Deadenator

Title: Deadenator
Link: https://www.gamemaps.com/details/16692
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=672231603
Author: Soup Toaster
Survivors: L4D2
Notes: The campaign chooses randomly between two possible maps for both the second and third chapter of the campaign.

Every once in a while, a campaign comes along that really succeeds in impressing on the initial playing, but then fails to live up to that expectation. Either by being unable to maintain the high benchmark set by the beginning or by virtue of not having a fully realized design planned out, the campaign is for one reason or another, very rocky. Deadenator is one such campaign. It's got no shortage of lofty ambitions, but for a multitude of reasons, time has shown that it's failed to secure for itself a position as one of the greats. Bigger is, of course, not always better, and Deadenator is a great example of that.

This campaign was designed by the same person who had previously created Die Screaming and, later on, Deadworld (an even more ambitious project that has since appeared to be abandoned). Deadenator has an awkward story in its description about a cult using a radio tower to send out messages to lure unsuspecting people to kill them or something, and the survivors have to take out the radio tower to stop the transmissions. It's one facet of a larger picture where semblances of ambitious ideas are in place but aren't developed well. The campaign starts off in a back of a plane, after which the survivors grab health kits and primary weapons before falling out. The part immediately following this sequence is the introductory gameplay section that's, to my knowledge, completely unique to only this campaign, in which the survivors all start out in separate sections and have to find each other. It's an interesting idea and works to varied degrees. I've seen cases where everybody finds each other without problems and other cases where someone gets pinned and dies, so it's of course a mixed bag. It would've been ideal if only boomers and spitters could spawn in the beginning, preventing the possibility of a survivor getting pinned by a special infected that he couldn't see or block in time.

Once the survivors meet up, which I imagine would be frustratingly difficult on Realism since highlights are gone, the players are treated to what's probably the best map in the entire campaign. Believe me when I say this campaign starts out strong and then soon after goes downhill. The main reason for this is that the first map actually feels like it pulls the player along through interesting environments. It's not terribly original since city campaigns at night are a dime a dozen, but the areas are packed full of detail and it takes the players through several different buildings and outside areas without being confusing or getting the player lost.

There are plenty of supplies strewn around, especially if you're willing to do a little exploring. The rooms and buildings throughout the first map generally appear pretty nice, and directionality on the whole is fairly straightforward. Towards the end, the map opens up to a larger outdoor area and even that feels pretty focused and streamlined. The first map is probably the best though, and feels like the only one that was fully finished.

As mentioned before, the designer attempted to squeeze more replay value out of the campaign by having the game choose between two possible versions of the second map, one which is deemed "forward" and one which is deemed "reverse." Neither of these matter except insofar as they're simply one map but making the player go in totally opposite ways through it. And herein lies the problem: if your level can be played backwards or forwards, then it's not a good map. If you think about it, this just makes sense. You won't lead the player through the map logically through the level geometry if it can be played backwards or forwards because then it will either look like you're going backwards or it will look like the way forward is completely arbitrary. The second map(s) feel like both.

That's why the second map really falls victim of a really shitty attempt to circumvent this design flaw, which is to put orange arrows everywhere. The map is fairly big and surprisingly well-optimized, true, but even well-optimized maps become slogs when you're going through nondescript, pitch black buildings where all you're doing is following arrows on a wall. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there must be at least a couple dozen of those arrows in this map alone. I get that the arrows are probably reversed when going through the opposite direction, but it's simply not fun to follow arrows on a wall that just point in arbitrary directions. A good campaign shouldn't need arrows to direct the player where to go, because good campaigns will lead the player by things natural to the level: architecture, lighting, vehicles, items, and events. I'm harping on this point a lot because there's zero point in making your map possible to be played backwards and forwards if the map itself isn't fun to play. Any map can be adapted to being played forwards or backwards, it doesn't mean they all should. That effort really should have been directed towards making one map that was solid, logical, and fun in a single direction, not expanded into a randomized two-version gimmick where neither version holds up. And while we're on the topic, can someone explain to me just what the building is that you're going through? Is it a hospital? School? Office? Retirement home? Just what kind of huge building is that barren and devoid of indication of what it is?

Anyway, after a certain point, you'll receive an indication to blow up a wall by placing two propane tanks, and honestly this was one of the only fun parts of the map, for some reason. You'd think that I would hate needing to find certain objects to progress, but limiting it to only two was smart and makes it a lot more bearable than, say, a scavenge event would. There's not much more to say about this map since the rest of it bizarrely meanders through some equally illogical parts, such as woods and the obligatory sewer. It all feels incoherent and is definitely the map that needs the most work.

As with the second map, the game will choose between two versions of the third map, one set during the day and one at night. This isn't really as offensive as the second map's randomization, but again I wonder why that effort wasn't put into making one map stand on its own. And besides, wouldn't it disrupt the flow and general character of the campaign for it to randomly change the time of day in the third map and then back to night for the fourth? In any case, I actually rather like the beginning of the third map, as it's somewhat open but does a well enough job of giving the player plenty of areas to explore while also giving decent natural directions.

I thought the car lot in particular looked very nicely developed. Unfortunately that area isn't nearly long enough, or perhaps the rest of the map feels much less developed by comparison. Upon going through some more random buildings, you'll receive a message stating that you need to find a key to open a door to proceed. It's pretty obvious where to start looking for this key, but you'll soon come upon a rather annoying challenge, where a tank punts a number of cars from across the map at you and the other survivors. It's at this point where it's 50/50 as to whether any of the bots will make it, which are terrible odds. I understand that some campaigns may be designed with four human players in mind, but a campaign of this type, where so far the only challenge has been infected, should really only be challenging based on the merits of the Director's spawns and the level geometry itself. This clearly hasn't tried to be some sort of environmental challenge map like the hehe series or Grey Box. So I really don't think it should start to leave the fates of bots in the hands of RNG, especially when bots can be crucial to people who only have the option of soloing campaigns of this length.

Again this just strikes me as the designer being too ambitious and simply thinking that any and all ideas could work without regard for testing or really thinking about how they would play out in reality. After the car section, there's a large horde event plus a tank, and it's really fairly bland. The environment doesn't look nearly as interesting as it did in the first half of this map, as it just goes through some more nondescript woods, and as with the previous map, simply meanders around until the players stumble upon a randomly placed saferoom.

I will say that the saferooms have looked pretty consistently good. In fact, a lot of areas look pretty nice, but are often too nondescript to be memorable. The fourth and final map of Deadenator is another rocky one. It starts off fairly strong with a nice, bright setting in a sewer, but unfortunately this leads to another large building similar to the one in the second map. Now, up until this point it had started to become a running gag to see where the next orange arrow was, since it was generally predictable that the next one would never be far away, since the directionality frequently didn't lend itself to logically showing the intended path. But here is where I draw the line:

Just, what the hell is this? It's impossible to tell what this is supposed to mean. Is this supposed to be a troll? Does this mean that the player can go either way and they lead to the same place? If you have arrows pointing in two directions, because both ways are equally correct, then you don't need arrows in the first place, now do you? I get that you're not supposed to think about a person going through these buildings and actually spray-painting directions on a wall, but seriously, what context on fucking Earth would justify a person spray-painting arrows in opposite directions signifying two opposite directions for where to go? And why are there so many goddamn arrows in the first place? Just fuck off already.

Anyway, after suicide jumping out of that useless building, there's a large and equally useless courtyard that had a witch guarding the way forward for some reason. After that there's a gauntlet through a building and it seems like it's going to be the finale, but it's really just a gauntlet to an elevator. Again, it would be nice if this were made more clear, but I guess clarity isn't really this campaign designer's strong suit. The gauntlet is surprisingly okay, and if it had been extended to be the real finale, it might have made for a fairly strong ending to the campaign, but alas, the campaign continued on from there.

The elevator drops the survivors off at the top of the building, where there's an odd-looking radio tower (that doesn't get more narrow the higher up it goes) that the survivors have to blow up with another pair of propane tanks, just like in map 2. Again it's not hard to find the propane tanks, and the mechanic works fine, and at least the loud explosion logically makes sense as to why a lot of infected attack. The finale area is paradoxically large but also doesn't give many intuitive places to hold out. It's fairly easy, as a standard two-wave holdout, but the rescue vehicle arrives so slowly that you're almost guaranteed to have to deal with the third tank and its horde in order to make it on board.

Difficulty: The difficulty in this campaign comes more so by its sheer length and by a couple of gimmicks, most notably in the beginning when the survivors are all separated and also where flying cars can instantly incapacitate players who fail to dodge or notice them. Supplies are in fair numbers, but the maps may drag on to the point where it feels like special infected attack relentlessly. It's still fair but a couple of more additional ammo piles wouldn't have been too much to ask for. This is at an overall average difficulty.

Final Verdict: Deadenator is a campaign that needed to have its ideas reined in and its gimmicks either worked out better or removed. As it stands, it is overly ambitious and works most successfully when it's at the most typical, formulaic Left 4 Dead. That's not an insult to other campaigns; the first campaign I can think of that does the Left 4 Dead formula well is Detour Ahead, and that campaign is great. Deadenator, however, tries to be original in ways that simply make me wonder why that effort wasn't put into making the maps flow better. The first map is clearly the best and the second map is clearly the worst, while the third and fourth have equal parts good and bad. The environments are sufficiently detailed but ultimately my singlemost criticism of the campaign is that it feels too nondescript. And in terms of the logic of the design layout, aside from the first map it can be either confusing or too random. The holdout area for the finale is also very forgettable. I do feel that with strong revisions this could still be something noteworthy, but as of right now the only thing of particular note is its length, with the fact that it can go on for an hour or more for only four maps. It's hard to know whether or not to recommend this one; if you enjoy city maps at night, even if they're fairly nondescript that don't really have much of an identity of their own, you could do a lot worse than this one. However, this really misses the mark of greatness because it doesn't strike out on its own original path enough and doesn't develop its ideas sufficiently through the environment enough. It's still above average since it's clearly got some nice polish, but I didn't come away feeling that I played something particularly memorable.

Rating: 3.85/5.