De inferno campaign

Title: De inferno campaign
Link: https://www.gamemaps.com/details/21383
Author: Valve, Alex Zen
Survivors: L4D2
Notes: This is a port of DE_Inferno and CS_Italy from Counter-Strike: Source. It has no ending and requires a manual quit to the menu.

De inferno campaign is the first in a pair of CS:S ports made by Alex Zen, both of which are fundamentally unfinished campaigns. The first is this one, which consists of two maps, DE_Inferno and CS_Italy. The porting job is, by and large, sub-par, and there's not a whole lot to work with for the maps in general anyway. Since L4D2 campaigns are linear, and these maps were designed for more circular gameplay, essentially all you can do here is create a starting area and direct the player through a path to an ending point. It's not compelling here and I think the only people who would enjoy this would be fans of the CS maps originally.

Both maps only look okay, although I felt that CS_Italy looks fairly awful in the game, partly because it has missing textures. As for the first map, DE_Inferno, the pathway doesn’t make very much sense as you’re just kind of roaming around through buildings and streets, going through doors, interior rooms, and ugly exteriors. There's a mandatory tank spawn somewhat close to the start, although there should be enough resources to deal with it. Resource distribution shouldn't be a problem at all in these maps anyway because of their brevity. 

There also isn’t much that makes it feel “L4D2.” There’s a corpse and a tank spawn placed in the first map, but otherwise it just looks like a shitty CS map. Also, the infected are basically guaranteed to do next to no damage to you. A lot of them spawn on rooftops or otherwise far away with plenty of space to kill them before they come up to you. 

In the second map, there really isn’t much of a logical pathway at all. You’re limited by player clips so the only interesting thing you’d think you can do, such as skip a path by jumping from a bridge, you can’t do because it’s clipped off. 

 
I have to mention the ridiculously huge file size. Since this is a shitty port, the porter seemed to include every texture from Counter-Strike, not just the ones relevant for the map. As such, these two short, shitty maps are packed in a 1.4 GB .vpk. And not only that, but there are missing textures in the second map. How fucked up is that? Why would anyone waste their fucking time downloading, and space preserving, this short, boring, unchallenging piece of dogshit?  

I also have to talk about the most egregious thing here; not only does this campaign not have any events, not only do you have to manually quit to the menu at the end of the second map because there’s no finale, but the end of the first map is fucking painful. The reason why is because the fucking bots won’t get into the goddamn motherfucking saferoom! On two occasions I played this campaign, two of the bots just stand in the goddamn door and just wouldn’t get the fuck inside. When I opened it for them, they just stood in front of it; when I closed it to push them inside, they’d open it again. The nav just needs to be set up so the bots go to the end of the saferoom. 

Difficulty: There aren't really enough infected or enough events for anything to be challenging here. The common infected generally don't seem to notice you early enough for them to be difficult, and often times you can notice them from far away or they spawn on rooftops. Oddly enough, even though there are narrow corridors here, the special infected don't seem to really have any power here.

Final Verdict: This feels like "baby's first port" and more like a demo than an actual campaign. However, it was released as a full campaign, even though it can't be completed since there's no finale or fade to the credits. It's not challenging, it's ugly, there are missing textures, and the file size is unjustifiably large. Its only possible redeeming factor might be playing this on a mutation that's good for short maps, like Tank Attack or something. However, it's still not worth the huge amount of space this takes up. Not recommended.

Rating: 1.76/5.