The Hive (Resident Evil 1 Movie) is an interesting Custom Map. Structurally, it’s more of an experience-based map, as opposed to an actual proper Left 4 Dead 2 campaign.

There are lots of custom assets, custom sounds/music, story, locales, and other little curiosities and points of intrigue recreated from the Resident Evil 1 (2002) movie. Notably the iconic Raccoon City, Raccoon City Hospital, The Hive (duh), Red Queen, the laser trap room, the Spencer Mansion (not actually in the movie itself, from what I recall), the Hunter Alphas (in the form of Left 4 Dead Hunters), and the 'Resident Evil Main Title Theme' and ‘Seizure Of Power’ songs by Marilyn Manson make an appearance on this campaign.

The inclusion of the actual music from the movie made this campaign a lot better, with it always being intense when the music started playing during a major scripted event.

Whilst ‘The Hive’ does still include the standard Left 4 Dead 2 combat and AI Director-spawned Common and Special Infected, this all takes a back seat to the big scripted sequences on this campaign.

The relative difficulty of 'The Hive' is kept pretty low, as a result of the map being very generous with supplies, and due to us only encountering a single Tank on our entire first playthrough, and a limited number of horde events.

Chapter 1 notably starts off strong and gets you in the mood for what’s to come with the ‘Resident Evil Main Title Theme’ song by Marilyn Manson playing, as the camera dramatically pans across the facade of the iconic Raccoon City Hospital. However, right off the bat, there's some pretty significant map jank. For starters, Commons and Specials immediately start spawning and can run up and attack you in the cramped starting alleyway, with your guns and First Aid Kits being just outside of here. And if you go just past the hospital building and take a left, you can actually see through big chunks of the map, and even crawl through what is supposed to be an Infected-only vent, which can allow you to skip the entirety of the opening hospital segment (which we decided not to do, despite having the option to).

The hardest part in ‘The Hive’ is definitely the Chapter 2 Horde + Tank fight (the only Tank in the entire campaign, from what we saw), in what I believe is a generator room that is partially flooded (though fortunately this water isn’t deep enough to actually slow you). The laser trap room on Chapter 2 can be survived by simply crouching near the entrance door of the laser chamber for the first two lasers (the second one tries to psyche you out by starting lower and then raising), and then just standing as close to the entrance door as possible for the final laser array trick. Alternatively, in multiplayer, you can escape from the laser trap room by entering it and then simply AFK-teleporting out of it immediately (magic).

Chapter 3 is very short, but notably features a Moderate Gauntlet right at the start. Stay on the elevated pipe whenever possible and watch out for Smokers/Jockeys, and you should have no issues with this fairly short Gauntlet event.

On Chapter 4, we encountered a major map glitch, which resulted in us having to noclip through an elevator door that we were meant to ‘Pry Open’, but couldn’t interact with/melee through. This odd map glitch resulted in us unintentionally skipping some of Chapter 4 on our first playthrough, unfortunately.

‘The Hive’s Chapter 5 Finale was my favourite part overall, with you briefly encountering and passing through the Spencer Mansion’s main foray from the Resident Evil 1 videogame. You then have to run a unique Moderate Gauntlet through some back roads in the woods, a small canyon, and around the perimeter of the Arklay Mountain Hospital, in order to finally make it to an escape bunker under the hospital, which you must reach before a nuke detonates and destroys the city in 6 minutes’ time. The inclusion of a time limit on this Gauntlet Finale, as an air raid siren blared and a 'time until detonation' timer counted down, made it way more intense, even despite the fact that no Tanks spawn on this Finale.

Another interesting detail to note is that outside of each of the Safe Rooms throughout ‘The Hive’ is a floating, rotating solid dice, which apparently allows you to select between ‘Random Path’ and ‘Scripted Path’ for the Chapter. We always chose the ‘Random Path’ option on our playthrough, but I presume that this dice gives ‘The Hive’ some extra replayability, via adding different possible layout configurations (will have to see in future playthroughs).

You can also optionally toggle the RE music on/off in the Safe Rooms, which is a nice little detail added for Streamers.

The addition of optional, separate Resident Evil-themed addons by the creator is also a nice little thematic touch, which shows the map designer's dedication to small details. This is highly appreciable.

I also didn't play with Survivor Bots on my playthrough of 'The Hive', but I've read in various places that they simply can't function on this campaign, which is quite unfortunate.

Ultimately, ‘The Hive’ is a great experience-based campaign with human friends. However, if you’re looking for the more typical Left 4 Dead 2 campaign structure, or are playing with Survivor Bots, this Custom Map isn’t for you.


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