2019 II: The Blartening

Title: 2019 II: The Blartening
Link: http://www.gamemaps.com/details/15031
Author(s): MaddaCheeb101
Survivors: L4D2
Notes: Annoying reskin of 2019 II: Director's Cut.

2019 II: The Blartening is a parody campaign of the author's own work, 2019 II. It's six maps with one hidden map that can only be accessed by being launched from the console. This campaign has the dignity of being one of the worst rated and lowest regarded campaigns on all of Gamemaps, for good reason. But let's talk about what this campaign first is.

2019 II and 2019 II: Director's Cut were panned by players for its hammy acting, nonsensical narrative, terrible gameplay, and overall the fact that they are not effective in L4D2. If the author wanted to tell a story about Nick using cutscenes, the tools are available for her. Source Filmmaker exists and is actually the resource used by a lot of good artists. Pushing those cutscenes and focus on the story into L4D2 doesn't work because in this game, the story always takes a backseat to the gameplay.

After the dust settled from the negative reception of these two campaigns, the author released 2019 II: The Blartening as a parody of her own campaigns. The point here was to make fun of herself, to ramp up the already hammy acting to new heights, to mock herself and pop culture trends of the time period of 2012-2015, and it just comes across as yet another failure. The reason why 2019 II: Director's Cut was funny was because you could tell MaddaCheeb was taking it seriously. With this, you can tell she's trying to save face by plastering Paul Blart posters everywhere. It's not funny, it's just sad and pathetic. MaddaCheeb was so insecure about being known as a failure that she deliberately tried to pretend that she was in on the joke, that making her campaign into a farce was her goal all along.

But even though it makes no sense to an outside observer, this campaign is still an absolute blight on the modding community. It actively wastes your time in various areas by forcing loading screens. It contains horrendous voice acting, again with static models that don't have facial animations or move their lips. One map makes you replay the level over again by the saferoom door rejecting you and teleporting you back to the beginning. A different map has a bullshit area that kills you instantly if you go in the direction you expect to go. Most of the maps blare really annoying music at you. I think worst of all, however, is that this campaign is split into three components and totals over 3 GB in total. The reason for this is because there are just so many assets used and stolen here, lots of music, custom voice lines, and tons of high-res textures (which don't look as good as they should).

Of course, I could go into a lot of other things that should deter you from playing this. For one, it steals from other campaigns, including Cold Stream, Source of Infection, and The Lost Island, without crediting them. It also steals assets from Mirror's Edge, Half-Life 2, Halo 3, Spec Ops: The Line, and other games. It contains advertisements, fake DLC purchase screens, and posters in poor taste.

Gameplay-wise, there really isn't much to comment on. This probably has the best gameplay out of all the 2019 II series but it's not what I'd call "good." It only works better because infected tend to spawn a bit more frequently, giving you something to actually do. It's still a slog to get through, but it's by no means impossible. The finale isn't even a holdout, you just choose an ending and then it's over.

Difficulty: The biggest source of difficulty is dealing with the design decisions around the campaign itself, such as waiting through loading screens and listening to horrible music. Otherwise it's a bit easier than average to play through.

Final Verdict: If you find memes and pop culture references from 2012 like Shia LeBeouf, Paul Blart, and Honey Boo-Boo hilarious, then this is the campaign for you. Otherwise, if you have more than two brain cells, then you're better off just watching a playthrough of it on YouTube and saving yourself the download and stress of having to play this piece of garbage.

Rating: 0/5.

0 Paul Blart boss fights out of 100.