I happily played the re-released L4D maps, but avoided Cold Stream until I read this last night. Now I'm wishing I'd continued to avoid it. Many of the set pieces could have been a lot of fun, but they were really poorly utilized.
For example, it can be fun to fight over to a tower and then fend of the horde from high ground while they try to clamber up the sides. Cold Stream has a tower at the very beginning and very end, but the first can simply be ignored and the second is just a dressed up stairway to the helicopter.
Tunnels are also used poorly. There are several sections of L4D and L4D2 that use the tension and claustrophobia well, but in Cold Stream they lack any atmosphere. The constant stream of zombies is also overwhelming . . . unless you have a bile bomb, or get to the entrance quickly enough to lay down constant automatic fire, in which case they're no threat at all.
Between the bland setting and the poor use of gauntlets/terrain I rather wish Valve had just scrapped this to build something in-house.
For example, it can be fun to fight over to a tower and then fend of the horde from high ground while they try to clamber up the sides. Cold Stream has a tower at the very beginning and very end, but the first can simply be ignored and the second is just a dressed up stairway to the helicopter.
Tunnels are also used poorly. There are several sections of L4D and L4D2 that use the tension and claustrophobia well, but in Cold Stream they lack any atmosphere. The constant stream of zombies is also overwhelming . . . unless you have a bile bomb, or get to the entrance quickly enough to lay down constant automatic fire, in which case they're no threat at all.
Between the bland setting and the poor use of gauntlets/terrain I rather wish Valve had just scrapped this to build something in-house.
