Vienna Calling 2 (Austria) is unfortunately among the worst and least fun fully-playable Custom Maps that I’ve ever played on Expert, in its current state.

The most positive things that I can say about Vienna Calling 2 is that it’s more believably Austrian than its predecessor, due to there being nice custom assets and many locations being modelled after real-life places in Austria. And the little sub-plot with the Left 4 Dead 2 survivors dying one-by-one is neat. However, these details cannot make up for awful gameplay and level design.

There's many issues with Vienna Calling 2 in its current state. Especially in the later Chapters, Vienna Calling 2 simply feels unfinished, broken, and glitchy, and the Chapters variably suffer from unintuitive level design, poor navigation, broken AI pathing (this can result in Specials getting stuck and taking up 1 of the 3 Max Alive Special slots), map lag, bad pacing, bad difficulty balance/spikes, and the length being far too long.

Another issue that creates inconsistency issues throughout the campaign is, like its predecessor, Vienna Calling 2 annoyingly uses a lot of environmental props that aren’t properly anchored to the map geometry, which results in you being unable to shoot/’wallbang’ through most things that you otherwise would be able to on a vanilla map (IE trucks, train cars, thin walls, etc). This can result in scenarios such as someone dying to a Hunter, because their teammates tried to shoot through an object/wall to save them, only to realize too late that their bullets aren’t going through. Whereas at other times this is no issue.

The overall difficulty of Vienna Calling 2 is also raised as a result of the relatively ungenerous health supplies provided throughout, which are insufficient compared to the very long length and high difficulty of each Chapter. As a result of this, it’s pretty common to find your team limping through many of the mid-end parts of the Chapters.

Chapter 1 was mostly okay, although I feel that the intro helicopter flight doesn’t have enough visual spectacle (it’s dark and foggy and the city largely appears empty and barren), and it goes on for a little too long (‘Dead Vacation’ did this intro style better, in my opinion), the Chapter goes on a little too long, the difficulty is a little too high for an intro Chapter (especially due to the Wandering Witch spam in the dark and the Moderate Gauntlet at the end), and the pacing is off; with you getting fully kitted with Tier 2 weapons, Magnums, and even potentially Laser Sights (RNG) almost immediately. Other issues with Chapter 1 include the Survivors being mute and unable to use most of their vocalization lines (including important teamwork lines like ‘Reloading’, ‘Take this’, ‘Healing’, etc), there’s at least 1 spot where Survivors can fall and become stuck (hopefully they’re able to AFK-teleport), and there is a burning barrel near the Safe Room whose hurtbox is too large (contacting it will cause you to take around 23-24 damage per second, rapidly Downing and then killing you). These flaming murder barrels also notably appear all throughout Vienna Calling 2, so keep that in mind (on the flip side, you can exploit them to ignite Common Infected, Tanks, Witches, etc).

The first half of Chapter 2 starts off okay, but it quickly falls apart once you reach the random unmarked door in the pitch-black amusement park, which activates an alarm and summons a Hard Gauntlet event, for no apparent reason. Also for some odd reason, there is a scripted multi-Spitter spawn on the second floor in the building right after this Hard Gauntlet begins, I guess just to troll you on the staircase? Who knows? Then there’s also a trolly fenced in area in front of the windows that you’re supposed to use to drop down from this building, which instead of leading forward like you’d expect, actually blocks you in and forces you to go back around the entire building and up the stairs again, just to get back to the windows again. Again, no idea why the map designer did this, especially during a Hard Gauntlet. Once you get around the fence troll, there’s navigation issues galore in the next area, as a result of dead-ends, staircases that are conveniently only blocked off at the very top, and there being no immediate clear indication of where to go, as the Hard Gauntlet continues to relentlessly pound you (a big no-no of level design during Gauntlet events in general). This is all also compounded by the fact that bombs and health supplies are near non-existent during this Hard Gauntlet. The area after this has, you guessed it, yet more navigation issues from too much open space, many dead-ends, and no immediately clear way to go. The map designer even put ammo and good Tier 2 weapons out in an open field, which then leads to two very long dead-ends at either end of some train tracks, almost like the map designer wanted to bait you into going the wrong way during the Hard Gauntlet. And then even more inexplicably, once you reach a certain random point, the Hard Gauntlet just ends for no apparent reason. And then the Safe Room shows up a little beyond this.

Chapter 3 is a total train wreck right from the start, with the level itself causing severe map lag (even as the Local Server host) near the start (up until Coach falls) and near the end (at the major Hordes + Tanks event), which results in lots of unavoidable damage and artificially inflated difficulty. The level design is so bad past the midway point on Chapter 3, that there were several points where I wasn’t sure if we had gotten out of bounds or not (such as on the glitchy fallen crane), only to then discover that this was, in fact, the intended path. The major Hordes + Tanks event at the end of Chapter 3 is also quite excessive with its length and difficulty, feeling more like a tough Finale than a mid-campaign event. This Hordes + Tank event follows the format Defend-Tank-Tank-Hard Gauntlet + Double Tanks. The difficulty of this major event is also artificially inflated due to the map lag that occurs during it, making it feel frustrating rather than fun and intense. Chapter 3 was also far too long overall, and had lots of AI pathing issues that caused Specials and Commons to become stuck throughout it.

On Chapter 4, I liked the silly little Ellis cutscene, but it should be noted that you can also get cutscene-fragged during it, if a horde spawns as it plays. The tree descending part of Chapter 4 was very unclear and dumbfounded everyone, representing significant level jank. It resulted in someone walking off and falling, thinking that there may be a scripted vine ladder to grab onto, like in some other Custom Maps, resulting in them being Downed instantly for their effort. Finally, I decided to just try and walk on the tree itself, and to everyone’s surprise, I didn't plunge to my death (normally the top part of trees in L4D2 are made non-solid). Chapter 4’s ending Crescendo and hedge maze can be easily cheesed by jumping on a Common’s head and then running along the top of the maze itself (as this is apparently one of the only places where invisible walls aren’t overused). Chapter 4, like Chapter 3, was also far too long overall, and had lots of AI pathing issues that caused Specials to become stuck throughout it.

Chapter 5 introduces Hard Rain-style storms, which notably include a pushing ‘wind’ effect. This wind’s pushing effect was also notably glitchy, causing me to get FPS/frame-skipping issues whenever it activated, thus resulting in more frustrating artificial difficulty from this campaign. Chapter 5 also has a significant invisible fire glitch after you blow up the fence that summons a Crescendo, with the fire hurtbox persisting for too long after the visual has disappeared. This can rapidly damage/Down people by surprise, as a result. There was also invisible Propane Tank glitches present on Chapter 5. And finally, there was at least one spot on Chapter 5 where Survivors can get stuck, on the tilted front loader in the water (AFK-teleportation fortunately worked to get me unstuck from this). Chapter 5, like Chapters 3 & 4, was far too long overall, and had lots of AI pathing issues that caused Specials and Commons to become stuck throughout it.

Vienna Calling 2’s Finale is a frustrating, janky, and glitchy 10/10-Unfair difficulty Moderate Gauntlet-Hard Gauntlet-Tank-Hard Gauntlet-Hard Gauntlet + Tank/Run To The Escape Elevator. This running Finale seemed to go on forever, with it being longer than 5 ‘The Parish’ bridge Finales combined. And to make this Gauntlet Finale worse, there’s immediately a janky and glitchy very strong wind + storm effect that renders you largely unable to move forward, pushes you around, increases the incidence of friendly fire, and blows the Special Infected around chaotically. There’s also variably uneven terrain, foliage, and fog to obscure your vision, insufficient health supplies provided for the long length and high difficulty of this Finale, improper invisible wall usage, there a Dead Drop at one point, and it’s even made unclear that you’re all supposed to get in the elevator at the very end of the Finale. In fact, we actually made it to the escape elevator on our first try, and even stood in it briefly, but this didn’t end the Finale because everyone wasn’t in yet. We then assumed that we had to stay and fight the final Tank in order to win, as there were two mounted guns provided, and there’s also a set of large doors, which logically seem like they’re intended to close at some point. The escape elevator itself doesn’t light up at all, there’s no button on it to press, no messages/tips appear, there’s no vocalizations that tell you what the map wants from you here, and the previous gated area just before this had a button which you had to press and then hold out at, as you waited for it to open. The latter of which seemed to imply that there may be more moving gates to come. The real icing on the cake on this Finale though, is that there are even some RNG elements. An elevated catwalk path can either be open or blocked randomly, with the blocked configuration being more difficult.

Overall, it’s a shame that Vienna Calling 2 plays so poorly and feels so unfinished, broken, and glitchy, and has variable unintuitive level design, poor navigation, broken AI pathing, map lag, bad pacing, bad difficulty balance/spikes, and the length being far too long throughout. I really did want to like this map, as I thought that the original Vienna Calling 1 was pretty good.

You can tell that a lot of time and effort was put into crafting these ambitious, long, and intricate levels, and the special effects present in them. But unfortunately, it would seem that not as much time was spent actually playtesting, balancing, and polishing them. This results in Vienna Calling 2 becoming a classic example of 'quantity over quality'.

As a result of all this, I simply cannot rate Vienna Calling 2 higher than a 3/10 for Quality in its current state. Stick to Vienna Calling 1 (which I previously rated 7/10) if you want a better overall gameplay experience on Expert.


For more Expert Custom Map Reviews and ratings, see my full Collection here. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2252724380