VALVe's Best Independant Game

Its really between L4D and Richochet for me. Mainly because they're the only games that VALVe has made that wasn't continued or expanded. Although Richochet has only 4 maps, 1 game mode, and a community of 10 German experts.

Left 4 Dead has showed us that VALVe can actually move on to different games and become a bigger company. They also expanded on the Source engine by making a completely different version, it's actually a less cartoon-ish version of the Team Fortress 2 Engine and a more realistic version of the original engine. Today dubbed as Episode 1 engine or CS:S engine because of the mappers.

Left 4 Dead has also made more things that VALVe can use for episode 3. Such as the Zombie AI. The Zombie AI might not be the hardest task but it allows VALVe to make a random monster able to climb every obsticle in your way without needing a 'scripted sequence' or a trigger. All it takes is for the AI to recognize the player and they're off.

However Team Fortress 2 has taught VALVe about the community and how to deal with them better seeing as TF2 was the only game that's multiplayer actually needed balancing. So it taught them when to listen and when not to listen to the community, how to deal with all the retards of the community, and how balance a game flawlessly.

I really see no need of expanding into the CS and DoD series mainly because its all pretty mainstream. No giant work went into CS:S or DoD. Condition Zero on the other hand was actually made by "Turtle Neck Studios", more known today because of there giant work and effort put into Left 4 Dead. They also made maps and helped with CS and CS:S, and later on decided it would be fun to put a couple of CS:S players against a giant horde of zombies only armed with pistols and knifes. It started out as a small game mode for 1 server but grew into something bigger. VALVe saw their potential from making CZ and CS and thought that they actually might be a great investment. Which they were.

I vote Left 4 Dead because it not only has its own community now. It also tied in the TF2, CS:S, and DoD community.

RICOCHET, MOTHERFUCKER.

TFC was always the best, I grew up with it in the 90's. THERE IS NO WAY YOU CCAN RESIST A SNIPER BULLET TO THE FUCKIN FACE WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE! I would have picked TF2 but they changed so many mechanics that it confused the shit outta me.