Absolute Zero

Title: Absolute Zero
Links: http://www.mediafire.com/file/qjm445nrd529o63/absolutezero.rar
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1600285281
Author(s): Chris "Soul" Toth
Survivors: L4D1
Notes: Repeatedly removed from the Workshop and Gamemaps by the author over a period of years, I finally decided to upload this to my Mediafire account because I was tired of the author's juvenile behavior pulling down his own work because of mean things people say on the internet. Grow up, Chris.

This is a very long five-map campaign that takes place in Alaska, or possibly another Arctic area. It goes from a destroyed military stronghold to some underground caves and ruins that fit a fantasy style, aligning very strongly with some of the ruin environments of Skyrim. After that, there is a return to the surface where the survivors need to call on the assistance of a military tank break through a heavily fortified barricade to reach a plane that will take them out of there.

First things first, there's no getting around it, this campaign for the most part looks excellent. All five maps are very expansive, highly detailed, well-polished, look very original and compelling, have custom voice work that isn't intrusive, and feels like a fleshed out, highly revised campaign that's gone through many iterations to hammer out flaws. The aesthetic is very nice and while it doesn't look particularly like any other campaign, it doesn't look or feel out of place with L4D2. This is a campaign that has been revised extensively over the years to address issues and complaints, and it feels like everything is there for an intended reason.

The maps have good directionality, lots of areas to explore, and doesn't keep you in one place for too long. You're encouraged to always be on the move, and while it may sometimes force you to wait in a certain place or to backtrack briefly, there is always something nice to look at. The areas have been polished and almost all have been designed to keep your interest visually. The maps are mostly linear, with a couple nice branching path sections, but it feels like you're always exploring and discovering the way forward. The fact that the campaign takes place through ruins makes it feel like you're unearthing something hidden and discovering secrets. Light direction is never an issue and I've never had a problem figuring out the way forward.

While this campaign looks very good and is mostly laid out well, it unfortunately has some very serious problems, the first of which is the basic placement of geometrical shapes. This campaign is extremely cluttered, which you can easily see from the very first map with the way that there are cars, trucks, and downed helicopters everywhere. There is never an absence of things to look at because there is always something right in front of you. This works to the detriment of the campaign because while it visually holds your attention, gameplay-wise it creates nothing but bizarre and irrational situations for the level geometry.

A level can look aesthetically unappealing but can have a fantastic geometrical design, that is, the layout through which the player moves. This is something that old school level designers had to always keep in mind. Graphical limitations meant that more had to be done with the way that levels used space and how the player would be directed in terms of movement more so than depicting a world full of crashed trucks, broken trees, dilapidated pillars, rusty cars, etc. That's why games in the early Doom, Quake, and Unreal series are so fun to move through, because their levels were specifically designed to encourage free and open movement. In Absolute Zero, there are so many bizarre geometry choices that it profoundly affects your movement. This is a classic example of a campaign designed solely with an artistic eye rather than with an eye for actual practice. A very simple example of something that contributes to this is the slide effect on the ice. While it looks nice and seems like the right thing to do, this delays your time between changing direction and only really serves to prohibit you. Other examples include bizarrely formed stairs and crooked paths.

In essence: the places look cool but they're no fun to run through.

The second major problem is the constant flood of common infected. There are so many infinitely spawning hordes that it's not even funny. In the first three maps it seems to be appropriate to the level of difficulty. Aside from the turret event in map 2 that needs special attention, there's nothing that a well-prepared team shouldn't be able to handle. Throwables are useful on the map 2 holdout event as well. However, map 4 is where there is almost an endless flow of common infected from the beginning of the map to the end. They will constantly fall from the sky and there are several sections where you need to fight a tank and avoid witches all while getting swarmed with infected. Avoiding the witches isn't difficult since they're wandering witches, but the problem is that this is incredibly unfeasible on higher difficulties, with bots, or with anything less than very skilled players. Near the end, there is a brief holdout event with constant hordes bombarding you from all sides, and the justification for it is that a door that was opened has just randomly locked on you for no reason.

This is where you'll really notice my first and second problems compounding each other. Despite the campaign looking good, the bad level geometry is egregious when you have constant hordes, since it means you'll never have the space or movement you need in order to successfully deal with them. You might say "So why not use throwables?" Well, this is precluded because of all the wandering witches, who can and will be disturbed if you throw anything. Throwing anything other than a bile jar at a horde is always a huge risk. The fourth map, while it looks very good, is absolutely terrible because of the constant hordes and abysmal level design choices.

The finale is even worse. I don't think I've seen anyone, even from players who like this campaign, write any form of justification for the horrendous finale. This is where you will really see how limiting the level geometry is. In the first holdout space, you can hardly see anything and the space in which you're supposed to hold out hardly allows you any freedom of movement because you're barricaded in and in the center is an electrified truck that deals constant damage to you if you touch it. And guess what happens if you get incapped on it? That's right, you're fucked because you take constant damage and you can't get healed. Even if you get defibbed, you'll lose about 15 health after getting revived before being able to move away. Isn't that a great design choice?

In the first iterations of this finale, you couldn't even leave this area, which, due to pressure from literally everyone addressing this as a terrible design choice, had to be scrapped for the alternative of letting people leave and deal with the holdout from anywhere. This absolutely must be taken into account in order to succeed because it is an intentional deathtrap that wasn't laid out well at all. After that horrible holdout, you have to then slowly progress against, you guessed it, more infinite hordes, this time with even less space to move (only slowly along a narrow trench) and next to a military tank that will kill you if you touch its wheels. Not only that, but there are still tanks and witches in the way. And even if you make it past that Hell, you need to make absolutely 100% sure you do not try to walk through the plane's propeller blades because unlike the C-10 model from Dead Air that this is taken from, you will get dissected by its blades here. I learned this the hard way.

The third issue in this campaign is optimization. Many areas will cause your FPS to take a nosedive, presumably because it's trying to render too much shit at once. You may notice it, you may not, but certain areas cause the game to occasionally struggle to keep up with what the author wanted. The sad thing is, it's never really for anything cool, there's just always a lot of clutter, junk, and shit on screen at once.

Absolute Zero is needlessly convoluted and painfully difficult for all the wrong reasons. It was made without any eye for gameplay. The author seems to have taken pride in thinking that he intentionally designed a challenging campaign out of some stroke of genius when in essence he designed a good looking but ultimately extremely shoddy and sloppy one. The first four maps are nice to look at (while the fifth is butt-ugly), but the gameplay for the fourth and fifth maps ruin what could have been a great campaign. There is so much unnecessary clutter and terrible level design that it just ends up being very un-fun.

Difficulty: Absolute Zero's difficulty ups the ante, but it stems from poorly made design decisions, increased horde sizes, and infinite hordes rather than from actually good, well thought out challenges. It ends up feeling extremely unfair and painful to go through on higher difficulty levels. You can tell that the author recognized the difficulty because he puts the improved bots mod in his collection to be played with this campaign; a good campaign should be sufficiently beatable with the standard bot intelligence. Also, defibs are strewn around the finale like candy to try to alleviate the irreparable problems of that map.

Final Verdict: The first four maps are very nice to look at but running through these maps feels like a chore because there's so much to get through and on top of that, the already bad gameplay takes a huge nosedive in the fourth and fifth maps. Terrible geometry and custom scripts with common infected make the latter half of the campaign intolerable. The majority of the campaign is just not fun to play through, and it overall feels like a slog rather than a fun campaign. If you need something pretty to look at, then I guess you could play it, but I won't understate its needless difficulty. Otherwise, not recommended.

Rating: 1/5.
20 military tanks that kill you instantly by touching them out of 100.