2019 II

Title: 2019 II
Link: http://mediafire.com/file/fyn3xkvuseuin0i/2019_ii.zip/file
Author(s): MaddaCheeb101
Survivors: L4D2
Notes: A campaign that makes extreme sacrifices to gameplay to serve as a vehicle for narrative story-telling.

This is the role-playing sequel to 2019 by MaddaCheeb, the person who picked up and took credit for the original 2019. Now, I played through this one after all the other 2019 versions and sequels, so this was technically the last one I played. However, I played it with an open mind, trying to give it the benefit of the doubt. This is a seven-map sequel campaign to 2019, taking place after the helicopter crash at the end of 2019. This plays totally different from 2019 in that it’s very heavy on the role-playing and cinematic aspects. In fact, only the second, third, and sixth levels have enemies at all, and you’ll never have to fight special infected.

This plays like an average Half-Life 2 mod, with lots of voice work, plenty of cutscenes, and a semblance of a post-apocalyptic plot. I give the author of this campaign credit for actually trying to do this kind of thing in L4D2, a game that wasn’t meant for this style of campaign. One example of a campaign that attempts this style and utterly fails is Cold Case.

I don’t really fault this campaign for not being heavy on gameplay, but it does seem to take unnecessary liberties. For instance, four levels have basically no gameplay aspect: there are two dream sequences, one gauntlet where you run for approximately ten seconds, and the finale simply has you walking to an exit, basically. It seems like the author wanted to make this have special gravitas, but it comes across as overly gauche, contrived, and self-congratulatory. The slow-mo is abused to a crazy degree and at some points it just becomes comical.

On top of that, the author steals assets from Mirror’s Edge, Source of Infection, and Cold Stream without ever crediting those sources. It’s also hard not to laugh at the models that don’t have eyes and at the scenes where they just stand there and voices play but you don’t see their lips move. The story is extremely basic and the ending feels out of place, but there’s a lot of good custom dialogue thrown in. One of the best parts in my opinion was going through Haven talking to everybody, including the L4D1 survivors. Clearly a lot of work went into this, but the levels are so short and there’s just so little meat to dig into here that it’s just really contrived. However, as I said, I do give props for the author for actually trying.

Unfortunately, I think this campaign was so poorly received because it doesn’t play well in L4D2, so I think the author not only abandoned work on this but went the other way completely and tried to make fun of the seriousness of this campaign by making the laughable Director’s Cut and abysmal Blartening. But this could have actually been a good campaign if it had been worked on more. As it stands, it’s fairly short (all seven maps can be beaten in around 20 minutes) and once you play it, there’s really no reason to replay it.

Difficulty: Most of the maps don't even have enemies at all. As I said before, this is mostly a vehicle for the author to try to make fanfic using her favorite fuck fantasy, Nick.

Final Verdict: If you like role-playing mods, this is the best one you’ll probably find for L4D2. If you're interested in classic or standard L4D2 gameplay and map design, you're not going to find it here.


Rating: 3.1/5
62 models talking without moving their lips out of 100.