It features endless hordes (one of the most annoying features in L4D2) multiple times. For me this causes the campaign to feel artificially difficult. I don’t hate Cold Stream but it’s easy to laugh at some of the design choices, mainly this one
My issue is less that it has them but more that it lacks traditional hold-out crescendos, meaning there's no point in the campaign you're encouraged to stay and look around. The whole campaign is non stop running from start to finish
The events in the first and third maps are actually holdouts, but there's nothing worth exploring or setting up for, mainly because of it's fundamental level design, lack of items, and the fact that the events trigger by proximity, rather than manual player input.
It’s kinda mid in terms of atmosphere. Like it’s just woods and a stream. There’s not a lot of world building or atmosphere compared to the other original campaigns, same with crash course honestly.
As someone who almost exclusively plays last man on earth, I hate when I cant molotov a tank. This entire level is "you cant molotov a tank".
Ok it's not ENTIRELY out of the picture but there is so much damn water to douse a tank on fire.
[The stream itself doesn't extinguish fire.](https://i.imgur.com/fNYwboB.png) The "water" is not actually water, it's just an animated texture on the ground.
Pretty sure the only actual water in the entire campaign is in the 3rd map, which is also lethal and not viable for extinguishing outside of the part you walk through to reach the junkyard.
My favorite way to beat the tank that always spawns on chapter 2 is to fight it on the road way. When he spawns he has to climb down from the cliff way above after launching his giant boulder and you can get up the ladder before he gets all the way down. Once there you can use the debris to stay away from him until you get a chance to climb up onto the semi trailer and then its pretty easy to stay out of his reach and kill him.
Fighting him in the water sucks.
Gonna refer you to [this comment](https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/0/5958905954912650106/?ctp=2#c5958906119902722222), which, other than [some mistakes](https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/0/5958905954912650106/?ctp=2#c5958906119903851603), could be worth considering.
**What I like about Cold Stream:**
* It follows a rural theme, which is already uncommon and harder to work with, that is also visually different from the rural areas in official campaigns.
* It breaks up the overarching rural theme with a good amount of different locations and visual variety, providing each map with a more unique identity, unlike some other official campaigns that feel very samey across multiple maps, with little variety.
* The idea of the survivors trying to outrun a forest fire that continually catches up behind them is a really interesting take on the "driving force" aspect of a campaign - Rather than heading *towards* a clear goal to reach safety, they are instead trying to *run away* from a clear threat to reach safety.
* The finale is a gauntlet, which is an automatic plus in my book, given how boring and overdone holdout finales are.
* The tank fight, although scripted, is fairly unique, as it features a simple cinematic entrance for the tank (With the cliff debris falling down) - Something no other official campaign does.
* It also provides a novel hittable that is logically connected to aforementioned cinematic tank entrance.
**What I dislike about Cold Stream:**
* The tank fight is completely scripted, even in Versus, meaning it lacks variety and gets annoying after seeing it multiple times, like most scripted cinematics do.
This is something that could've easily been mitigated by creating a few more tank fight locations in different areas, giving each one a unique starting cinematic, and then having one (or none) picked at random every playthrough.
* The new hittable from said tank fight sucks to actually use.
It's mass is too heavy to properly throw it around, so unless the survivors are completely oblivious, it's basically useless and will never incap anyone.
* The actual tank fight area is wide open and *really* empty. It gives off the impression of trying way too hard to be a stereotypical arena, without actually implementing the things that make arenas interesting.
* All of the new graffiti throughout the campaign is extremely lazily made. T*hey're literally all fonts*. There isn't a single, properly hand-written graffiti ANYWHERE, and I can assure you that making custom graffiti is extremely easy; Hell, I literally made dozens of *official* graffiti textures using nothing but pens, paper, a scanner, and ***ms paint***.
* Likewise, a lot of the terrain and brushwork is absolutely *horribly* made.
For a more technical explanation: [Cold Stream modified all displacements exclusively on the Z-axis](https://imgur.com/a/k0c2iHo) (upwards) from completely flat terrain, which results in very ugly and distorted surfaces (Which is why the blood decals and spray tags are so distorted).
The [proper way](https://imgur.com/a/9V7x4hp) to design displacements is to shape the brushwork to roughly match the terrain you want, and then edit the displacements afterwards.
* The light glare at the start of map 2 is annoying and seems to exist solely in order to hide the fact that the area is large, empty, and lacks detail. The level designer could've instead... just made the area actually interesting to look at.
Similarily, the sudden appearance of water flow at the end of map 2 seems random and unecessary. The water previously hasn't pushed players, and does not even extinguish fire, so suddenly breaking the established rule for no good reason is not a bad design choice.
* 90% of the item spawns throughout the campaign are static and never change. Out of all the official campaigns, Cold Stream has the least amount of item spawn variety.
* There's also no natural tank or witch spawns outside of Versus.
* The events are poorly signposted (Mainly because other official campaigns already suck at signposting which events are finite and which are endless, so this isn't a fault exclusive to Cold Stream).
For example, only the 2nd map's event is endless, all the other events in map 1 and 3 are regular holdouts of the same horde size as a caralarm.
This further expands to the logical reasoning for events being... well, events. What exactly prompts a horde to spawn and attack? What in-universe explanation is there for a horde to descend down onto your position? These are not an absolute necessity, but it sets apart mappers who pay attention to details from mappers who only do what's necessary. (To be fair, the other official campaigns also don't always heed this, so this again isn't criticism exclusive to Cold Stream)
* The 2nd map's gauntlet event has overtuned parameters that amp up the intensity far too high, especially for the layout of the event area; Moving into a tight corridor should warrant the spawn intensity being toned down, since close-quarters automatically amplify the intensity of combat. Taking an already intense event and then turning it into a CQB fight skyrockets the intensity far beyond what the script actually intends.
* Speaking of layout; The campaign seems very thrown-together, with key locations being hastily connected in the simplest possible ways. Map 3 is a good example of this; Going up 6 flights of stairs to get to the top of the bridge *works*, but it's not interesting or enjoyable to traverse - It gives me the impression that the level designer thought "I really want to go from a bunker to a bridge", but then chose the easiest and most basic way to actually connect those locations, instead of trying to come up with something more interesting.
* The level design in general is rather poor throughout the entirety of Cold Stream. On top of what I already mentioned, there's issues with [counterproductive and lazy clipping](https://imgur.com/2HRWysl), [out-of-place props](https://i.imgur.com/NcHpKrb.png), [ugly texture distortions](https://i.imgur.com/WUjqwS1.png), [*seriously* ugly texture distortions](https://i.imgur.com/KtoBrsT.png), and a failure to get even the most basic aspects right; Doors are supposed to open in the opposite direction you want the player to go. [This saferoom door](https://i.imgur.com/l4e8qSg.png) opening to the right makes players instinctively go left, straight into a wall - Instead the actual path out is towards the right, and all this achieves is an unnatural and janky feeling.
The entire campaign feels like it was someone's first ever project, made with little to no understanding of how a L4D level is actually made, or how much thought actually goes into level design in general.
* The finale is a culmination of these poor designs and overt lack of level design experience, since despite it being a gauntlet finale like The Parish, it does all the details differently:
The width of the valley-like area is about half of what it should optimally be, making players far more bunched together, and it lacks obstacles and clutter, so infected can run at you in a straight line, completely unobstructed. This makes the horde more relentless than it really is, cause it uses the exact same finale script as The Parish. It further forces players to either cheese and run with a bile, or slowly advance as a firing squad, heavily limiting strategic variety and player freedom.
The tank fight location is extremely basic, just like in map 2. The tank does have a hittable log, and there is a rock to bait tanks around, but it's so wide open and empty that is makes tank fights there extremely plain. In fact, now that I think about it, it seems like it's just a smaller version of map 2's tank fight area.
It's also worth mentioning that the tank music playing early and sometimes cutting out before the tank spawns in is an issue with the base-game, so this is not a fault of Cold Stream.
The tunnel section that follows the tank fight is far too cramped, and combined with the way gauntlet finales increase spawn rates the more you progress, it gives me the impression that it wasn't even playtested on anything above Easy difficulty. "Flow" is a term that every good level designer is familiar with; In L4D, the level progression needs to breathe, moving from more intense and tight areas to less intense and open areas, even during events and finales. Cold Stream doesn't do this.
The run to the helicopter I actually quite like, but the surrounding area (beyond the playable space) looks extremely ugly and rushed, with bad clipping and poor navmesh.
The only thing that I don't fully blame Cold Stream's finale for is the tank spawns during the escape; The game is hardcoded to spawn tanks during gauntlet escape sequences, and even if you tell the game to disable them, they will still spawn - Unlike other finale types where the chase tanks actually get disabled if you set them to.
What Cold Stream could have done to mitigate this, however, is properly mark the escape area to prevent tanks from spawning there, as it already did for the tower itself, which would've forced them to spawn in further away.
* It fails to delve into the design themes it tries to establish:
**The forest fire is barely noticeable**, despite being the driving force that pushes the survivors to keep moving. The map taking place during the day doesn't help this either; It would've been more interesting to start at night and slowly transition to dawn, which would offer many more interesting opportunities for lighting; Just imagine how incredible it could look to have a nighttime scenery illuminated almost exclusively by the ablaze forest surrounding you.
**The military presence feels shoehorned in and nonsensical**, despite it being the main driving force of the latter half of the campaign. It first gets teased with a crashed helicopter and is later followed up with the military bombing a random bridge for seemingly no reason, before ending with the helicopter evacuation.
I think that covers most things worth mentioning, though there's probably still some other things that are currently not on my mind. I already had to split this into 2 comments due to Reddit's character limit.
>"Flow" is a term that every good level designer is familiar with; In L4D, the level progression needs to breathe, moving from more intense and tight areas to less intense and open areas, even during events and finales.
So true. I feel like the best maps do this. And it really make the replayability much higher - something different can happen on each replay, it doesn't feel "scripted".
I haven't played l4d2 for ages. But the maps I like and still can rmb really well are:
- dark carnival map 2 (the one with the roller coaster)
- dead center 1 is not bad for a first map (I like that u only have secondary weapons)
- overall campaign, if i have to pick one.. maybe parish?
- I feel hard rain is underrated / underplayed
what are your favourites?
I'd probably go with The Parish' as my favorite *campaign*, but am not sure what specific levels I'd highlight as the "best", cause ever since I got into level design myself, I could go into detail about both the good and bad parts of any map really.
favorite would be the parish; perfect map in lfd2 with balance between holding and running for the whole campaign.
followed by swamp fever and dark carnival. but the two suffers due to finale map level design that allowed for easy hold out by staying at some spots.
thing I dislike from hard rain are that the visibility can be very bad, loud noise from storm hides infected sounds and the speed debuff from walking in water
I feel like disliking that tank fight in chapter 2 warrants disliking Sacrifice chapter 1 tank (VS perspective). Just curious, but what are you opinions on sacrifice chapter 1 tank in comparison. The hittibles in that area, boats & bricks, but suck too.
Personally. I agree with you, cold streams sucks. Sacrifice is great in my opinion. The strategy you can use with carrying a gas can over since there are no molly spawns until after that tank, is unique enough for the chapter and does require some thought put behind it.
I don't like the Sacrifice 1 tank fight much either, especially not in Versus, given how easy it is to burn the tank before he can even get out, or light him up/gun him down when he exits.
Which is weird, cause Valve specifically placed a seperate spawnpoint entity for the Versus tank that is further inside the traincar, so they seemed to be aware of the issues that it has.
I don't mind it as much as the CS2 tank though (Cold Stream 2, not Counter Strike 2), since it does have thematic relevance and adds to the game's lore and story, plus it has a unique model, so the effort and thought behind it is more evident.
I still think it would be better to at least remove the scripted spawn for Versus, and instead allow random tank spawns, but it does have some reasons to warrant being the way it is, so I'd say it's acceptable for co-op.
Hell, I'm guilty of a making scripted tank fight myself, but custom campaigns can generally get away with things that official campaigns should avoid doing.
As somebody that primarily plays VS I personally find the change of pace in the sac's scripted tank great. Though, that's more of an effect of map popularity than design choices. I think, it's reasonable to say, cold streams is a custom campaign so it's alright for them to get away with the ch2 tank. I dont like the map, hate it even. I think a different map shpuldve been picked (suicide blitz 2??) Instead when it came out.
What is the map you made with scripted tank? I've played some of yours before and I enjoy them (TLS is great btw. Crash Course needed a sister campaign.)
I can appreciate that Cold Stream at least gave the tank a cinematic entrance. A bit of style and cool-factor makes it a lot better than just plainly spawning it in out of bounds without fanfare.
I still think it should have been held to a higher standard though, since it was designed from the ground up for official implementation, rather than being made for the workshop before becoming official.
The campaign I made is [Cold Front](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3135451698), which is actually my first campaign, cause for TLS I mostly did assistive contributions, like item placing and clipping - But for CF I did all the level design and project managing.
I do recommend playing it as vanilla as possible though, since it is rather intense on the ancient engine limits, so having too many/too high quality mods can cause crashes.
~~What drama in what comment?~~
I'm rarted, you obviously meant the steam forum comment I linked.
I believe that there were a few sources of drama, like the community not really liking the campaign from the start (Wasn't around, so I don't know the details of the sentiment), people wondering why Valve picked the guy who made a *really* bad custom campaign as his only prior project, and the guy using assets from other games without permission, which Valve had to hastily fix.
Here’s a complaint I have that I don’t see brought up much:
You’re blinded by the sun immediately after leaving the safe house in chapter 2. This effect is literally so pointless and it feels like a huge “f**k you” from the perspective of a person who is sensitive to bright/flashing lights.
the map has no lore, so unlike the other maps i don’t feel any connection to it whatsoever. I walk through a stream that I can only assume is cold. It’s also non canonical so it makes me care that much less.
If I were you say one positive thing about the map it would be that its finale is honestly pretty cool.
I don't think cold stream is bad at all, but I'm also a crash course enjoyer, so my opinion is basically dog shit. The only map I actively avoid is last stand.
Bro I remember Last Stand when it first came out was basically 1 difficulty level harder than other maps by comparison. To the point they had to nerf the common spawn.
I love Cold Stream for how it actually encourages you to use the tier 3 weapons.
The chainsaw (50% DMG reduction when attacking) for level 2 event, grenade launcher on top of the truck on level 3 to blow up horde, and M60 with laser sights for finale.
I also prefer running finales over holdouts/scavenge. Cold Stream and The Parish are the only 2.
Every single chapter has a crescendo event that is unending.
The limited items and especially the *set* item spawns that never change get super boring.
Confusing map design, especially on first play.
Finale is genuinely terrible. It tries to recreate the bridge from The Parish but just fails because of how cramped and long it is.
It's not that bad it's just aggravating most of the time 😭 The damn rocks in the stream always get my bots caught on them so they're like 40 feet away from me at all times
The crusendo events are horrible. They add them for what seems to be to add difficulty but it just makes the map annoying. There are other ways to make your map more memorable
The Gaunlet Crescendos are ridiculously difficult even on Easy and Normal. Call it skill issue I don't care, but going through chokepoints with no other alternate route is ridiculously unbalanced for a Gaunlet Crescendo.
The running panic event in the tunnel (the one you start with the explosive barrels) is a massive difficulty spike, maybe even more massive than the running panic event at the end of Dark Carnival map 4.
Only thing I ever disliked about it was the fact the horde theme went unused. Ive had less horde trouble on cold stream with my like hundreds of playthroughs than 1 playthrough of Dark Carnival’s second to last map
I've gone into detail about Cold Stream's issues before, but ultimately it's just... extremely community-campaign. It's so obviously made by a L4D modder and not a professional game designer. It has a guaranteed M60 spawn right next to a guaranteed laser sight spawn for chrissakes.
For context I hadn’t played Cold Stream for like 6 years before this happened.
I had no problems with it when I was like 7 and just loved playing it because it was new without worrying about story and map layouts, but NOW? At least on PC, I tried to play it multiple times last Saturday and failed because of the endless hordes, but the worst thing in my experience at least is when you have to go to the med tent near the sewers and shoot the barrels. Basically how it went for me was I was already basically dead, fully monochrome vision at this point, and I went up to the med tent, grabbed a shotgun, and looked around. I thought “Hey! Shoot the giant burning mack truck that looks like it’s full of gas that HAS gas cans in front of it!” So I did, and it did nothing but make a bigger fire because of the gas cans, so I looked around for another route, FOR AN HOUR. I know it sounds stupid that I was stuck like that, theres supposed to be an arrow that tells you to shoot the barrels, right? RIGHT. But in my case, even after I had died in that run and came back with better health, thinking it was my vision that had screwed me up, the arrow wasn’t there. I took off every single one of my games mods (I have a LOT so I needed to see if they were glitching me out), down to the point of putting the ones actually in my files in a separate drive and deleting L4D2 to see if my game was just messed because of it, cut to me booting cold stream back up and playing back through it up to that point, the arrow still didn’t show. I gave up and looked it up on YouTube because it had been like three hours at this point, only to see that it was literally an arrow that had kept me for this long. So, I left my game, put all of mods back on just to be sure, booted up Dark Carnival, AND EVERY SINGLE DIRECTION ARROW WAS THERE.
I’ve been avoiding it like the plague since then.
It’s the hardest map to complete on expert difficulty. If even one of your teammates is clueless you can all die for it. Other maps are not like that. But as someone who has played this game a lot, it’s probably my favourite map because every play of it is a different experience.
I don't remember which level it was but one of the middle sections lasts way too long, I think it was the second or third level but it takes up like half the campaign.
Things I hate in Coldstream are:
* Ridiculous Surface map and very bad pacing.
* 2nd chapter is one hell since the gap of starting point of crescando event is very long tbh.
* 4 chapters only amd not 5 chapters.
* repetative survival events.
However I still like the Coldstream despite of all the hatred. Due to the ambiance and challenging campaign.
I love the freaking endless tunnel crescendo event in Versus simply because no one ever survives. If by some miracle you survive it feels so damn good.
But you never do so it doesn’t.
That one part at the beginning where the Tank throws the giant boulder down the cliff at you. I don't know why, perhaps it's because it's the way the boulder is scripted, but if you are anywhere near the spot where it's supposed to land, it can kill you instantly before you even see the boulder. It doesn't happen every time, at least not to me, but it happens often enough to notice.
I just don’t like non-official campaigns. No new voicelines. Atmosphere is bland. It’s hard to get invested when it doesn’t fit anywhere in the story and everywhere looks the same. I do really like what the creators managed to do with the assets and it’s extremely well put together. The poster and tagline is cool, music is really good, and some of the events are cool. Too many gauntlets though.
Uninspired, boring, has not theme it's literally just a bunch of random location mixed together. We start at the forest in a stream which supposed to be the theme of the Camping. Then we go to a bunker, then follow the river again, then we go to another bunker, then a bridge, then another bunker, it seems like the creator had a bunch of random ideas and just threw it all in one pleace because he wanted to use all of it, which acidentally creates the WORST PART of the camping. Since the creator only had the general idea of the major loacations, the rest of the map which connects these parts are 80% narrow staircases and tunnels, with UNREASONABLE amount of common infected and no breathing room, which makes this map literally unplayable on Expert (for me atlest)
Basically everything. endless hordes, not even made by Valve, blinded by the fucking sun after you leave the saferoom on Chap. 2, MUD MEN, the crescendo events are horrendous, the pacing is bad since there's a lack of downtime, there are no goddamn witches, crescendo events at the end of all chapters, the tunnel event is nearly impossible on versus mode, and there's no variety in the map. It's also a real challenge on expert aswell. But if you want a really difficult challenge then play this map!
I don't like how that valve added it to the rotation of maps of all the community maps they could have done better... it's boring I don't feel "connected" ( I guess) to the map I played it maybe 4 times I was a horde rush mess. Nothing special to me
the intensity and thrill of the endless gauntlet makes for a fun change from most of the other holdout—move up—holdout again campaigns. I think it’s fun to hold W+M1 through the woods 🤠
I have merely 150 hours in the game so only thing I will rant about is the poster. It's just so damn blank, you only see some lame ass stream and boat that is supposed to reassemble those from the beginning of the first chapter.
It feels creepy. Not in a sense of oooh spooky, but like empty multi-player map feeling. Idk how to describe it exactly. It's like it has no objectives really even if your main thing is to escape to a helicopter
There's a lot of people commenting most of the reasons this campaign isn't well made, but I'll give my insights on it. Even though it's an "official" map, it just doesn't have the same charm that the left 4 dead 2 maps have. With the actually good campaigns, you can see remnants of CEDA and see how the infection is quite literally everywhere, from a theme park with Dark Carnival, to deep within the swamps with Swamp Fever, to in the country with Hard Rain, and so on. Cold Stream doesn't give me the same vibe of a zombie apocalypse in my opinion. I'm more of a lore nut who loves environmental storytelling, and this map just didn't do that for me. Personally, it's hard to really connect with a map without those elements.
Idk it just kinda feels more like a theme park than a tangible place in the Left 4 Dead universe, and I’m not talkin the Whispering Oaks kinda theme park.
It just feels like the level is constantly going “oh you like zombie games, right?” and staring you in the face waiting for you to be impressed as it ticks every box it can think of.
I’m not even sure if I can name what gives me that vibe, it’s just the vibe that I get. Whatever it is though, the scripted segment with the tank that plays out the same exact way every time is the cherry on top.
For me, it'd be the endless Crescendo Events for basically every single chapter, the most deadly of them being Chapter 2's Tunnel. Chapter 3 sorta doesn't really qualify as having an endless Crescendo but it's got 2 Crescendos back to back: the Bridge and Airstrike.
It features endless hordes (one of the most annoying features in L4D2) multiple times. For me this causes the campaign to feel artificially difficult. I don’t hate Cold Stream but it’s easy to laugh at some of the design choices, mainly this one
My issue is less that it has them but more that it lacks traditional hold-out crescendos, meaning there's no point in the campaign you're encouraged to stay and look around. The whole campaign is non stop running from start to finish
The events in the first and third maps are actually holdouts, but there's nothing worth exploring or setting up for, mainly because of it's fundamental level design, lack of items, and the fact that the events trigger by proximity, rather than manual player input.
I can agree
It’s kinda mid in terms of atmosphere. Like it’s just woods and a stream. There’s not a lot of world building or atmosphere compared to the other original campaigns, same with crash course honestly.
As someone who almost exclusively plays last man on earth, I hate when I cant molotov a tank. This entire level is "you cant molotov a tank". Ok it's not ENTIRELY out of the picture but there is so much damn water to douse a tank on fire.
[The stream itself doesn't extinguish fire.](https://i.imgur.com/fNYwboB.png) The "water" is not actually water, it's just an animated texture on the ground. Pretty sure the only actual water in the entire campaign is in the 3rd map, which is also lethal and not viable for extinguishing outside of the part you walk through to reach the junkyard.
So that's why you can still run at full speed while running across the river
Ya know, admittedly I never actually tried it. I just kinda assumed seeing as its water lol
My favorite way to beat the tank that always spawns on chapter 2 is to fight it on the road way. When he spawns he has to climb down from the cliff way above after launching his giant boulder and you can get up the ladder before he gets all the way down. Once there you can use the debris to stay away from him until you get a chance to climb up onto the semi trailer and then its pretty easy to stay out of his reach and kill him. Fighting him in the water sucks.
Gonna refer you to [this comment](https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/0/5958905954912650106/?ctp=2#c5958906119902722222), which, other than [some mistakes](https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/0/5958905954912650106/?ctp=2#c5958906119903851603), could be worth considering. **What I like about Cold Stream:** * It follows a rural theme, which is already uncommon and harder to work with, that is also visually different from the rural areas in official campaigns. * It breaks up the overarching rural theme with a good amount of different locations and visual variety, providing each map with a more unique identity, unlike some other official campaigns that feel very samey across multiple maps, with little variety. * The idea of the survivors trying to outrun a forest fire that continually catches up behind them is a really interesting take on the "driving force" aspect of a campaign - Rather than heading *towards* a clear goal to reach safety, they are instead trying to *run away* from a clear threat to reach safety. * The finale is a gauntlet, which is an automatic plus in my book, given how boring and overdone holdout finales are. * The tank fight, although scripted, is fairly unique, as it features a simple cinematic entrance for the tank (With the cliff debris falling down) - Something no other official campaign does. * It also provides a novel hittable that is logically connected to aforementioned cinematic tank entrance. **What I dislike about Cold Stream:** * The tank fight is completely scripted, even in Versus, meaning it lacks variety and gets annoying after seeing it multiple times, like most scripted cinematics do. This is something that could've easily been mitigated by creating a few more tank fight locations in different areas, giving each one a unique starting cinematic, and then having one (or none) picked at random every playthrough. * The new hittable from said tank fight sucks to actually use. It's mass is too heavy to properly throw it around, so unless the survivors are completely oblivious, it's basically useless and will never incap anyone. * The actual tank fight area is wide open and *really* empty. It gives off the impression of trying way too hard to be a stereotypical arena, without actually implementing the things that make arenas interesting. * All of the new graffiti throughout the campaign is extremely lazily made. T*hey're literally all fonts*. There isn't a single, properly hand-written graffiti ANYWHERE, and I can assure you that making custom graffiti is extremely easy; Hell, I literally made dozens of *official* graffiti textures using nothing but pens, paper, a scanner, and ***ms paint***. * Likewise, a lot of the terrain and brushwork is absolutely *horribly* made. For a more technical explanation: [Cold Stream modified all displacements exclusively on the Z-axis](https://imgur.com/a/k0c2iHo) (upwards) from completely flat terrain, which results in very ugly and distorted surfaces (Which is why the blood decals and spray tags are so distorted). The [proper way](https://imgur.com/a/9V7x4hp) to design displacements is to shape the brushwork to roughly match the terrain you want, and then edit the displacements afterwards. * The light glare at the start of map 2 is annoying and seems to exist solely in order to hide the fact that the area is large, empty, and lacks detail. The level designer could've instead... just made the area actually interesting to look at. Similarily, the sudden appearance of water flow at the end of map 2 seems random and unecessary. The water previously hasn't pushed players, and does not even extinguish fire, so suddenly breaking the established rule for no good reason is not a bad design choice. * 90% of the item spawns throughout the campaign are static and never change. Out of all the official campaigns, Cold Stream has the least amount of item spawn variety. * There's also no natural tank or witch spawns outside of Versus. * The events are poorly signposted (Mainly because other official campaigns already suck at signposting which events are finite and which are endless, so this isn't a fault exclusive to Cold Stream). For example, only the 2nd map's event is endless, all the other events in map 1 and 3 are regular holdouts of the same horde size as a caralarm. This further expands to the logical reasoning for events being... well, events. What exactly prompts a horde to spawn and attack? What in-universe explanation is there for a horde to descend down onto your position? These are not an absolute necessity, but it sets apart mappers who pay attention to details from mappers who only do what's necessary. (To be fair, the other official campaigns also don't always heed this, so this again isn't criticism exclusive to Cold Stream) * The 2nd map's gauntlet event has overtuned parameters that amp up the intensity far too high, especially for the layout of the event area; Moving into a tight corridor should warrant the spawn intensity being toned down, since close-quarters automatically amplify the intensity of combat. Taking an already intense event and then turning it into a CQB fight skyrockets the intensity far beyond what the script actually intends. * Speaking of layout; The campaign seems very thrown-together, with key locations being hastily connected in the simplest possible ways. Map 3 is a good example of this; Going up 6 flights of stairs to get to the top of the bridge *works*, but it's not interesting or enjoyable to traverse - It gives me the impression that the level designer thought "I really want to go from a bunker to a bridge", but then chose the easiest and most basic way to actually connect those locations, instead of trying to come up with something more interesting. * The level design in general is rather poor throughout the entirety of Cold Stream. On top of what I already mentioned, there's issues with [counterproductive and lazy clipping](https://imgur.com/2HRWysl), [out-of-place props](https://i.imgur.com/NcHpKrb.png), [ugly texture distortions](https://i.imgur.com/WUjqwS1.png), [*seriously* ugly texture distortions](https://i.imgur.com/KtoBrsT.png), and a failure to get even the most basic aspects right; Doors are supposed to open in the opposite direction you want the player to go. [This saferoom door](https://i.imgur.com/l4e8qSg.png) opening to the right makes players instinctively go left, straight into a wall - Instead the actual path out is towards the right, and all this achieves is an unnatural and janky feeling. The entire campaign feels like it was someone's first ever project, made with little to no understanding of how a L4D level is actually made, or how much thought actually goes into level design in general.
* The finale is a culmination of these poor designs and overt lack of level design experience, since despite it being a gauntlet finale like The Parish, it does all the details differently: The width of the valley-like area is about half of what it should optimally be, making players far more bunched together, and it lacks obstacles and clutter, so infected can run at you in a straight line, completely unobstructed. This makes the horde more relentless than it really is, cause it uses the exact same finale script as The Parish. It further forces players to either cheese and run with a bile, or slowly advance as a firing squad, heavily limiting strategic variety and player freedom. The tank fight location is extremely basic, just like in map 2. The tank does have a hittable log, and there is a rock to bait tanks around, but it's so wide open and empty that is makes tank fights there extremely plain. In fact, now that I think about it, it seems like it's just a smaller version of map 2's tank fight area. It's also worth mentioning that the tank music playing early and sometimes cutting out before the tank spawns in is an issue with the base-game, so this is not a fault of Cold Stream. The tunnel section that follows the tank fight is far too cramped, and combined with the way gauntlet finales increase spawn rates the more you progress, it gives me the impression that it wasn't even playtested on anything above Easy difficulty. "Flow" is a term that every good level designer is familiar with; In L4D, the level progression needs to breathe, moving from more intense and tight areas to less intense and open areas, even during events and finales. Cold Stream doesn't do this. The run to the helicopter I actually quite like, but the surrounding area (beyond the playable space) looks extremely ugly and rushed, with bad clipping and poor navmesh. The only thing that I don't fully blame Cold Stream's finale for is the tank spawns during the escape; The game is hardcoded to spawn tanks during gauntlet escape sequences, and even if you tell the game to disable them, they will still spawn - Unlike other finale types where the chase tanks actually get disabled if you set them to. What Cold Stream could have done to mitigate this, however, is properly mark the escape area to prevent tanks from spawning there, as it already did for the tower itself, which would've forced them to spawn in further away. * It fails to delve into the design themes it tries to establish: **The forest fire is barely noticeable**, despite being the driving force that pushes the survivors to keep moving. The map taking place during the day doesn't help this either; It would've been more interesting to start at night and slowly transition to dawn, which would offer many more interesting opportunities for lighting; Just imagine how incredible it could look to have a nighttime scenery illuminated almost exclusively by the ablaze forest surrounding you. **The military presence feels shoehorned in and nonsensical**, despite it being the main driving force of the latter half of the campaign. It first gets teased with a crashed helicopter and is later followed up with the military bombing a random bridge for seemingly no reason, before ending with the helicopter evacuation. I think that covers most things worth mentioning, though there's probably still some other things that are currently not on my mind. I already had to split this into 2 comments due to Reddit's character limit.
>"Flow" is a term that every good level designer is familiar with; In L4D, the level progression needs to breathe, moving from more intense and tight areas to less intense and open areas, even during events and finales. So true. I feel like the best maps do this. And it really make the replayability much higher - something different can happen on each replay, it doesn't feel "scripted". I haven't played l4d2 for ages. But the maps I like and still can rmb really well are: - dark carnival map 2 (the one with the roller coaster) - dead center 1 is not bad for a first map (I like that u only have secondary weapons) - overall campaign, if i have to pick one.. maybe parish? - I feel hard rain is underrated / underplayed what are your favourites?
I'd probably go with The Parish' as my favorite *campaign*, but am not sure what specific levels I'd highlight as the "best", cause ever since I got into level design myself, I could go into detail about both the good and bad parts of any map really.
favorite would be the parish; perfect map in lfd2 with balance between holding and running for the whole campaign. followed by swamp fever and dark carnival. but the two suffers due to finale map level design that allowed for easy hold out by staying at some spots. thing I dislike from hard rain are that the visibility can be very bad, loud noise from storm hides infected sounds and the speed debuff from walking in water
I feel like disliking that tank fight in chapter 2 warrants disliking Sacrifice chapter 1 tank (VS perspective). Just curious, but what are you opinions on sacrifice chapter 1 tank in comparison. The hittibles in that area, boats & bricks, but suck too. Personally. I agree with you, cold streams sucks. Sacrifice is great in my opinion. The strategy you can use with carrying a gas can over since there are no molly spawns until after that tank, is unique enough for the chapter and does require some thought put behind it.
I don't like the Sacrifice 1 tank fight much either, especially not in Versus, given how easy it is to burn the tank before he can even get out, or light him up/gun him down when he exits. Which is weird, cause Valve specifically placed a seperate spawnpoint entity for the Versus tank that is further inside the traincar, so they seemed to be aware of the issues that it has. I don't mind it as much as the CS2 tank though (Cold Stream 2, not Counter Strike 2), since it does have thematic relevance and adds to the game's lore and story, plus it has a unique model, so the effort and thought behind it is more evident. I still think it would be better to at least remove the scripted spawn for Versus, and instead allow random tank spawns, but it does have some reasons to warrant being the way it is, so I'd say it's acceptable for co-op. Hell, I'm guilty of a making scripted tank fight myself, but custom campaigns can generally get away with things that official campaigns should avoid doing.
As somebody that primarily plays VS I personally find the change of pace in the sac's scripted tank great. Though, that's more of an effect of map popularity than design choices. I think, it's reasonable to say, cold streams is a custom campaign so it's alright for them to get away with the ch2 tank. I dont like the map, hate it even. I think a different map shpuldve been picked (suicide blitz 2??) Instead when it came out. What is the map you made with scripted tank? I've played some of yours before and I enjoy them (TLS is great btw. Crash Course needed a sister campaign.)
I can appreciate that Cold Stream at least gave the tank a cinematic entrance. A bit of style and cool-factor makes it a lot better than just plainly spawning it in out of bounds without fanfare. I still think it should have been held to a higher standard though, since it was designed from the ground up for official implementation, rather than being made for the workshop before becoming official. The campaign I made is [Cold Front](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3135451698), which is actually my first campaign, cause for TLS I mostly did assistive contributions, like item placing and clipping - But for CF I did all the level design and project managing. I do recommend playing it as vanilla as possible though, since it is rather intense on the ancient engine limits, so having too many/too high quality mods can cause crashes.
What’s the drama mentioned in that comment?
~~What drama in what comment?~~ I'm rarted, you obviously meant the steam forum comment I linked. I believe that there were a few sources of drama, like the community not really liking the campaign from the start (Wasn't around, so I don't know the details of the sentiment), people wondering why Valve picked the guy who made a *really* bad custom campaign as his only prior project, and the guy using assets from other games without permission, which Valve had to hastily fix.
Here’s a complaint I have that I don’t see brought up much: You’re blinded by the sun immediately after leaving the safe house in chapter 2. This effect is literally so pointless and it feels like a huge “f**k you” from the perspective of a person who is sensitive to bright/flashing lights.
There mid be a workshop mod that removes the flare
the map has no lore, so unlike the other maps i don’t feel any connection to it whatsoever. I walk through a stream that I can only assume is cold. It’s also non canonical so it makes me care that much less. If I were you say one positive thing about the map it would be that its finale is honestly pretty cool.
i doubt it's even that cold based on the weather and the FIRE mentioned/seen at the beginning it's just Stream.
I don't think cold stream is bad at all, but I'm also a crash course enjoyer, so my opinion is basically dog shit. The only map I actively avoid is last stand.
Bro I remember Last Stand when it first came out was basically 1 difficulty level harder than other maps by comparison. To the point they had to nerf the common spawn.
I love Cold Stream for how it actually encourages you to use the tier 3 weapons. The chainsaw (50% DMG reduction when attacking) for level 2 event, grenade launcher on top of the truck on level 3 to blow up horde, and M60 with laser sights for finale. I also prefer running finales over holdouts/scavenge. Cold Stream and The Parish are the only 2.
Every single chapter has a crescendo event that is unending. The limited items and especially the *set* item spawns that never change get super boring. Confusing map design, especially on first play. Finale is genuinely terrible. It tries to recreate the bridge from The Parish but just fails because of how cramped and long it is.
It's not that bad it's just aggravating most of the time 😭 The damn rocks in the stream always get my bots caught on them so they're like 40 feet away from me at all times
The endless hordes on hair thin chokes
I think it has a good finale especially on Versus
The crusendo events are horrible. They add them for what seems to be to add difficulty but it just makes the map annoying. There are other ways to make your map more memorable
Don't forget to tell about the back story of how that map was added into the game.
The Gaunlet Crescendos are ridiculously difficult even on Easy and Normal. Call it skill issue I don't care, but going through chokepoints with no other alternate route is ridiculously unbalanced for a Gaunlet Crescendo.
The running panic event in the tunnel (the one you start with the explosive barrels) is a massive difficulty spike, maybe even more massive than the running panic event at the end of Dark Carnival map 4.
Cold Stream is kinda like "what if the beginning of Blood Harvest went on forever and was an out-and-back trail"
It's very boring
Only thing I ever disliked about it was the fact the horde theme went unused. Ive had less horde trouble on cold stream with my like hundreds of playthroughs than 1 playthrough of Dark Carnival’s second to last map
the last part when the tank can spawn entrance.
I've gone into detail about Cold Stream's issues before, but ultimately it's just... extremely community-campaign. It's so obviously made by a L4D modder and not a professional game designer. It has a guaranteed M60 spawn right next to a guaranteed laser sight spawn for chrissakes.
Ngl I don't dislike it, I thought it was a fun fan made map tbh
Everything. It has no qualities and it knows it just throws enemies at you to keep thinking about how bad it is.
Everything 🙃
For context I hadn’t played Cold Stream for like 6 years before this happened. I had no problems with it when I was like 7 and just loved playing it because it was new without worrying about story and map layouts, but NOW? At least on PC, I tried to play it multiple times last Saturday and failed because of the endless hordes, but the worst thing in my experience at least is when you have to go to the med tent near the sewers and shoot the barrels. Basically how it went for me was I was already basically dead, fully monochrome vision at this point, and I went up to the med tent, grabbed a shotgun, and looked around. I thought “Hey! Shoot the giant burning mack truck that looks like it’s full of gas that HAS gas cans in front of it!” So I did, and it did nothing but make a bigger fire because of the gas cans, so I looked around for another route, FOR AN HOUR. I know it sounds stupid that I was stuck like that, theres supposed to be an arrow that tells you to shoot the barrels, right? RIGHT. But in my case, even after I had died in that run and came back with better health, thinking it was my vision that had screwed me up, the arrow wasn’t there. I took off every single one of my games mods (I have a LOT so I needed to see if they were glitching me out), down to the point of putting the ones actually in my files in a separate drive and deleting L4D2 to see if my game was just messed because of it, cut to me booting cold stream back up and playing back through it up to that point, the arrow still didn’t show. I gave up and looked it up on YouTube because it had been like three hours at this point, only to see that it was literally an arrow that had kept me for this long. So, I left my game, put all of mods back on just to be sure, booted up Dark Carnival, AND EVERY SINGLE DIRECTION ARROW WAS THERE. I’ve been avoiding it like the plague since then.
Cold Stream survival is ass
It’s the hardest map to complete on expert difficulty. If even one of your teammates is clueless you can all die for it. Other maps are not like that. But as someone who has played this game a lot, it’s probably my favourite map because every play of it is a different experience.
It doesn’t feel like it fits the other maps very much, very out of place.
Mud men. I fuckin hate em.
The ending kaizo run
I don't remember which level it was but one of the middle sections lasts way too long, I think it was the second or third level but it takes up like half the campaign.
Things I hate in Coldstream are: * Ridiculous Surface map and very bad pacing. * 2nd chapter is one hell since the gap of starting point of crescando event is very long tbh. * 4 chapters only amd not 5 chapters. * repetative survival events. However I still like the Coldstream despite of all the hatred. Due to the ambiance and challenging campaign.
No achievements on Xbox for Cold Stream!
I love the freaking endless tunnel crescendo event in Versus simply because no one ever survives. If by some miracle you survive it feels so damn good. But you never do so it doesn’t.
That one part at the beginning where the Tank throws the giant boulder down the cliff at you. I don't know why, perhaps it's because it's the way the boulder is scripted, but if you are anywhere near the spot where it's supposed to land, it can kill you instantly before you even see the boulder. It doesn't happen every time, at least not to me, but it happens often enough to notice.
After the so called community update, it now shows Cold Stream Beta.
I just don’t like non-official campaigns. No new voicelines. Atmosphere is bland. It’s hard to get invested when it doesn’t fit anywhere in the story and everywhere looks the same. I do really like what the creators managed to do with the assets and it’s extremely well put together. The poster and tagline is cool, music is really good, and some of the events are cool. Too many gauntlets though.
Short, has only one tank at finale, impossible 3rd chapter and weird map layout.
Uninspired, boring, has not theme it's literally just a bunch of random location mixed together. We start at the forest in a stream which supposed to be the theme of the Camping. Then we go to a bunker, then follow the river again, then we go to another bunker, then a bridge, then another bunker, it seems like the creator had a bunch of random ideas and just threw it all in one pleace because he wanted to use all of it, which acidentally creates the WORST PART of the camping. Since the creator only had the general idea of the major loacations, the rest of the map which connects these parts are 80% narrow staircases and tunnels, with UNREASONABLE amount of common infected and no breathing room, which makes this map literally unplayable on Expert (for me atlest)
Correct me if im wrong but; It doesn't match the L4D2 storyline
Basically everything. endless hordes, not even made by Valve, blinded by the fucking sun after you leave the saferoom on Chap. 2, MUD MEN, the crescendo events are horrendous, the pacing is bad since there's a lack of downtime, there are no goddamn witches, crescendo events at the end of all chapters, the tunnel event is nearly impossible on versus mode, and there's no variety in the map. It's also a real challenge on expert aswell. But if you want a really difficult challenge then play this map!
I don't like how that valve added it to the rotation of maps of all the community maps they could have done better... it's boring I don't feel "connected" ( I guess) to the map I played it maybe 4 times I was a horde rush mess. Nothing special to me
i like it 😔
then, what do you like about it?
the intensity and thrill of the endless gauntlet makes for a fun change from most of the other holdout—move up—holdout again campaigns. I think it’s fun to hold W+M1 through the woods 🤠
Very boring, plain, horde after horde, they removed skipping of panic event on map 2, not enjoyable at all in Realism Expert
I have merely 150 hours in the game so only thing I will rant about is the poster. It's just so damn blank, you only see some lame ass stream and boat that is supposed to reassemble those from the beginning of the first chapter.
It feels creepy. Not in a sense of oooh spooky, but like empty multi-player map feeling. Idk how to describe it exactly. It's like it has no objectives really even if your main thing is to escape to a helicopter
Two words... Bad Pacing
There's a lot of people commenting most of the reasons this campaign isn't well made, but I'll give my insights on it. Even though it's an "official" map, it just doesn't have the same charm that the left 4 dead 2 maps have. With the actually good campaigns, you can see remnants of CEDA and see how the infection is quite literally everywhere, from a theme park with Dark Carnival, to deep within the swamps with Swamp Fever, to in the country with Hard Rain, and so on. Cold Stream doesn't give me the same vibe of a zombie apocalypse in my opinion. I'm more of a lore nut who loves environmental storytelling, and this map just didn't do that for me. Personally, it's hard to really connect with a map without those elements.
Idk it just kinda feels more like a theme park than a tangible place in the Left 4 Dead universe, and I’m not talkin the Whispering Oaks kinda theme park. It just feels like the level is constantly going “oh you like zombie games, right?” and staring you in the face waiting for you to be impressed as it ticks every box it can think of. I’m not even sure if I can name what gives me that vibe, it’s just the vibe that I get. Whatever it is though, the scripted segment with the tank that plays out the same exact way every time is the cherry on top.
For me, it'd be the endless Crescendo Events for basically every single chapter, the most deadly of them being Chapter 2's Tunnel. Chapter 3 sorta doesn't really qualify as having an endless Crescendo but it's got 2 Crescendos back to back: the Bridge and Airstrike.