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The Sniper Elite series, while somewhat failing to capture the attention of the gaming world at large, has certainly managed to carve out its own niche in the third-person shooter genre thanks to its focus on stealth and creative sniper kills. With the modest success of Sniper Elite, what's the next logical step for developer Rebellion?

Why, a zombie-infused spinoff of course! While it flew under the radar for many, last March, Rebellion released a spinoff of Sniper Elite that borrowed the Nazi Zombies shtick from Call of Duty to create Zombie Army Trilogy. With a World War II backdrop, the game plays very much like one would expect, Sniper Elite with zombies, and even allows players to kill a zombified version of Adolf Hitler. If that wasn't enticing enough, now the PC version of the game has received a free update that adds some familiar zombie-killing faces to the mix.

Per the free update, which released earlier today for the PC version of the game only, all eight playable characters from Valve's celebrated Left 4 Dead series are now playable in Zombie Army Trilogy. This includes Bill, Francis, Louis, and Zoey from the first Left 4 Dead game as well as Coach, Ellis, Nick, and Rochelle from Left 4 Dead 2.

The addition of the Left 4 Dead characters doubles the amount of playable characters in Zombie Army Trilogy, bringing the total amount of playable characters to a whopping 16. While Rebellion could've just added the characters to the game and left it at that, they're also giving a story reason as to how the Left 4 Dead cast has ended up in Zombie Army Trilogy, through a free digital comic.

Adding familiar faces to the game in a free update will definitely entice more people to shell out the cash to give Zombie Army Trilogy a shot. What may also convince people to take the plunge and pick up Zombie Army Trilogy for PC is that, in celebration of this substantial new free update, the game is currently 66% off on Steam, which brings its price down to a mere $15.29 as of the time of this writing.

Valve has effectively injected its characters into other games in the past. They usually do these cross-promotional projects with Team Fortress 2, either by adding Team Fortress 2 characters to other games, or by having in-game content based on other games added to Team Fortress 2 (typically in the form of hats). For example, Valve had one such joint effort that saw weapons and cosmetic items from Deus Ex: Human Revolution added to Team Fortress 2.

It's nice that the memorable cast from Left 4 Dead will be able to live on in a newer game that is also playable on current-gen consoles, but we want something a bit more from the franchise. Where's our rumored Left 4 Dead 3, Valve?

Zombie Army Trilogy is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. So far, only the PC version enjoys the benefit of the added Left 4 Dead characters.

Source: GameSpot