Left 4 Dead has become one of my favorite games. It’s funny because when the demo first came out, it scared the crap out of me. I remember falling down into the apartment in No Mercy and standing in a dark room with only a flashlight on the gun and ugly zombies staring me in the face having no idea what I was supposed to do. Let’s just say that I didn’t last 5 minutes before I turned the game off and left. A couple of months later a close friend was interested in playing so I gave it another try and I was hooked. Talking to friends while doing the campaign makes all the difference, at least to me. It raised my brave meter very high. After a month of playing all the campaigns many times, boredom set in as it was getting hard to choose a map, as we had played them all over and over.
Enter the world of L4D mods. At the urging of yet another friend, we downloaded and tried a couple of game map mods and I wanted to share them with you. The first is called Death Aboard. One of the favorite mods going around, this campaign is really good and really long.
The chapters might be long but the map detail is good and worth the extra playing time. It starts in a very familiar looking prison complex and you make your way outside the prison and on toward the docks. Look out for the car that drops out of the shipping crate, that was a surprise the first time around. About halfway through, you end up on a ship that is leaning and shuddering adding some interesting perspective to making your way to the safe house. The lighting could be better, as it was sometimes hard to figure out which way to go since everything was pretty dark. The final chapter takes place at a lighthouse. The rescue vehicle is a hot air balloon; it’s a bit slow but really cool. Don’t let the slowness fool you, making your way from the lighthouse to the rescue point is difficult. I’ve played twice (on normal) and have yet to make it. The mod has a few annoying bugs regarding missing med-packs, but they don’t really affect playability. The game takes about an hour and a half to play and I recommend you try it.
The next mod to try is called Dam it! The entire campaign is one chapter long and takes about 30 minutes to play on normal. Short but very enjoyable. You make your way in the dark from the woods outside to a nearby dam.
Entering the dam you then make your way through the inner workings and finally to the top where you are rescued by a helicopter. I enjoyed this one and having a short campaign was nice.
To get these mods, click the links above to reach the downloads. Double click the zipped folder on your desktop and it should auto-install. If not, then drag and drop the mod file into the addons folder in your Left 4 Dead folder. Each player must have the same files and the same version. Have fun and let me know if you try them out. If I find more good mods, I’ll let you know.
The mods in L4D make me wish I had the game on the PC… or a PC for gaming for that matter.
buy a decent PC for gaming Matt and get two hard drives, install OS X on one and windows on the other. Then it won’t feel like a waste buying a crappy PC just for gaming. You’ll have a nice computer for work as well.
Absolutely! I really wish something like this would take off for the consoles. I really want to get my hands on that Macho Man Randy Savage soundboard for the zombies……. Who DOESN’T want to hear, “Snap into a Slim Jim!” in the zombie apocalypse?
I’ve played both and I really prefer it on the PC, better control of the characters. The console controller feels awkward after using the mouse.
console FPS is a joke. but if it is all you have, you have to deal with it.
On consoles i always feel like i miss out on really cool mods i hate it. instead we get crappy dlc with bugs. turns looks at fallout 3 box shakes fist.
To be honest, I thought Death Aboard sucked – no fault to the creator, it’s just that the Director doesn’t work that well on custom maps. Most of the time I spent running through empty hallways and parts of the map where there were just flat out no spawns at all. Made for quite a boring time.
On Versus it was a bit better, but not much.
We never had a problem with no spawning, it almost seemed like there were too many zombies. Especially in one area that looked like the trash compactor from Star Wars. Did you play the updated map? 6.1?
I prefer consoles for everything, I’d just much rather sit on the sofa instead of at a desk playing games. That said, one thing I do regret not having is access to all these mods.
My only gripe on Death Aboard? The lighting (or lack of) is awful. I don’t have the best eyesight to begin with, so I had to crank my brightness all the way up in order to move. Especially on the very beginning of Dam It. This throws colors off, and will actually blind you if you walk thru a cloud of smoke from a Smoker.
Sad to say, all of my L4D content is about to come off of my machine as I’m putting in a much larger harddrive and reinstalling my OS…But once I do get it in, I plain to focus on many more of the cool mods out there. I’ve been wanting to try out the Zelda Map which will have you battling actual bosses…And a special death-trap map known as Powerstation (I think that is the name)
i still cant believe they have l4d 2 on its way.
yeah it makes no sense haha. just give people an expansion, that is all they want.
L4D mods for the PC just like HL2 + CSS have all given us a better ‘excuse’ to play the game it also gives the community to get involved and give us the sense and feel a true zombie apocalypse.
L4D2 really has to be truly something new + innovative to grab me otherwise I wont buy it. Just like the other comments above me I’d prefer the DLC content instead of a full retail game.
Unfortunately Xbox 360 owners will still be bored with the original maps but maybe some of the best community based maps will get included for the 360 in an update
Far as I’m concerned, I’m a little sight challenged. Not exactly night-blind, but when things are dark, I have trouble.
And my monitor is already cranked up full brightness. I’m sorry but the darkness of DA just ruins it for me.
I no L4D2 I May not buy – I didnt like the looks of the new characters.
also I can’t wait for l4dmods.com to release their dead before dawn map
They mentioned something bout the addition of their 5th character
I’m Hoping it’s a badass survivor that you find in the mall
L4D Is the best game I ever bought – even better than Unreal Tournament 3
[...] of the original Left 4 Dead extra campaigns were great (see here). Here’s to hoping the new batch of content turns out to be as good if not better. Since I [...]