Divine Cybermancy

Title: Divine Cybermancy (E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy)
Link: Part 1: https://www.gamemaps.com/details/21372, Part 2: https://www.gamemaps.com/details/21390
Author: Streum On Studio, MLUI
Survivors: L4D1
Notes: This is a port of levels directly from the Source game E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy.

The first thing that should strike you about this campaign is that it is massive in file size. That's because it's a complete rip of levels and materials from the Source mode E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. It's a gigantic twelve-map campaign with horrendously huge levels clearly made for a different game. Since it's so very clear that the maps were for the most part untouched, they're horribly out of place to play in Left 4 Dead 2. I'm not sure what the deal with all the positive four- and five-star reviews on Gamemaps. Maybe people think that this person actually single-handedly made the maps himself, which is of course untrue. I guess one point in favor of the person who ported the maps is that the campaign is actually beatable from start to finish, although by the end of it you may wish you hadn't.

The biggest drawback of all these maps is that almost all of the twelve maps are huge and absolutely serve no real gameplay purpose in Left 4 Dead 2. There is a lot of wide open space that only makes the gameplay ridiculously easy while at the same time incredibly confusing as to where to go. This is mitigated ever so slightly by orange arrows placed here and there, but it seems that that is a band-aid placed over a seething flesh wound in terms of design flaws.

While the maps of course work in their intended medium, that of being played in a completely different game altogether, when played in this game there's no option except to wander around aimlessly. This is present right from the beginning, where there are multiple paths to go down very long stretches with no clear indication of the correct path. God help you if you don't have the game instructor enabled, as you will be utterly clueless as to what you're supposed to be trying to do. It doesn't help that using objects typically brings up poorly translated text over the progress bar.

At a certain point in the first map, you'll find a cannon aimed at a wall that does nothing, so you're forced to backtrack and find something that can make it fire. You can go to a military training section and a medical branch with nothing in it, but eventually you'll need to find a library archive and search various posts for something you need. Once you pass through some cool-looking holo-gates, you'll happen upon a huge room that's sort of set up like a church. When you climb up the ladder to approach the altar, you'll be able to interact with the post and the book nearby, which should activate a teleporter that will take you back to the cannon. This is about the most work it seems was put into the campaign, as it seems like even the person who ported this campaign knew not to force the player to backtrack at least five minutes to find the cannon again.

After going back to the part with the cannon, there's a hole in the wall and there's a relatively brief section in some caves with some water before it ends. The first map itself took us half an hour to complete, and that should be the expectation for time to complete every map except for the last.

It should immediately strike you as bad form that the saferooms are completely disconnected from one another, which is apparent right from the beginning of the second map. Also, if I were to outline every thing you were supposed to do in this campaign, I would never be able to finish, so allow me to roughly summarize the essential points of the maps. The second map is sort of cyber-punky and a bit confusing from the start because you're naturally led up a staircase, but it doesn't lead the way you're supposed to go. The actual way forward is at the bottom of the staircase through a door that's easy to miss.

The rest of the map takes place in some kind of sort of futuristic set of ruins with staircases and scaffolding all around. While there are some misleading paths, it's not particularly difficult to figure out where to go. This map was a fair bit shorter than the first, clocking in around 20 minutes.

The third map has a very promising start, opening up outside in what appears to be some ancient ruins. This was probably my favorite map, aside from the last, mostly because the aesthetic reminds of something from the original Unreal engine. The visual appeal really carried this for me. While the level design isn't necessarily bad (after all, it's pretty much a straight shot from the beginning to the end), it is incredibly long. Even without having to choose between multiple paths, simply walking in a continuous direction in this map may take you upwards of half an hour.

Players may notice the lack of rescue closets, mostly because these maps don't really logically fit rescue closets in since it wasn't made for Left 4 Dead 2. However, every once in a while you may come across a funny-looking office room standing apart in the middle of ancient ruins for just that purpose. In any case, most of the rest of the map takes place in huge, cavernous sections that make killing infected an absolute joke. At one point, you'll encounter a lift that will take you deeper into some caves, but that doesn't last too long and soon after, you're outside again and by the saferoom. This map took us about 20 minutes.

The fourth map is in my opinion one of the ugliest, as it has lots of sharp, primitive geometry and tons of dark areas that contrast sharply with jarringly bright lights. It's a fairly linear map that feels maze-like with the nondescript walls, and the fact that buttons aren't lit well may cause some confusion.

The fifth map is where things start to take a turn for the worse. The layout itself is relatively confusing. It probably makes more sense in the actual game it was built for, but here there's a ton of wandering around aimlessly, not knowing where to go. Additionally, there is a section where it seems as though you can go outside, but you'll be killed by the game dealing rapid damage to you. This is probably going to piss players off, especially ones who are playing the map solo, but if you're playing with friends, this can actually be helpful since the dead player can lead the others in the right direction. This turned out to be a positive for us because this map has no real sense of direction. After climbing up and finding a key on a body, a switch can be activated to open some doors that lead to a room with saferoom doors at the far end.

The sixth map is about as confusing as the fifth, albeit for different reasons. It's actually fairly linear, not requiring backtracking, it's just that there are lots of different pathways to various areas that make it very unclear as to where to go. In particular there's one outdoor section that definitely looks like the way to go, but the actual path forward is in the complete opposite direction. The look of the first half of this map is very cyber-punky, but once you trek down some waste tunnels and reach the bottom area, it soon becomes a mess of gigantic spaces in a kind of waste area that additionally wastes the players' time by being ridiculously difficult in figuring out where to go (a driller needs to be activated to clear the path, and then more random wandering needs to be done).

As with the sixth map, the seventh map also has a cool aesthetic to it for the most part. Also like the sixth map, this one is extremely aimless, and even with a person dead to guide the other player, this turned out to be a shitshow. The seventh map really shows an over-reliance and dependency on orange arrows, since it's truly impossible to figure out any sort of logical pathway towards a goal. The players must constantly search out orange arrows because there are tons of dead ends or even worse, places where the map will just loop back on itself unexpectedly. Fences and barricades don't even do a good job of marking off sections the player's not supposed to get to. The saferoom ends up being inside a storage container that you need to climb a ladder to reach, for some reason.

The eighth map is utterly bizarre, and the first half might be my second favorite map of the bunch. Unlike the previous two, this one is extremely linear, though quite long and still very wide. It starts off in a cave that looks pretty cool. An extremely long ladder (that can see the death of more than one bot) leads up into a sort of city section that has a very "primary color" look to it, almost as though it were designed like a Lego town. There is another huge ladder here that players can have a lot of fun with.

The outdoor section leads to a huge hole where you can jump into fluorescent green sewage water in a sewer section. Enjoy this while you can because it gets much worse later. Upon leaving the sewer area, there's a narrow walkway that reminds me of the first gameplay section in Final Fantasy XIII, the part on the highway with only one way forward. Once you reach the other side, there is a switch that's hard to see that opens a door back on the other side. Upon crossing the bridge again, you're treated to perhaps the worst part in the whole campaign.

The sewer that follows this is still part of the same map, and it requires slogging through a very narrow tunnel through sewage that slows you down. Not only is it easy to get charged here, or encounter an unavoidable witch, but it's also possible to get completely stuck in the geometry. As soon as you enter, you have to be very careful to stay directly in the center, otherwise it's possible to be unable to get back into the middle. If two players are in the map and they're both stuck, one person can go idle and switch to a bot. That kind of getting stuck is pretty inexcusable. Thankfully it doesn't continue too much longer before ending.

The ninth map is thankfully pretty short, and looks interesting with bright green fog everywhere. There's a somewhat cool looking forest with barren trees giving off a Halloween-esque vibe, which leads to a tunnel with four tanks. If you have a molotov, it should be no problem, otherwise good luck. The map doesn't continue much longer after that.

The tenth map is the last of the gigantic maps, and unfortunately it may very well be the worst in the entire campaign. Since nothing was changed in the maps, it's possible to wander throughout about half of the map that literally leads to a dead end, just looping back on itself. A word of advice, if you see floating light tracks that are actually rails for a train to ride on, you're going the absolute wrong way. It doesn't help that the map starts you away from the resources, but on the plus side, once you find the resources in the starting building, you're on the right track. 

There's some awkward fighting up scaffolding and slopes in confusing paths, but eventually you'll be led to this weird sludgy sewer pit with a dead tank in it. A valve close by releases the sludge and you can proceed through, leading to possibly one of the best saferooms in any campaign.

The saferoom has a couch over some puke. Also the wall along the saferoom door is climbable for some reason, and in fact many walls in this campaign can be climbed like ladders even without any obvious indication. The saferoom also gives off a vibe like that of the second half of the Yama campaign (kind of like the grimy parts of Silent Hill).

The eleventh map is the standard finale. It takes place in a beautiful Chinese or Japanese environment with what I suppose are cherry blossoms all around. The finale area itself is decent enough to hold out in, but it's not very climactic. It also doesn't give very good indication of where to go after the two waves are finished. One temple, to the right of the starting position, can be opened up once the finale waves are over. This leads to what I can only call the bonus map.

I suppose it's possible that there are multiple endings in E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, so there could be a "Heaven" and "Hell" ending. This last map would obviously be the Hell map, where you fight a literal Balrog with wings. It's actually absurdly easy, especially since you have all the resources you need if you back up. The Balrog has 20,000 HP but the only thing somewhat hard about this is the infected that tend to attack from the sides. Once he's killed, a tank spawns, but it'll probably ignite itself because of all the fire around. Then once the tank is taken care of, you can go down the short path and pass through the Stargate or whatever is at the end. I heard that there are multiple endings here, but I can't really imagine what there would be. As it stands, passing through the portal here just triggers a very short cutscene where the camera pans back a little and fades to black. Did you really expect anything else?

Difficulty: The most difficult thing about this campaign is tolerating all the bullshit of trying to figure out where to go. Most of the maps are gigantic and very rarely do they lead the player in any logical sense direction-wise. The spaces are too wide for infected to really do any damage. The biggest obstacles here will be ladders (which tend to kill bots a lot) and not ripping your hair out as you struggle in vain to figure out which random corridor is correct or search desperately for which obscure door you were supposed to go through. Resource distribution may be iffy but they're around if you look. It's fine to play this on whatever difficulty you tend to start new campaigns on.

Final Verdict: For all the length of this port, and it probably took some work to convert the Divine Cybermancy maps into a playable campaign that's beatable from start to finish, it really does feel like all of this went to waste for everyone except the most diehard fans of the mod. Even though it will probably take first-time players of this campaign close to four hours to complete, it really isn't too much of a fun time, aside from talking with friends. Especially with the huge file size, this is really not worth keeping around. The maps may be nice to look at, but they don't play well at all in Left 4 Dead 2. And especially since it's very possible to get stuck in the wall of map 8, this is just a weak port of levels that don't work for this game. It feels like a combination of the port of Half-Life 2's chapter Water Hazard (in being wide open and easy but very long) and the map Space Jockeys (which is often confusing in where to go). Not recommended.

Rating: 1.85/5.