam sales which brought in a lot more people which weren’t as interested in building any kind of community. And then that game... the scoring system sucked, hell, it still sucks. The Infected are horrible to play in L4D2—several of the new ones are useless except in certain favorable situations, the hitboxes are ridiculous, you can run through people and still not hit them. The maps are decent. At best.”

So that’s why you left?

“That, life, and in the competitive stuff, it was simply being outskilled. It was really cool meeting people better than you, you need that challenge if you want to get better at a game. But... I don’t like losing that much.”

What kind of skill is involved?

“Have you played versus?”                                                                                       

I didn’t play it much... It always seems unduly complicated. And I never liked playing a character whose point was to run in and die. Strategically or otherwise.

“But that’s what you needed to know, all tournament matches were Versus. You have to know maps, where Infected are likely to come from, stuff like that. It was fun to learn all of it and then put it to use while in play. It was another aspect of the challenge.”

You don’t play much anymore, right?

“Nope. I don’t play many games as much now, especially not FPS. If I do play, it’s usually with people I’ve known for a while. Otherwise, I just don’t.”

But you still do play other games. What are you into now?

“A lot of them. Some of them I try for a while, some of them I don’t even bother to finish.”

We still have a Borderlands 2 game to get through. That Tiny Tina DLC.

“Yep. That is true.”

- - -

Suffice to say... that was the end of all the questions for a time. At least ones that weren’t “So we’re going with the metal bikini armor right? Right?”

Thanks again, Nathan! He was a trooper, putting up with stuff he despises, just because I asked nicely.

Left 4 Dead 2 is one of my all time favorite games.  No steep learning curve, no need for a huge amount of backstory, just jump in and kill a few thousand zombies.  Now that Left 4 Dead 2 Beta is out of beta, a bunch of new functionalities are going to be available for modders.  This is the perfect time for you to jump back into the game with a few great mods. 

1. Velociraptors - There is no overstating the awesomeness of this mod.  I have played dozens of hours, and still love the instanity of playing as a dinosaur.
2. Helms Deep Reborn - Despite nearly 10 hours of play on this map, with a full group, I have never reached the final battle.  While not for beginners, you'll quickly forget your last 10 deaths because it is so much fun.
3. Slender Man Smoker - I really thought this mod wouldn't be scary, but it definitely has it moments.  Dark Carnival, particularly, has plenty of dark corners for Slender to hide in.
4. Panic in Pallet Town - This is another very difficult map, but there is a unique level of fun associated with playing in a Pokemon-inspired environment.
5. Deadpool - Who doesn't love Deadpool?  This mod changes Nick into the legendary merc.  BANG BANG BANG.

Open Source is a great way for developers to add and create new content for an already fantastic franchise. Now Valve has brought the zombie apocalypse to this open source platform creating ways to further enhance your Left 4 Dead experience. Although this is still in beta, Valve encourages everyone to participate, even if you are a Mac or Windows user. Valve has released the Left 4 Dead Beta on Steam so you can check out the Authoring Tools and get started on creating or adding new content. They even made a Wiki page to help you get off on the right foot and make things much simpler.

EMS? What's That?

EMS stands for Extended Mutation System which allows modders to use and test the tools that Valve has created before they are released into the game and workshop. Some of these tools include editing scripts to make each game play experience unique.

"Mod authors will now be able to create deep custom experiences that can be played on any map or tailor to create something for new or existing maps."

Who knows, maybe someone will create new special infected and survivors, ultimately creating the ever anticipated Left 4 Dead 3 before Valve gets around to it!

And the runner goes to?

Shiver me timbers, harr harr! Zombies be lurking and there’s no end in sight, what shall I do? Well for one thing, if you are being chased by mindless, grotesque, blood dripping zombies well, you should, um, RUN! That is what the most popular team-based survival horror “Left 4 Dead” is all about! I am here to enhance your survivability in the most efficient way.

Hello? Anyone there?

Left 4 Dead is all about teamwork, whether you’re playing as the infected or survivor. If you attack on your own, 4 survivors will gladly great you with bullets to the face and end your not so gruesome feast. Same goes for survivors; run off alone and 4 special infected will kindly mangle you to death before you can say “What the f…” So always make sure you and your team are in constant communication, and if you don’t have a microphone, just watch everyone on your team and try to follow as to what they are doing.

Hiding is not an option.

Sure we all would love to barricade ourselves in some hole and just wait out the endless waves of zombies, but that isn’t surviving, it’s waiting to die. Moving from point A to point B as quickly as possible is the way to survive. By taking your time you ensure victory, but waiting too long will be your demise. It is best to move quickly when more than half of the enemy team is dead or if you’ve killed 2 or 3 special infected. However, if you get the feeling that you are about to be swarmed by hundreds of zombies, it’s best to find a place to hold them off such as inside a building with 1 or 2 exits. Having more than 1 exit isn’t always a good idea, but it does give some options.

Help me, I’m being eaten alive!

Surviving the round is tough; it’s even tougher when you are alone. Always help your teammate if he is being thrashed or swarmed by the undead! Toss a pipe bomb, or a Molotov cocktail, shove the zombies away with your weapon, do anything and everything you can!

I survived the horror, but am I really safe?

In conclusion, surviving zombies is quite simple really. Make sure you can run, run with your team, and watch you and your teams’ back, and communicate! This is all you need to make it to the next wave of terror. Good luck and good hunting!

A project like this can only come from the minds of the fans. Or at least, that's what you'd think. But this PC-exclusive material isn't an elaborate April Fool's joke. It's happening.

You didn't even need your flashlight, Leon.

In celebration of Resident Evil 6's PC release, Capcom and Valve have collaborated to bring together their respective action-packed zombie-killing games.

As you can see from the above screenshot, special infected from Left 4 Dead are now roaming the scene in Resident Evil's Mercenaries mode. Aside from the Witch, you'll be witnessing Tanks charging through hordes of the undead.

"These Infected do not respect lines!"

The cast of Left 4 Dead 2 will also be making an appearance in the PC-exclusive, The Mercenaries No Mercy with their own unique loadouts.

Fearsome foes from Resident Evil are expected to cross-over into Left 4 Dead's playing field as well - namely the Lepotitsa, Napad, and Ogreman. As for whether or not the Resident Evil cast will be entering the fray, the developers are looking towards the players.

All of this content will be made to PC players for free. Resident Evil 6 will be available to the PC on April 5th! Left 4 Dead 2 is currently 75% off during Steam's Midweek Madness sale!

In an industry where many developers have begun to shy away from the PC market, Valve stands its ground as a PC friendly company. Not only do they put a lot of polish into their releases, but they also openly support the modding communities that form around their games. This is evident in the new Expanded Mutation System coming out for Left 4 Dead 2.

Mutations is an existing system that creates new game play modes. The Expanded Mutation System will allow modders to have much more freedom in their creation with a "vastly improved scripting system." They will be able to "create deep custom experiences" on both existing and newly created maps.

Valve's games have a very long lifespan. Counter-Strike 1.6 still has quite the following. It wouldn't be any shock to see Left 4 Dead 2 still be played 10 years down the line either, especially when Valve gives its fan base so many tools to create new content with.