Vienna Calling 1 (Austria) is a good campaign overall and starts off very strong, but falters in quality in the last two Chapters.

Vienna Calling 1 also notably doesn’t feature a lot of custom assets or iconic Austrian landmarks (except for the Finale), and thus over relies on vanilla Left 4 Dead 2 American assets, which results in this campaign never quite feeling authentically Austrian.

Gameplay-wise, despite the Chapters being dark, cramped, cluttered, and there being a fair number of Alarm Cars and Crescendos sprinkled throughout, the overall difficulty of Vienna Calling 1 is kept reasonable thanks to its generosity of supplies (especially Ammo Piles, bombs, carriable explosives, Pills/Adrenaline, and notably several guaranteed Laser Sights pickups). Oddly though, we only found a single Military Sniper Rifle throughout the entire campaign on our playthrough, which was disappointing, as an Autosniper-lover.

Despite there being several long Crescendo events that have many waves of hordes, there are no true Gauntlets on Vienna Calling 1, which further lowers the relative difficulty of the campaign.

I quite enjoyed the first three Chapters of this Custom Map, with my only real gripes being the excessive use of invisible walls where they’re not needed/logical, the excessive amount of props and clutter illogically strewn about in some areas, and the propensity for this campaign to use environmental props that aren’t properly anchored to the map geometry. The latter of which results in you being unable to shoot/’wallbang’ through most things that you otherwise would be able to on a vanilla map (IE train cars, thin walls, etc). This can result in scenarios such as someone dying to a Hunter, because their teammates tried to shoot through an object/wall to save them, only to realize too late that their bullets aren’t going through. Whereas at other times this is no issue.

These two issues are not exclusive to the first three Chapters, however, and they continue to be annoying and create inconsistencies all throughout Vienna Calling 1 (and even its lesser sequel).

The cinematic train ride through the countryside on Chapter 2 was quite cool, and everyone commented on and enjoyed it.

Chapter 4 is where Vienna Calling 1 starts to have issues, such as glitchy ladders, minor navigation issues, acidic water you can get temporarily stuck in and damaged by due to glitchy terrain, awkward and uneven terrain in some areas, and a major glitch with the river ferry that enables players to start it without everyone being on; resulting in an invisible wall then preventing Survivors from being able to board the slow-moving ferry and leaving them stuck on the opposite side of the river (hopefully they can AFK-teleport, but this is unreliable).

Vienna Calling 1’s Finale is an easy, standard Defend-Tank-Defend-Tank.

The Finale on Vienna Calling 1, whilst cool aesthetically and with its custom music, has major issues, such as Special Infected frequently getting stuck behind the rock debris that falls to block the Survivors from leaving the Finale area, and Commons, Specials, and even Tanks being able to spawn in plain view of the Survivors inside the sealed escape helicopter tunnel, resulting in them being trapped behind the gate which only opens at the very end of the Finale.

Several full hordes, Specials, and the second Tank on our playthrough notably spawned trapped in here, with the Tank suiciding almost immediately due to Frustration, thus trivializing the difficulty of this Finale for us.

If not for all of the myriad small issues that present on Vienna Calling 1, it easily could have been a 9/10 Custom Map, which is a shame, as I quite liked the themes, locales, and overall design of this campaign. Which is unfortunately far more than I can say for VC1’s ill-fated and unfinished-feeling sequel, Vienna Calling 2, which I rated 3/10.


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