Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Dead City II (Official)
Nicky Grimes 14 May, 2023 @ 5:00pm
Nicky Grimes's Review of Dead City 2: Lots of Space but Very Dark and Repetitive
Full video walkthrough on Youtube.

Pros
- This is a great map to play on Versus and in Co-op mode.

- Wide open space. Lots of the cityscape are available for exploring and holding out between waves.

- The custom event with the Tank was awesome! It was a bit too fast for us, but we were able to catch up. This part could be shortened as it took us very long on foot to catch up.

- Passing trains add a challenging hazard and additional scenery to the level. It doesn't make the maps feel dead as it implies there's some activity underground.

Cons
- The levels are big, but not a lot of rewards to find if you're not exploring exclusively in buildings.
Most outdoor spaces that weren't within an enclosed space or tent ended up having no items.

- The finale is very cramped at the bottom level and the top. Not a lot of space to maneuver. I could be wrong, but if there was 2 Tanks to battle, we were NOT prepared for this. One Tank in rage mode with the items being located at the bottom made it more than challenging to maneuver through.

- Maps were very dark. You couldn't maneuver through the Water Plant and the Parking Lots without a flashlight 99.9% of the time. I attempted to navigate with my flashlight turned off the first time I played through this. That was a huge mistake for my eyes. I never did that again for my second playthrough.

- Event crescendos took very long to complete and not a lot of memorable hiding places for survivors to take refuge in to avoid acid, teammates throwing molotovs all over the place.
- Infinite hordes.. There's already been an amount of people who mentioned this previously and I won't repeat in full length. However, within the lack of lights, this makes it impossible to move around.

Conclusion
- After playing through this twice, I've decided that the third attempt would be the final time to try playing through this campaign.

This is not to suggest that the campaign itself is a lost cause but due to the amount of times that I had to resort to using a flashlight for a very long parts of the campaign, this is something I wouldn't encourage to be replayed again unless there was a fix to the nighttime environment this project brings.

This is still a well done piece in terms of architecture, but the lack of lights makes this impossible to enjoy. :( I wouldn't recommend this map as the poor lighting in the nighttime environment again led to these things:
- Unable to enjoy architecture that's top-tier and you can tell the authors put their love into.
- Crescendo events takes long to complete
- Infinite hordes when alarms are activated are impossible to navigate through as arrows and environmental lighting are super important to find in the levels. Without the environmental lighting, it might've made it harder to finish the parking lot levelj.

If there was a future update where the lighting was improved, and nothing else - I'd still be willing to give it another try.
Last edited by Nicky Grimes; 14 May, 2023 @ 5:07pm