Same Spitter Different Game

Did you miss out on the thrill of having a tank smash you off the roof of Mercy Hospital? Are you like so many others who miss rocking out on the piano of the Death Toll church? Well, you will need retro night no more to satisfy those cravings, with the release of these L4D2 remakes of the original Left 4 Dead maps. Download the greats; No Mercy, Death Toll, Dead Air, and Blood Harvest to get a refreshing match from a classic setting.

In the footsteps of George Lucas and James Cameron, 1SG_HEARTLESS pulls together the same stuff we had before but adds bonus weapons and special infected to give an all new product. There won’t be any extended footage or special features here as these maps mirror originals with a few extra twists to keep you on your toes.


What are you going to find the same?

A lot. These maps are roughly 92% similar to the maps you will find in the updated Left 4 Dead 1. Just about every dirt pile, blood splatter, and roach infested sewer will be the same. This has both an upside and a down. The upside being all four were great maps and well deserving of more attention. The down is these maps can seem small. The first level of each map appears to set the safe room, no more than a stones throw away from the starting point. That can have negative effects in versus mode with the newer scoring system. Mainly that means your team will have to have a

better plan for taking down the survivors in the first round, but that’s okay because every corner-up location for the survivors will go out the window. I will dive deeper into the versus games later on.



What are you going to find different in these maps?

These maps are for L4D2, that means you are getting access to them as a Co-op Campaign, Realism Co-op, Versus, and Realism Versus. No Mercy also comes with Scavenger Hunt maps. All the weapons in L4D2, including Boomer Bile and melee weapons, can be found throughout all of the maps. Four all new weapons that are only available in these maps were added by the author; however, these weapons are only accessible when an admin activates them in the server. Chest Paddles, Incendiary Ammo, the M60, and Laser Sights can all be found randomly placed in the maps.

As for the maps themselves, you will be able to travel most of the original paths to the safe room. I say most because the author has stepped in and added a randomly spawning fence or two that alter shortcuts and typical routes in an attempt to balance out the L4D2's scoring system along with keeping the maps refreshing. In case you have never played L4D1, during the Versus Mode all four survivors needed to make it to the safe room if the team desired to obtain a reasonable score. Distance contributed almost nothing to a team's score for a round. If all four survivors fail to reach the safe room, even if they die mere feet away from the door, the round was considered a complete failure. The scoring system changed in L4D2 as distance became the main measure of Versus Mode. 1SG_HEARTLESS’s maps are for L4D2, so distance will be the name of the game here as well. This is why he added the random road blocks, so the maps will be slightly longer. Also, during the finale, the distance marker does not start until a team has activated the rescue radio. Other changes include: the alarm door on the second map of Blood Harvest will need to be deactivated via a switch, the finale of Dead Air is a scavenger hunt, and other small changes that I will not spoil here.



What did they botch?
Nothing major league, but these maps do come with a few strings attached as No Mercy is the only FINALIZED map. Having personally gone through each map with the assistance of both Krom and the author, we have been able to locate a limited number of bugs. Many of which have to do with the Steam add-on support, so not the fault of the author.

*****Note Some issues are caused by Add-on Support not the author*****

• Tank music will get stuck playing in a cycle during the finale of Dead Air after the first tank appears.
• On the Dead Air finale, 13 cans of gas are needed even if the number displayed maybe lower, depending on the difficulty of the campaign.
• Two gas cans may spawn under one of the Army trucks, requiring the players to destroy them so they can respawn.
• Chopper sound will not go away on the second level of No Mercy.
• Can not texture the outside top of the elevator in the Hospital of No Mercy.
• There is no sound for the scissor lift in No Mercy.
• The outside of the railroad car in Blood Harvest can be seen through.
• The guns in the farm house of the finale, for the second team, during a vs will float a foot above the pool table.
• There is an infected ladder that will not allow you to reach the top of the cliff choke point in the second to last level of Blood Harvest. Infected may climb to the top of the rail car, then jump on the rocks to get over it.

Over all, I give these four maps a 95/100. They are near perfect remakes of the original maps that have only been altered to make the experience more exciting. Access to the newer weapons, items, and the appearence of the additional special infected will cause players to rethink how they worked there way through theses classics. The maps have limited bugs that only managed to take away from the perception of reality, such as being able to see through the roof of an elevator. Then again how authentic is the experience when there are blood thirsty zombies taking over the city? Also, most of the errors are do to add-on support bugs and out of the author’s hands. Given all that, theses are still great maps that will give you hours of fun. You will need to download each of the maps separately, along with installing the Steam Add-on support which will be prompted at your fist attempt to play these maps. The author has released a 5th file that fixes any bugs found in Blood Harvest, Death Toll, and Dead Air as those three maps are complete and not finalized. Simply unzip the file using 7zip and drop it into your add-on folder for Left 4 Dead 2. This file also includes several textures from Left 4 Dead that were not included in Valve's add-on support.
Download links



Blood Harvest
http://www.l4dmaps.com/file-download...72&entry=13957



Death Toll
http://www.l4dmaps.com/file-download...76&entry=13854

Dead Air

http://www.l4dmaps.com/file-download...75&entry=13806

No Mercy
http://www.l4dmaps.com/file-download...77&entry=13986

Bug fixes
http://www.box.net/shared/l20i04da1b

You will need to install add-on support for Left 4 Dead 2, which you will be prompted to do in-game during add-on activation and/or the first time you attempt to play the maps.


And for those who are wondering, no, the author did not add an addition sleeping bag to the open of Blood Harvest. Thus, continuing the insinuation, four survivors, three sleeping bags...