Coach, Nick, Ellis, and Rochelle will soon be controllable in yet another game, but it's not Left 4 Dead 3. Instead, Capcom is borrowing Valve's iconic zombie-slaughtering quartet for the upcoming PC version of Resident Evil 6 and loaning some of its zombies as new downloadable enemies for Left 4 Dead 2.

The Left 4 Dead 2 protagonists will be available in a special "Mercenaries No Mercy" mode in RE6 through a free download available on April 5, two weeks after the game's March 22 PC release. The mode will also make use of the Witch and Mini-Tank special infected zombies from the series, which should prove to be about a million times scarier than any of the undead that were actually featured in the original Resident Evil 6. Speaking of which, sometime this spring, Left 4 Dead 2 players will be able to fight against the Lepotitsa, Napad, and Ogroman zombies from Resident Evil 6, rebuilt by Valve's designers using public Steam Workshop tools.

On one level, this is an obvious cross-marketing opportunity, joining together two of the best-known zombie-killing franchises in video gaming (and bringing to mind Left 4 Dead's previous crossover with Payday: The Heist). On the other hand, while both Left 4 Dead games have been nearly universally praised by critics and fans, Resident Evil 6 was seen as a major critical failure for the storied franchise, with reviews generally ranging from bad to mediocre.

That said, Resident Evil 6 shipped nearly 5 million copies through the end of 2012, proving that the brand is still quite the draw among gamers in general. Nevertheless, Capcom has scaled back its initial projections of 7 million sales for the game by the end of March.

And what about Left 4 Dead 3? We know some people were mad when the second game in the series was announced so soon after the first, but it's now approaching 4 years since the last time Valve offered up a chance to take on the zombie hordes (DLC updates and patches notwithstanding). The closest we've gotten to an official confirmation of a new L4D is Valve's Chet Falsizek telling Eurogamer in October that the game would be coming "some time down the road." What would that sequel look like? According to a Falsizek interview with NowGamer, it would "[need] to be more than a new city with four characters." And... that's about all we've heard from Valve so far.

In the meantime, at least we get to control the familiar survivors in another series. For his part, Faliszek said in a statement, "We're huge Resident Evil fans, so when the opportunity arose to work directly with Capcom to combine L4D2 and RE6, we jumped at it." Yeah right... I bet they're just jumping at a chance to procrastinate more on the next Left 4 Dead, right commenters? [/sarcasm].