- Rorschach! A rather accurate reproduction, even down to the pinstripe pants and FPV gloves.
- Good attempt at the face-mask element (falls just short unfortunately)
- As Nick, he's still hated for his antisocial traits. Go figure. :P

Working:
- Lobby picture and name
- HUD Avatar picture
- FPV arms
- Fallen survivor picture

- The fask-mask effect fails to be a true rorschach mirroring; it seems to be a layered floating collage.
- The pistol looks weird being holstered without a holster.
- Looking at the mask with the flashlight on makes the black inkblots of the mask whiten (though this isn't bad, just not accurate if I recall)

I would gush if you got this perfect. You didn't (you got close) but I don't really care; this is a great approximation with a lot of the bases loaded and targets hit. The facemask unfortunately doesn't stand up to a good look for fans of the fiction like me.

With but a few sparing visual flaws, mostly resulting from the design demands of the character not matching the weapons and items layout on the world model, this is a well done and effective skin. Recommended for the curious and for the fans.

- I'm not so daunted to use the chainsaw; don't have to reach for the volume buttons seconds before now. I know they're loud in real life but this is a video game and virtual life doesn't need to be vanilla chainsaw loud...
- Appears to be fully functional, perhaps in part due to it's simple ambition

- People who like loud might not like this

I'm adding this review because, well, you have earned my aural gratitude. Don't need to go deaf for video game content.

Because it meets its simple goal with a minimally sized vpk and so far hasn't presented any problems, I'd have to say this earns a rare 100 from me. If there's nothing noticeably wrong with this, what justification do I have to say 99?

-Suits the setting
-Preserves Coach's head; keeps facial animation active/intact
-Coach has his armour!
-Hits all the marks one would expect to make it look integrated, ala the secondary has a holster

-It's armour for show (no points removed, merely an aesthetic point)

Until I find something wrong with it, I don't see why I can't give this a big score. Without negatives to list and the fact that I like this... Oh no, three figures! I am so hesitant to give 100 scoring reviews, but as I enjoy this mod so much over coach's polo jumper look and considering I just can't lay any negative criticism, I can't justify NOT giving 100.

Dithiannim lists Coach's nametag as being inaccurate due to it not being his given name; however, I would counter that criticism by citing we never find that out.

There are a ton of other coach mods but none really have stuck with me for its general appeal as this one has.

- Adds two additional features on top of the third person view, the glow colour toggle and the tab key accessories (love the netgraph)
- Helps the player see themselves in position to the rest of the world; can be very useful for positioning in squad work and melee with zombie swarms.
- Third person view enables people to appreciate the custom world model they might otherwise not see during their run.

- Not needed for the third person view; the user can simply build themselves an autoexec.cfg file and leave it in the config folder (how I do it). The config file remains editable with just a simple text editor
- The accuracy of ranged weapons of the script leaves a bit to be desired. I think I'll stick with my autoexec, as the med-long range accuracy is more off in the vpk's script than I care for (or am used to). When you're up close, it's not a big deal to be off a bit, but it's the med-long range accuracy that counts for most of my use of third person shooting.

Since it's not a fully implemented feature in the engine, the author cannot be faulted for errors in the use of it; for instance, the shotguns sounds don't work because Valve didn't code it to. This is not the author's fault.

Additionally, the shooting isn't ever going to be totally accurate; I've spent months tweaking my settings and no matter what, you end up with a focus point where the accuracy match to the crosshair picks up then drops off after it. You really can only shift the focus point and tweak the crosshair to match it. That being said, the focus point in this isn't where I want it.

Without the additional features, I wouldn't really consider using this. However, it does prove to be a capable add-on; while I won't personally use it as I can't edit VPKs to reset the internal script to my preference, it is a nice package to have combined three features.

If I could repackage the script to my preference, I would be very tempted to use this.

For the curious, here's my script:

Bind G "thirdpersonshoulder";
c_thirdpersonshoulderoffset "0.0";
c_thirdpersonshoulderaimdist "720.0";
c_thirdpersonshoulderdist "50.0";
c_thirdpersonshoulderheight "15.0"; (rather 10-15, the 15 is to accommodate the fatness of vanilla Coach)
cam_ideallag "0";

- Characters engage with the world around them (though Bill saying 'sailboat' confuses me still)
- Decent placement of throwables
- Items and events in tucked away spots provide a nice danger/reward balance for explorative players

Map 1
- Ice cream van is a creative change from the typical alarmed car we usually see in campaigns

Map 2
-This is my favourite. The laundromat, the cops paying subtle homage to Max Payne's rooftop moments while burning death drops onto tanks…

- Once you know about the less rewarding of the tucked away spots, you'll know to avoid them; still, they're neat traps for anyone new to the campaign and adds depth to the work

Map 2
-Rare Spawn Glitch - SI can spawn in strange places they can't move, eg, between the building and the stairwell up to the train platform.

Map 3
- Now seems to have three or so ammo stashes, a few of which appear redundantly close to each other (conversely, the ammo pile at the bar is now removed, like in the L4D2 version).
-SPELLING: A sign says Chicago TEd's Guns. TEd, not Ted? Am I missing something with the TE?

Finale
- Unusual Nav glitch? Bots can get stuck on the Howitzer somehow when trying to retreat for the rescue

What can I say? This is one of the campaigns I'd miss if I got stuck with the Xbox version.

- Small file size for a fair amount of replayability
- Relatively unique idea (wonder how much the originality would hold up as the idea spreads to other projects)
- Encourages effective teamwork on the players beyond the usual (e.g. picking Short/Med/Long range weapons balances)
- The tech tree is pretty awesome, especially now that you can see how and what you're building as dependencies. It really helps with easing new players to its ideas, especially now that the names of things all seem to be in the L4D2 context.
- Nice custom music track (have found I would wish it to stick around after it disappears)
- Potentially addictive (isn't that a con?)

- The map's level design may be lacking in complexity for some (Not for me, as the experimental ideas seem complicated enough to iron out without reworking the level design every time; imagine if it was "let's build a car on an assembly line"). Admittedly, while the level design leaves something desired, it is presently a canvas for the author's ideas and as such, should be both simple and elegant for their needs.
- Horde flow is too constant for solo play to be much fun; could this rate be somehow scaled to the number of human players present?
- Bot's less than helpful (as with any map that's outside the box)
- EXPLOIT: can continue to finish a progress bar, even when normal concentration breaking events happen. Examples: being hit by a charger, being hit away by a tank, bashing zombies behind you, shooting zombies in the third person camera mode of the progress bars. This isn't deliberate, is it? True, it makes defending yourself easier but the charger disruption not occurring seems… strange and exploitive.

"Help, I'm being pounded into the ground, but I took the button with me!"

- The present design means that you can divide your attention between a fair number of objects but only the rocket is used to complete the map; defining clear team roles helps keep teams organised.

The rocket is … made of corrugated iron? Oh well.

Having read the changelog update as of 22/05/2011, I'm excited. A new desk for prop building from junk, and player selected prop dropping! Man, sounds like being L4D engineer. Would we be able to redrop the prop, I wonder, in case of a poor drop? However, seeing as this is one more thing to divide a player's attention between, fingers crossed on the new gameplay balance.

One thing I've found desirable, though not necessary, is where are all these building materials coming from? Perhaps there should be a junk pile outside the fence to the player's initial right, next beside the van? Sure, the truck is from carfax … do fences come from fencefax? Course, if it didn't diminish with use, it'd just be a junk pile…

Fun, fresh concept to L4D, potentially addictive, and definitely no bots. Highly recommended, even in it's current state, but the map is still being worked on and figured out. Stay tuned.

- the '4' decal is an effective way of simplifying supply location
- Decent enough bot AI (their nav-pathing and rescuing ability leaves a lot to be desired though)
- Minigun placement has nice and wide range at finale
- Nice touch on map 3 with the train falling through.
- Pretty good degree of challenge throughout the maps
- Some maps feature interesting lighting shifts
- The half-life 2 model was neat (but really noticeably polygonal…)

Cons:

- Is it just me or do the credits not seem to roll?
- Map 3's elevator needs a call button on the bottom, not just on the elevator. Had to save a surv-bot who was hanging, so sent the elevator up with the other bots on it; only to realise I couldn't get it back down because the bots teleport… Even without bots, a team can accidentally trap themselves. Highly unlikely but the possibility remains.
- During map 2, the normal rendering of the map blipped out to being a uniform blue at some points, depending on what angle one looked and where on the map one was
- The first time i played map 3, the custom props loaded fine; second time, they came up as a errors. With Dead Run the only map set to load in the extras… I didn't get it.
- In the map 2-3 safehouse, there are tier 2's available if you start from map 3. But if you start from the finale map, you have tier 1's available. And no medkits. What's with that?

Map 4
- A fair amount of the design seems really blocky and unnatural for being outdoors; it does create nice killing corridor but it is very same-ish. This makes some of the SI spawn spots really easy to counter.
- The rescue trigger doesn't have a courtesy warning/prep-period when you push it. Not bad per se but some warning, like a floating tag, that we'd cut straight to the battle would be nice.

The level design was good but the overall visual design seemed somewhat lacking in some regards, particularly towards the end where the lighting became more or less static. The bots can be somewhat reliable but don't depend on them to save someone in your team; they're more than likely to fail that task when it really counts in the heat of battle.

It is still, however, a fun campaign with some interesting ideas and features. Some design elements seem to let it down.

- The whole nevada desert feel was a good atmosphere
- Small touch but the map names are capitalised and literate! Woot. You get bonus points.
- Loved the "my mind is going, my ming is doing, my mind is gang" tag
- The zombie occluding not in "Do not enter tomb" in the finale map was a nice not-so-subtle touch
- Decent bot AI
- Decent weapons progression
- Author's website has a skybox fix for Mac players experiencing the checkerbox problem (thanks!)
- An actual story is being told here. Some effort with new 'story-tags' on walls to give sense something is happening here as opposed to a place existing to run away from zombies.
- Well paced maps

Cons:

-Urm… I'll get back to you on that? Seriously, I don't think I had any real bad notes. Sure, the ending is obscure to those unfamiliar with Arthur C. Clarke's fiction.

Maybe they could all become star babies? I really am at a loss for solid criticism; I might come across something... eventually.

- Small light glitch: short abrupt lighting inconsistency when climbing ladders.

As good a campaign for l4d1 as it is for l4d2.

The implied story is an interesting fusion of fictions; I don't understand how the combine had an influence on this planet before the events of HL1-to-HL2, but that's irrelevant. I don't really mind that it doesn't make complete sense; it's an implied story after all. Though I do wish we could have seen some scientist tags trying to figure it out coupled with some remarks from once survivor-soldiers mocking them, rather than just calculations.

There was a weird skybox issue that was Valves fault for not putting the skybox data in my mac version. Hurrah for the fix mentioned on the One 4 Nine site. Shame on Valve. It helped fix a few other maps as well.

I'd give you the full 100 but I need to play it to death before I'm that satisfied. :)

- Love the randomised gas-powered weapon drops - makes you want to save fuel for goodies later and can force you to choose between them. That there seems to often be two or more choices is great; with the randomisation however, when it gives you only one decent choice, it may not seem like much of a choice.
- Paintings serve a purpose
- Seems to have an implied repeated theme with the left 4 dead 2 team being tested as what is presumably control group 4.
- Characters react to environment
- Original ending
- Decent Bot AI
- Level design and atmosphere reminiscent of Portal's ethically lacking Aperture Sciences

- A fair number of spots where you can't return to, like the descent through pipes or the hanging cargo containers, can leave a player that needs assistance stranded (virtually dead). Survivor closets tend to partially rectify this issue in a roundabout way. Might want to warn people to team up in groups of two to insure against this?
- The texturing in general may be too lacking and repetitive for some

Map 3
- small graphical glitch; medkit sits in the air when it should be on the dumpster in the 'tunnel of love' textured rolling cylinder.

Finale
- bots stand in front of heavy gun placements…

With the random weapon drops and select amounts of fuel canisters to go around, the general replayability of this set of puzzles and hazards is through the roof for a custom campaign; a real plus in a game already geared towards it. While it doesn't seem to do this by using alternate routes, instead what is used ranges from randomised keypad passwords to laser traps to the rotating cylindrical tunnel; these maps are trap machines.

In spite of a minor issue here and there and bots, as usual, loving to sit right in front of the machine gun mounts, this was one of the most fun maps I've played.

Yes, the ending feels unrewarding but I kinda like it as a premise; each time you play it, you're trying to get out … again. It would be interesting if a total playcount for the campaign could be done and the characters could say, "again?" at the ending after the first few plays; don't know if that's feasible…

All in all, colour me impressed. Looking forward to future editions; best of luck in getting that difficulty balance right.

- Good Custom Sounds
- Good pacing
- Effective pathfinding
- Decent Bot AI
- VS and Survival support

- Can't think of any; I find some, I'll let you know

Awesome.

Awesome.

The quality in this campaign is one that helps set the bar for L4D custom campaigns should aspire to be, or at least attempt to best. One of the best custom campaigns available for L4D1, among other noteworthies like I Hate Mountains and Dead Before Dawn. Almost can't wait for the L4D2 ver.

Updated to v1.3

- Original safehouse tags about the haunting help the story evolve and bring humour to the campaign, e.g. Transylvania Ted. Long live the repeated meme.
- Good custom sounds
- Direction decals help keep players on track
- Effective and usually appropriate character dialogue; Coach saying he doesn't want to see a tank in a tuxedo was classic.
- Some obvious haunting effects, like a voice, or floating objects, and some seemingly not so obvious haunting effects.
- Effective atmosphere and lighting
- Good map pace
- A few alternate paths

Map 1:

- Rochelle asked Nick for a splash fight … even though he was dead.
- Bots don't seem to know to pick up the hunting rifle in the first house, in spite of character preference (like Ellis, for example, would want it); they act very SMG-specific in their weapons pickup.

Finale:
- The pop-up text after radio activiation still says 'get to the helicopter' in spite of the Virgil ending

General:

- If you're not looking the right way, sometimes you can miss an image that haunts

This campaign, while not downright scary, is appropriately detailed and suits the Left 4 Dead world; it's a nice touch that the Author managed to get some custom vocal content for the campaign back when Valve was getting the actors in for more lines. Really helps it stand apart from the normal vocal content. Coach saying he doesn't want to see a tank in a tuxedo was classic.

All in all, this is a very well constructed series of maps; the only other campaign I've played that evokes a similar feeling is 'Night Terror' and that hardly comes as close.

- Impressive variety of locale
- Good use of props
- Fresh rescue ending, though the implications of it are absurd (where are they going to go with that rocket?)
- Decent Bot AI (any bot that knows to pickup stuff gets bonus points in my book)

-On map 3 around the train area, there is a stairwell that the zombies have to climb onto; it seems to temporarily render them incapable of receiving damage
-on Map 3, at the last saferoom, bots can somehow warp into the carriage before the doors open

Strange name, an attempted portmanteaux of Escape/Ascension; I'm not sure it works but I don't have an alternative for you.

On the whole, I am taken back by the quality and amount of attention to detail in the design of these maps. It wasn't until the few small bugs around map 3 that I noticed a thing or two out of place. Overall, though, this is a very impressive campaign that exceeds visually and needs some small tweaking in the gameplay.

- Pretty dark lighting in a campaign for the L4D2 crew; since it is not too long, it does not become too tedious to have the flashlights on most of the time.
- In spite of darkness, mostly clear pathfinding
- Bot AI decent; they interact with the environment
- Small file size
- Fair variety of location in map progression
- Length of maps means players can do a quick 30min+ game rather than the usual 1hr+; this is good if people are pressed for time or just want a quick game

- Could be far too dark for some people (but I like the dark L4D1 style)
- Could be too short for some people
- The poster is the stock poster for L4D2 campaigns; this campaign is more deserving than that, surely?

A solid and short quality campaign, where surprisingly, the car the crew was driving is not the Jimmy Gibbs Jr. car.

- Great L4D1 campaign more or less successfully converted
- AI is effective; they seek weapons and first aid kits, so bots can be relied on to carry some of their weight if someone drops out of a session
- Easier to keep track of the finale's gas scavenge because of l4d2's orange locating auras
- Nice tucked away sections with both rewards and risks to keep players exploring.
- Effective L4D1 dialogue that isn't about military bases!

- Audio missing (Not author's fault if I can tell, Valve simply hasn't moved the files from l4d1 over)
- Some areas of design, once threatening, are now quite fatal, e.g. the rooftops of map 2 have quite a drop and any sign of a charger or a jockey on an open rooftop is a portent of likely doom. This is balanced by survivor closets in the maps. Nevertheless, the new SI has made the rooftop areas of map 2 far more trying than the L4D1 version
- Jockey got stuck trying to climb a pipe on map 2
- Is it supposed to say "Emerlad Tunnel" on map 3?

A number of changes has rendered this map in a slightly higher register of difficulty, such as forced weapon swaps by ammo attrition, but it is still just as fun. For example, the removal of the ammo stash in map 3's crescendo event makes it more challenging.

Some details are missing at the moment; so there is still a little bit of spit and polish to be applied to this version.

- Nice sense of the place having been trashed by the zombie horde
- Good nautical setting
- Mostly clear and obvious pathfinding
- interesting challenge with the underwater section of map 2
- Slow enough weapons progression, ie, start off with pistols, then later find tier 1 shotguns and SMGs.
- Finale is good for those who feel they haven't had a decent challenge to their skills

Map 1

- Charger took surv-bot-Nick and, since the charger ran with enough speed off the boat into the ocean, killed Nick nigh-instantaneously. New meaning to man overboard. Room got him back though.

Map 2:

- Water Section killed at least one bot on each playthrough - fortunately the healtkits and defrib at the end offset this
- odd moment where you have to jump over rather than walk over the smallest incongruent design, where a metal grid walkway meets a sewer duct.

Map 4:

- Bots tend not to be good for this, even on normal; play finale with humans. This map requires tight teamwork. Due to the bots being swarmed while not doing much to help each other (bot nick once just stared at bot rochelle being strangled by a smoker), the amount of SI spawned can overwhelm them - must have restarted the finale map 13+ times just to successfully get the fuel and to the chopper.
- Finale just kicks in once you climb the ladder outside the safehouse; a bot can activate this! Some warning would have been good. This really is a small but glaring issue for solo play. 3/5 times the bots activate it.
- Many areas too easy for the horde to close in (sometimes amounting to two tanks in VERY tiny spaces) - couple this with bots and the odd player who don't protect the gas collectors… some tight spaces become a lot more annoying than they have to.
- Bots not willing to enter helicopter; they'd rather stand next to it shooting until they can't see any horde. Once the near constant swarming of horde was over… they got on.

Nice work; the finale however leaves me rather frustrated to attempt solo even on a normal difficulty. Could just be my skill level but … my recommendation remains, unless you like playing with AI that gets swarmed too often to do anything, do not attempt solo.

The finale has a fair number of tight spaces where even if the bot party is preoccupied with shooting the tank, there is little to no room to move, avoid the tank, or avoid friendly fire; it more or less assures you deaths in the party, your bots if not you. The rest of the campaign was relatively straight forward and well done enough.

Seriously, finale is well done enough as a challenging scenario but you can't play it with bots and expect to have much fun; they'll drive you crazy. No doubt it would be a good challenge for a human group, but they can think and act dynamically. Solo; you're collecting the gas (and you better have gotten a melee weapon) and no one else.

- Interesting attempt to insert a custom campaign with relevance to the Canon story arc. Maintains a good gense of story with the characters. Jimmy Gibbs Jr. lives on in one more map
- Good pace and challenge.
- Small file size for a good campaign.

- As a juxtaposition to RainingMetal's statement, the load image blends into other campaigns' load images; was playing Welcome to Hell (beta) with this installed and it displayed the Gas Fever poster instead. Strange.
- In the construction site of map 1, there is a point in the wooden bridge that the zombies halt in, giving people a good shot at them when otherwise they're running and a harder target. Whether or not you intended this as a choke point is something I'd like to consider.
- Finale can feel a tad uneven

When it comes to map 3, wearing diesel on one's back makes one think there'd be something bad, like vulnerability to fire or greater penalty for friendly fire. Fortunately not!

All things considered, this was a fun and well put together campaign to play through. It manages to insert an unofficial segment into the l4d2 cast's journey without disrupting the narrative canon.

Pros:
- While the characters don't do much interaction, good voice acting adds peripheral characters that build a 'story' of sorts.
- Not too short but also not one of the longer custom campaigns
- Nice cinematic intro style (none too demanding on FPS rates, too!)
- Interesting that the party starts off split up into two groups and has to meet up at the start
- Like the adrenalin shot being in a vending machine - only noticed this a couple of times though? Only saw the vending machines twice I think.
- some split paths in the map design from the start (yes!)
- Custom music fits quite nicely into L4D2 musical themes (thought sometimes there is an overlap between the custom and the set music).
- Map 3's paper map-based air strike is reminiscent of Half-Life 1's moment where you get to direct the military's bombardment; neat feature.
- The randomisation of the drops on the gauntlet at the finale is definitely a good way of keeping that a tense situation
- The deadly gas is definitely a neat feature

- The speech used by the person asking for cola isn't always clear over the other sounds all the time; some subtitles would be interesting but not necessary. It is a pity that such attention to detail might be easily missed over battle music (which I listen to for game cues).
- In the finale safehouse, bot Ellis wouldn't get off the sofa and get a medkit or pills/shots - this only happened once
- A piece of garbled text appears as the players run out onto the street mutationally saying 'Don-=|' or something to that effect "Don't get stay in the toxin" i presume is the intent but...
- Bots don't always know to run from the descending neurotoxin in finale
- Cannot throw a grenade out onto the street from the blown open door in the finale - game switches to the normal weapons automatically. This seems to be because the game recognises this space as an unopened safehouse area still.
- Bots don't know to enter cargo copter! They try and get shunted over to one of the trees (nearest the bridge) where they stay - pretty major game killing bug. Rochelle got on fine once there was no one around to shoot but Coach had to be painstakingly shoved out and Ellis refused to move. Then a new swarm came, they wouldn't come on, they reset to the tree and still wouldn't move.

Aside from a few minor buzz killing issues, such as not being able to throw the grenades out the door and the confusion about why cola for map 2 could be found on map 1 (replayability?), this seems well put together… until the finale. Don't get me wrong, the finale itself is good; but if you have any bots, god help you finish.

The effort and attention to detail laboured elsewhere is definitely worthy enough to merit some final(e) bug squashing. The rest of the work is solid and delightfully fresh.

- L4D1 Cast; not all updates of l4d1 campaigns keep them (city 17 didn't)
- Chicago Ted! Tons of custom Canadian and American Border town tags from prior survivors (haven't played everything yet so maybe I'm not exposed yet)
- Compared to many of the other campaigns tried, this one had good humour and sense of the characters being present in the map.
- Alternative paths offer replayability from the start of the campaign.

- Small issues in finale's placement of horde spawning left finale map unchallenging on normal for the first play; a lot spawned in the water and posed little threat.

I'm a Canadian/Australian and I endorse this custom campaign. I've been testing a lot to see what else l4d is capable of and it's damn good fun to laugh at one's self while killing zombies. This one really does stand out amongst the rest.