Left 4 Dead 2

Left 4 Dead 2

Undead Zone Official Collection
KITTYV2X 10 Jun, 2023 @ 7:01pm
Nicky Grimes's Review of "Undead Zone": THE HONEST TO GOD MILITARY!
Full walkthrough available on Youtube.

WOW. That was my final thoughts coming out of that campaign. This is a campaign that'd look impressive in a movie with the right amount of tension to it. The author's choice of placing custom zombie spawn events was amazing.

I gotta hand it to them, the scenery when crossing through the desert to the military base was awesome. The Tank battle at the plane wreckage was done very well without the game crashing. This campaign is one of the very few examples that takes environmental storytelling and navigation to a positive extreme.

The only part that could've contained better navigation was coming to the science labs that looked very similar to early Half Life and Team Fortress 2's red and blue color scheme. Those were the tightest parts throughout the campaign so far. I didn't know that you had to find the turbine or go into the darker areas with red lighting to advance to the next section. That was the only time where I thought it has potential to be a bit bigger as the largest horde of that level was clogging up the rooms, making escape difficult.

The custom dialogue in the beginning was hard to catch amidst the noise of the zombies and the ambience drowned out whatever the dude was saying over the speakers. If there is a way to support custom dialogue, it'd help make it easier so I could turn off the director to fully understand what was happening. With Left 4 Dead 2 being limited in turning either the sound effects or the music, the spoken dialogue is easily lost. To listen to it again, you have to restart the level.

I could be wrong, but that's the only time there was custom voices. Was it someone turning into a zombie, or the dead guy at the end that was going nuts? I couldn't quite catch it, sorry. :(

If you want to get into real nitpicks, it's how there should be more than one option to change the sky and the environmental color. However, this is the author's original choice to go with it, and I respect that. It's a very harsh contrast on the eyes, so if you feel the need to step back and loosen up the eyeballs - please do that.

I enjoyed this campaign a lot, and the hordes felt well-paced. There hasn't been a difficult moment nor any parts that slowed the flow of the campaign. A lot of it is not eye candy as it tends to reuse a lot of textures from older Source Engine material. The author showed a lot of their creativity of how they placed the vehicles and made the military bases look interesting for the curious mind to explore.

If there's ever an alternate AU to this campaign that features a daytime setting or another nighttime setting, that would be so cool to see it in. For now, well done, author! This was well put together!