Left 4 Dead 2 is probably the best coop game of all time, blah blah lbah, you know how good the game is. I don't need to make a case for it beyond "shooting zombies with friends is good". This game took up a large portion of my gaming time both on console and PC when it came out. All of my gaming friends were taken by that game. Something about the mix of slightly different combat beats alongside tight design that fostered cooperative play really did something for us all. Nearly two decades have come and gone since then and a lot of coop shooters have come close but don't hit the mechanical purity that made L4D2 so special. Evolve, Darktide, Back 4 Blood, Deep Rock Galactic: irrespective of how good those games are to play they all fall into the shadow of Left 4 Dead 2. All of them h ave progression unlocks, some have crafting, baubles and systems galore to keep you shooting, to keep you playing, to keep you having fun. If a game has to construct all this artifice to keep you engaged I don't think the "game" part of the game is that good to begin with.

Games suck at telling (scripted) stories. Games only do one thing exceptionally well, be a toy masquerading as a black box. Games are all defined by limitations. Engaging gameplay comes from pushing the moment to moment encounters of a game up against those walls. Good videogame narratives come from organic moments of spontaneous play. Arma, Dwarf Fortress, and yes, to tie it back all the way Left 4 Dead 2 all percolate these diegetic story beats through their "organic" systems. Using unlocks, passes, cheevos, and other bean counter systems to push players into creating these moments feels very inauthentic. Well that would be at best, at worst these secondary systems are akin to having an older cousin telling you that you are playing Legos wrong. These notifications, bars, progress blips all nag at the worries that somehow you are missing out on the best "experience" or by not playing int he most optimal way to secure said laurels you are relegating yourself to a lesser experience.

The more artifice that gets tacked onto the core systems of gameplay the thinner the decision making tree becomes. Sure those others options are still there, but if incentives exist to play better than those other choices will be ignored. And is this really system mastery? Is beating the game as defined by developers through challenges, weekly REWARDS, a true measure of expertise? If those outcomes are known by the creators at the start then what is being pushed. Games (video game or otherwise) exist to be pushed past the understanding of the original creator's vision. But it's kinda funny how more traditional games don't have these didactic, approved ways to be successful. Paths to success snake wildly in other fields of friendly strife.

Games also don't help themselves as they choose to be as derivative of trends that were popular almost 15 years ago. They chase the highs of a L4D2 but the innovation isn't to make the games more mechanically rich or dynamic, it's all systems that exist in the secondary that obfuscate mechanical joy. I am tired of the boom/bust cycle of belief that games will be better the more incentivized we are to play them. None of these progression systems make this time any less wasted.