In its current state, City Of The Dead Redux has major balancing issues, navigation issues, Infected pathing issues, bizarre urban level design, lots of miscellaneous issues, and overall it lacks any redeeming gameplay qualities to make up for all this.

The relative difficulty of this Custom Map is kept very low throughout the majority of it, as a result of most of the Chapters consisting of wide-open spaces, the Special Infected often getting stuck and taking up one of the 3 Special Max Alive slots, and the oversaturation of almost every area with supplies of every type (especially Defibrillators, bombs, and Pills/Adrenaline). There were also notably 2-3 guaranteed Laser Sights pickups present on City Of The Dead Redux.

The only unique mechanic present on City Of The Dead Redux was the ability to search dead Left 4 Dead 1 bodies for extra supplies (notably including Medkits/Defibs), but with the low overall difficulty and the oversaturation of supplies already present on the campaign; this just felt excessive.

There’s one Crescendo event in the sewer on Chapter 3 (which was easy to beat by just going back to the previous hallway and holding the doorway, as nothing spawns from behind).

By far the hardest and most imbalanced part of City Of The Dead Redux was the Chapter 4 ending Insanely Hard Gauntlet just past Whitaker’s Gun Shop, where the difficulty spikes from a 4 straight to a 10 (almost reaching ‘Unfair’ levels of Common and Special Infected spam).

The Whitaker’s Gun Shop just before the Insanely Hard Gauntlet gives you every weapon in the game, guaranteed Laser Sights, Special Ammo of both types, and four extra Medkits.

But yet even with the team running 4 laser-sighted Military Sniper Rifles, Magnums, 4 Bile Bombs, and being fully kitted, this Insanely Hard Gauntlet can easily wipe your entire team, as you struggle to claw for every inch to progress forward (using any other weapons, which don’t have infinite penetration, may make this event borderline impossible without careful bomb usage/exploiting).

Minus a good Bile Bomb Rush/cheese, you should expect to kill at least 300 Commons and 20+ Specials during this one single event, which is set entirely within a short series of hallways and staircases just before the Safe Room. Utter madness.

The Finale was an easy-moderately difficult Defend-Tank-Defend-Double Tank set on a distinctly No Mercy Finale-inspired rooftop area.

One of the two Tanks during the Double Tank got stuck in a long falling-climbing loop in a window on our playthrough, which made it very easy. If not for this, the Double Tanks could definitely give your team some trouble, although there is a mounted gun to bait them with (AI Tanks are forced to target whomever is on a mounted gun).

A good example of the bizarre urban level design on City Of The Dead Redux is right away on Chapter 1, the apartment building is seemingly 80+ storeys tall and its layout is totally bizarre.

Navigation issues are present on every single Chapter of City Of The Dead Redux, with it being very easy to get lost running into dead-ends or large empty rooms/buildings. This notably includes an underground brothel containing 4 Witches, which apparently is just a dead-end that had nothing in it besides a single Pipe Bomb(?).

Likewise, Infected pathing issues are present on every Chapter of this campaign, resulting in Specials getting stuck all over the place throughout; which artificially lowers the difficulty and cheapens the overall experience.

Beyond all of this, we also had issues with one of my friends crashing every time that they tried to load into the campaign on Chapter 2 (the issue was either only on this Chapter, or else them running the campaign once on Solo seemed to have fixed it?).

City Of The Dead Redux also notably has a little secret easter egg if you press your ‘Use’ key on every hidden Gnome in the campaign, and some other small easter eggs throughout (like a decal of the Hat Girl from A Hat In Time).

Overall, all of the myriad issues on City Of The Dead Redux, combined with the ludicrous difficulty spike on Chapter 4's ending Insanely Hard Gauntlet, hinder the enjoyment that you could conceivably get from this campaign’s many diverse and carefully crafted (albeit often uncanny) urban locations. Particularly on Expert difficulty.


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