Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Death Aboard - L4D1 Port
Warhawk 26 Nov, 2023 @ 5:11pm
Death Aboard - L4D1 Port. Quality: 7.5/10, Difficulty: 7/10, Length: Medium. Played On Expert.
Death Aboard - L4D1 Port is a solid and pretty enjoyable Custom Map overall, with some very imaginative location designs. The custom sounds and ambience were also a nice thematic touch. However, it's hindered by a long list of small issues present all throughout.

Death Aboard takes you through some very unique and interesting locales, including a prison complex and its surrounding urban environments, a parking garage, a wharf and its offices, a large beached and listing container ship where the terrain is slanted throughout (by far the highlight and namesake of Death Aboard), and a somewhat bizarre little Finale island that contains a small dead forest, several small mountains that have a graveyard and a lighthouse complex built atop them, which are interconnected via two small bridges, and several small docks and wharf platforms; which are all connected via concrete stairways and walkways.

Death Aboard features one Crescendo event near the end of each of its first four Chapters (with Chapter 5 being the Finale).

There is also an extra surprise little Crescendo midway into Chapter 4, featuring a hidden Alarm Car in a shipping container pile that activates automatically when you climb a ladder.

There are no Gauntlet events present on Death Aboard (since it was originally made for Left 4 Dead 1), which reduces the overall difficulty of the campaign.

Death Aboard is also reasonably generous with supplies (especially Defibrillators), which also further lowers the relative difficulty of the campaign.

Death Aboard features a lot of tight corridors and other confined spaces, however, and thus Witches and Tanks can notably spawn in some tricky spots, which increases the relative difficulty of the campaign somewhat.

Also, due to the many confined spaces, Shotguns (and ironically the Sniper Rifles) excel on this Custom Map.

The Finale is an easy Defend-Tank-Defend-Tank-Run To The Escape Hot Air Balloon.

The Finale is notably pretty easy if you hold in the lighthouse atop the mountains, in the damaged building in between the two bridges, right where the Ammo Pile and weapons are located.

Most of the Common Infected will spawn from the ground below and then have to slowly make their way up the mountain and across the first bridge chokepoint, whilst most of the Special Infected will spawn behind the lighthouse itself and then have to run across the lighthouse bridge chokepoint, without any support from the Commons.

The Tanks will also spawn from the ground below, and will then have to slowly make their way up the mountain, thus giving you ample time to shoot and damage/kill them from afar with Sniper Rifles (which importantly have no damage falloff at long range).

If you want to be really cheesy, you can also grab a Sniper Rifle and hold far out in the ocean; in one of the two wide-open corners of the Finale area’s level boundaries (I was very surprised when testing to find that this doesn’t kill/drown you). Holding in the corners of the ocean trivializes Death Aboard’s Finale, turning it into a glorified shooting gallery.

Death Aboard’s Finale area also notably has a very large number of god/exploit spots that I discovered after just a short period of testing. Some of them are quite obvious, whilst others are more subtle.

Several of these god spots are so strong, that they cause Common Infected to do their stuck animation, make the Specials freeze in place, and cause the Tanks to rapidly suicide from Frustration.

This includes one of the level boundaries’ corners out in the ocean, behind the lighthouse’s mountains, where they apparently can’t path to you.

I also found at least two spots where the Survivors can get stuck and have to (hopefully) free themselves using ‘Go AFK’ teleportation.

Besides these issues with the Finale area, Death Aboard also unfortunately has some other significant jank that prevents me from giving it a higher overall Quality score.

This includes broken Common Infected spawns, which enables them to endlessly respawn in areas that have already been cleared (this is most noticeable past Chapter 1).

Another big issue is that the Nextbot AI pathing is fairly poor on the Chapter 4 container ship and the Chapter 5 Finale, due to the awkward and uneven terrain, which affects everything from the Common Infected, to the Special Infected, to the Survivor Bots.

Amongst the Commons, this results in a lot of jittery movement, pacing, stutter-stepping, erratic movements, and general navigation issues.

This also causes the Specials to get stuck a lot on Chapters 4 and 5, at which point they just sit idle whilst taking up one of the three Special Infected slots, thus making the game far easier for the Survivors.

Notably, at one point on the container ship in Chapter 4, I even had part of a stuck Common Infected horde teleport onto/inside of me, because they didn’t know how to path to me. Thus resulting in them immediately hitting me, me being briefly unable to move, and then 10+ Commons exploding out of me.

Another jank issue on Chapter 4 is related to the scripted Alarm Car Crescendo in the shipping container pile, where you have to climb a ladder up a downwards-leaning shipping container. When you reach the top of this ladder, the doors of the shipping container pop off, and then after a brief delay, an Alarm Car will slide out of the container and down the ladder, instantly Downing (and severely damaging) anyone caught by it, and also summoning a surprise Megamob in the process.

Whilst this didn’t happen on my playthrough, if you’re particularly unlucky, this car could probably instantly Down your entire team as it slides down the ladder.

We did, however, get unlucky enough to have a random Witch spawn directly behind this Alarm Car on our first playthrough. Which, needless to say, was quite awkward when combined with someone being instantly Downed by the car and the surprise from that, followed immediately by the surprise horde attack.

With advanced map knowledge, you can in fact climb the ladder, trigger the doors to pop off, and then quickly jump off the ladder and move away before the Alarm Car falls and Downs you.

But on your first playthrough, this scripted event will all but certainly Down the first person up the ladder (if not more).

There are also other shipping containers on Chapter 4, in the area just after the Alarm Car trap, whose doors you can shoot off. If one of these janky physics prop doors hit you as they fall, you will take 10-20 damage, and you can even get briefly stuck inside of them. Special Infected can also notably get stuck on these doors before you shoot them down.

And finally, in several areas throughout Death Aboard, there is janky shallow water that slows you down, and is totally invisible.

I’m not sure if this is invisible water is caused by some mods that I use, or because I didn’t have the ‘airport_water_lowend.vmt’ addon downloaded (from my understanding you only need this if you run the game on the ‘Shaders - Low’ setting).

But apparently nobody else in my game could see this shallow water either, and it doesn’t appear to show up on the official screenshots provided on Death Aboard’s Steam Workshop page, either.

All of which leads me to believe that this is probably just an issue with the campaign itself.

If it weren’t for all of these myriad small, janky issues, Death Aboard easily could have been a 9-10/10 Custom Map, as it’s very creative, imaginative, thematic, and well-designed, overall.


For more Expert Custom Map Reviews and ratings, see my full Collection here. https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2252724380
Last edited by Warhawk; 17 Dec, 2023 @ 10:41pm