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I was recommended this campaign by a friend who has tried out the map before. Being one of the Steam Workshop's most famous mappers, Yanzi has exceeded my expectations for creating a fully functional campaign for Left 4 Dead 2. Even though the campaign has been made a decade ago, it still impressed me in more ways than one.

- Creative use of default assets. There's a lot of campaigns out there that reuses the same default assets but it continues to look like a carbon copy of official campaigns themselves. Nothing wrong with using default assets to make pathways there and back, but Yanzi managed to knock it out oft the park. The Passing and No Mercy are the biggest sources of inspiration after observing the layout, environmental settings, and types of panic events.

- Functionality: I've only encountered two bugs during the finale, but they weren't severe enough to stunt gameplay.

Bug #1: The survivor bots and special infected have gotten stuck a few times. I witnessed a Charger running into a truck's hood twice. The survivor bots have gotten separated during panic events. If you're playing solo, all other bots will run off except for one.

Bug #2: The long winding staircase in the finale can cause the survivors to get stuck if they're knocked into the boxes by the Tank. I captured it in my gameplay video - There is a moment where I'm frozen in place after the Tank smacks me to a blocked off entrance on the second (or third?) to last set of stairs.

- Panic Events: Admittedly, the panic events are more challenging by being made unavoidable. There are two panic events where I struggled with my team: the alarm car before walking on the planks to enter the home, and the Tank placed at the end of the staircase (finale).
I think my favorite panic event had to be the metal bridges where you had to run to one side and activate them.

- Gauntlet Tank at the End of the Stairs While the placement of Special Infected (Witch and Tanks, especially) were placed before you could enter new rooms, the Tank being placed at the very last part of the finale's staircase was the most brutal.

This is my least favorite panic event as staircases are much more cramped than Dead Center's. With the infinite hordes pushing you to the back or front, they'll obstruct your path if your team isn't quick enough to dispose of them (or if you don't have enough melee weapons). The Tank will down the entire team, forcing you to start over from the bottom of the staircase.

It's not as tedious as other poorly constructed infinite horde events that I've experienced from the workshop, but placing the Tank there can sour the experience during a gauntlet very quick. Within the few times that I've played this the campaign, it seems to be a forced event because the Tank always spawned there or directly on the stairs. I wouldn't recommend following that type of mapping in very cramped spaces.

- Not Enough Items(?): This could change as the Director changes difficulty and availability of items depending on how well you play. I did struggle a lot throughout the campaign as there weren't enough medkits to heal all items after panic events. There's usually one or two medkits found in the darker rooms if you take the time to explore with sometimes 1 pills/adrenaline.

If a medkit spawns, it's never four at once. This has the potential to make panic events drag on more than usual. There's also one defibrillator should someone miss a health kit.

Again, this can be challenging to some who prefer harder gameplay but this would be brutal to beginners and casual players alike. My recommendation for this is to lower the difficulty, or use the system to give yourself and teammates any items needed to advance.

- The Gauntlet and the Staircase: This subject has been touched upon, but wanted to go into this again about how this can sour the experience. (Yes, it's an old map so the author will be miles ahead in their improvement by now.) Any hallways that's not meant to pass through is more spacious. You do have enough room in the building to fight, but as soon as you start going through the hallways and advance to the stairs, it's extremely cramped.

The staircase itself has a lot of flights, and there's not enough healing items to keep going. The gameplay heavily depends on how well you conserve ammo.

Throwables can either make or break the gameplay. If you have molotov, it's useful for keeping them off your back. However, when it comes to pushing forward - it can delay your time to get to the chopper. The only positive gained is giving your teammates a break while healing or reloading.

The bile bomb is the most effective out of the three. Pipe bomb covers a wide range, but it's too short to cover how this gauntlet continuously shoves the horde. With the bile bomb, you'll have more time to shove and run past the horde. Beware the rooms that you're throwing it in. If you throw it into a cramped hallway, and shoot the slimed zombies, that'll make the scent last a much shorter time - forcing you to find another randomly spawned bile bomb again.

- Not enough throwables, healing items, and melee weapons scattered. The greatest quantity of items you can refill on is ammo. Other than that, it's a first come, first serve when foraging items. You could be stuck with a Tier 1 weapon while one of your teammates have a Tier 2/3 weapon. It'll be a while until you can find a weapon that suits your playstyle. There's a LOT of Sniper weapons rather than close-ranged artillery.

- Navigation: Navigation is not perfect, but you can explore the area to see unfamiliar areas if you circle around long enough.

If you hate dark parts of a campaign, it's quite minimal compared to other campaigns that rely on solely darkness for a good horror event. This is very suitable as the author compensates a lot of darkness with dim lighting and making the rooms stand out. I noticed some environmental cues to head in a certain direction - like a van pointing with lights after crossing through the surface's bridge (after the metal bridge panic event).

The rest of the navigation in the campaign completely relies on the arrows. This is a potential pitfall if this is the only method that players can navigate by. Some areas of the campaign's first half didn't have arrows at all. It was up to exploration to figure out where you're supposed to go next. The second half has lots of arrows, but dim light could be added a little to make them stand out more.

- I'm looking forward to trying out another campaign by this author and/or trying it out in a separate game. The author knows what they're doing to make the campaign work and panic events run smoothly without it stopping.

- Not enough healing items, melee, and throwables to support the entire party. Tier 2 weapons may not be the kind needed to clear out larger hordes.

- Navigation is okay. Not perfect, but not too shabby. Ask the bots to lead if you end up lost.

- Good level design with shoutouts to previous campaigns.

well done, author!