2 Evil Eyes

Title: 2 Evil Eyes
Links: http://www.gamemaps.com/details/2478 
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=381419931
Author(s): Matt L.
Survivors: L4D2
Notes: Same author as official L4D2 DLC campaign Cold Stream.

This campaign is infuriating to me because it's one of the biggest cons in the whole Left 4 Dead series. This campaign was actually looked at by Valve and is what inspired them to contact the author to make Cold Stream. How this happened I have no idea, considering this mostly looks and plays like shit.

2 Evil Eyes is a six-map campaign that emulates the L4D2 campaigns in that it kind of tries to look and play like a standard campaign from the game. It takes place mostly in swamplands with lots of wooden planks, brown and ugly vegetation, and dingy shacks throughout. Visually it's not the worst, as it has some semblance of polish. The biggest visual detriment is its blatant ripping off of areas from L4D2 (the first map of Swamp Fever and the cemetery and bridge of The Parish) and its overall naturally ugly aesthetic. This isn't necessarily a by-product of the swamp environment, since the map IMPJAW C1 also takes place entirely in a swamp and looks better than this.

I'll just say it, this campaign is ugly. Swamp Fever didn't look the greatest and it did restrict movement speed temporarily, but at least it had enough open areas and didn't limit your vision too much. It wasn't full of random buildings and crashed objects that look out of place, and everything had its purpose without looking too linear. 2 Evil Eyes features a lot of overgrown foliage that is just an eyesore and doesn't serve much purpose aside from looking very unappealing. And while I said there was some polish to the campaign, it lacks a higher, final level of polish. So you'll see a broken plane or detached train that's crashed somewhere but it just looks like the author stuck it anywhere.

This campaign is one of the most controversial in terms of gameplay. This runs afoul of many, many fundamental flaws. There are a ton of events here that spawn in way too many infected, and it's extremely clear that there is custom scripting going on. The relax time between hordes is much shorter and more infected spawn per horde. This campaign goes overboard with the events, and the campaign even opens with one. In a couple of instances, you'll practically need a melee weapon just to get through either a door that needs to be broken down or to deal with the hordes. The hordes themselves are just a real chore to get through and it doesn't ever feel fun, it just feels annoying.

The real issue that I and others seem to have with this campaign, though, is that the bots are just abysmal. They constantly fail to keep up with you and their reaction time for when people get caught by specials is utterly horrendous. They will use single pistols during massive horde events and be completely unable to shove or kill infected on you. I'm not sure if this uses custom scripting for that specifically, but it sure feels like it. It may be a case of too many things getting their attention at once so that they just don't pay attention to you. I had two bots die on Normal simply for being unable to keep up with a regular pace. On another instance, a bot wasn't able to climb a ladder.

The event on the bridge should be mentioned because it definitely feels like it had custom scripting to be artificially difficult. The map gives you a lot of chainsaws and adrenaline in preparation, and you should take them. The bridge event will prevent you from moving for a while, allowing hordes to gather and special infected to spawn quickly. The respawn rate for specials is very fast here, so it's easy to get overwhelmed. The trick with this, as with most of such events, is to throw bile jars behind you and run. Using adrenaline at the end turned out bad though because at the end, some vehicles move on their own and getting too close to one will incap you.

The cemetery map was also pretty contrived. There are at least three events and a forced tank spawn, and it rains heavily. This wasn't impossible, but again with the increased horde sizes and lower respawn rate, it got annoying. The fact that we heard it raining in the tunnel was also weird.

The witch spawns turned out to only screw the bots, while the majority of tanks weren't able to even find me. One was on the other side of a floor that needed to be broken by survivors, but he wouldn't die of frustration. In the finale, one died because it couldn't find us.

The finale is worth mentioning due to how terribly laid out it is. The obvious holdout spot is on the roof of the house that has the ladder, but there's no nav on the chimney, so if you perch yourself up there, the infected can't get you. The thing that seals the ladder to lead up to the helipad is also very weak and contrived, and it just disappears when the rescue vehicle arrives. There's also no pilot in the helicopter.

These things, while minor, point to the fact that this was just a first draft that never got edited. It's pretty obvious that this campaign never got proofread. The game instructor indications, title, and chapter names were also sloppily put together and didn't get proofread, or the author didn't bother improving anything.

Resources were fairly plentiful, and although some saferooms lacked ammo piles for no reason, there is generally enough ammo and weapon variety to serve any player's preference. Architecture and level layout is typically "whatever," neither good nor bad. Directionality is only bad in a couple of areas, particularly any indication to drop down the sewer and knowing where to go after the alarm event in map 3.

Difficulty: This is harder than average because of the high number of events that trigger hordes, the numerous witch and tank spawns, the higher mob size, and the bad bot nav. With a team of four players, it's doable without dying once, but everyone will need to be prepared to go all out. On higher difficulties, aside from the finale, players will need to use every resource they can find and maybe even a restart or two may be necessary.

Final Verdict: This is a sloppy, lazy, ugly, unedited mess of a first draft campaign that thinks it's a lot smarter than it is. The custom scripting and overabundance of shitty events makes this painful rather than fun. Most areas are unnecessary or just eyesores, and I find the gameplay to be, at best, sub-par and annoying. Even with fewer events, improved bot behavior, and standard horde size, the levels aren't interesting or good enough to warrant salvaging this campaign in the first place. But as it stands, this is a terrible campaign that never should have convinced Valve to let this author make an official custom map for L4D2. This is a campaign so bad that it makes Cold Stream look good. Avoid.

Rating: 0.9/5.
18 random pitch black underground train section with a tank out of 100.