Like every Value game, Left 4 Dead 2 has a vibrant and expansive modding community who have created brilliant content over the years, including custom campaigns with new settings, weapons, and zombies for players to experience. Amongst all this content, a few truly standout custom campaigns showcase the best of the community and are the real highlights that every player should try. With that said, we’ve collected the ten best custom campaigns in Left 4 Dead 2 that we recommend you play the next time you fancy some zombie killing with friends.
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10) Helms Deep
Let’s start with a simple survival map to get the list going, and it’s a great setting to kick us off. This custom map is a survival-only affair set in the fort of Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and features the familiar chambers, interiors, and high and mighty walls of the iconic fortress seen in Rohan’s stand against Saruman forces.
There’s nothing particularly unique about this map other than its setting, but that doesn’t stop it from being a fun addition to your library of levels. Plus, with a few extra mods to add different melee weapons or infected, you could easily set up a more roleplay-centric game with swords, shields, and a knightly appearance.
9) Deathcraft 2
With its worldwide appeal, it’s no surprise that Minecraft made its way into the Left 4 Dead world, and it’s easily one of the more unique and unexpected crossovers we’ve seen. Deathcraft 2 is a hefty, seven-chapter campaign that has players make their way through a blocky world complete with zombies, sounds, weapons, and visuals from the Minecraft world.
It’s not too complicated, but it’s still a fun campaign for fans to try. It even has an Easter egg that sees you take on an Ender dragon and get yourself some Diamond Swords as a reward.
8) Suicide Blitz 2
Suicide Blitz 2 sees players travel across an infested city to reach a football stadium for extraction, complete with unique and varied environments to traverse, an epic train escape sequence, custom football-geared tank models, and an explosive ending that will test even seasoned survivors. You can also play these maps on Versus, Survival, and Scavenge.
Add with that some great level design and variety and a few Easter eggs that reference games like Portal and Half-Life, and you’ve got a great package.
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7) I Hate Mountains 2
I Hate Mountains 2 is filled with Left 4 Dead vibes that make it look and feel like an official campaign. In this campaign, players make their way through the North American mountains to find a way to escape.
These include huge forests, a mansion, a sprawling underground complex, and a lumberyard, all of which look great with moody, dark lighting and plenty of well-crafted environments to explore and navigate.
6) Journey to Splash Mountain
Everyone loves a theme park, but what about a theme park full of zombies? That’s what you get with Journey to Splash Mountain, a custom campaign with players making a trip to Disneyland to find it overrun with infected.
Each level has plenty of custom models and textures to create the huge theme park, and you’ll even get to jump on attractions and rides. If you are mowing down the hordes of the dead, you might as well have fun while you do it.
5) Warcelona
Warcelona is one of the most popular custom campaigns that have come to Left 4 Dead 2, and it more than earns its place in the higher tiers of this list. Created by a small team of 7, this campaign takes place in Barcelona, Spain.
It features a new environment created by the developers, with remodeled infected and new textures inspired and based on Spanish aesthetics and architecture like cathedrals, and includes a difficult finale that makes you earn your freedom.
4) Yama
This campaign offers one of the most unique settings on this list and one of the more challenging experiences. Yama takes place in an infected Tokyo and has players journey from Tokyo’s red light district into more rural areas, eventually reaching Kyoto’s Kiyomizu Temple and riding cable cars up a mountain. It’s all very epic.
Yama also presents a new challenge for players, with scarce resources and huge areas and levels to navigate, making this campaign particularly tough, and requires teamwork and a more measured and careful approach to encounters and exploration. It’s also a very cool setting you won’t see in any other custom campaign.
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3) Dark Wood
Dark Wood takes its design inspiration from horror games like F.E.A.R and Silent Hill. Players travel through various environments, including dark and derry woods, caves, abandoned labs, industrial zones, and ancient catacombs to escape the infected horde.
It also includes some cool easter eggs and secret weapons to find during your escape and has a couple of unique events to look forward to in this well-crafted, challenging experience.
2) Day Break
Day Break has been a fan favorite for years, and more than earns its place in this list. This campaign will take you to sunny San Francisco, where players must escape the city before it’s blown away.
The campaign features faithful recreation of the city’s iconic landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge, The Palace of Fine Arts, all the way to Alcatraz Island for its epic finale, along with plenty of custom assets unique to this campaign. What’s more, it can also be played in versus, survival, and scavenge hunt.
1) Urban Flight
We believe this Custom Campaign is the cream of the crop, and it has a slew of reasons why we have placed Urban Flight at the top of our list. For one, this campaign is visually stunning and varied; it also offers dynamic pathways, giving players a choice of multiple routes and ways to approach a level.
It also features a multi-stage finale and a scavenger hunt of Easter eggs to find that all add environmental storytelling into the mix. Each playthrough feels different and manages to be both challenging and rewarding, thanks to the dynamic nature of the chapters, and it’s filled with content no matter how you take it on.
Published: Feb 9, 2023 02:23 pm