Left 4 Dead 2 DLC - The Passing - campaign mode review

As I've written elsewhere, I love Left 4 Dead and its sequel - balls-out co-op zombie carnage.  L4D2's first chunk of DLC, The Passing (subtitled "Nobody survives forever"), has just been released for download (560 Microsoft points), a package I'd been looking forward to since it was originally announced.  The USP of this release is that it unites the survivors of the first game with those of the second. Except for one. Yes, the 'passing' of the title refers to the death of one of the original band of survivors.  At least I think it does - I suppose it could refer to the two groups passing, or the passing of the L4D flame between the two groups. Hell, I don't know - it's just an interpretation! I'll not give a spoiler to who the dead survivor is, other than to say that I guessed right at which one it was going to be...

Ellis, Rochelle, Coach & Nick look apprehensive, wondering who will be sacrificed as a ploy to flog DLC for L4D3

However, it is not the death of a L4D survivor that is the story that plays out in the campaign - that will happen in a future L4D slice of DLC (and, possibly, a digital comic). Rather, this is a 3-chapter vignette that covers what happened to Coach, Nick, Ellis and Rochelle  between the end of the  Dead Center campaign from L4D2  (where they flee a shopping mall in a NASCAR) and the start of Dark Carnival (where they kill zombie clowns - the worst type of clowns).  During this period they meet up - or pass, if you will - the original survivors, now reduced to a trio, who then provide cover for you in the evac chapter.

I've blogged about  L4D2 before and enjoy the campaign mode a lot. What the player gets with The Passing is more of the same, other than the difficulty. As I'd said even  before my L4D2 review, is a very hard game and that is part of what makes it so enjoyably satisfying upon completing a chapter. Many's the occasion where I've limped towards the evac vehicle, health dangerously low, with infected snapping at my stumbling heels.  The feeling of exhilaration on finally getting into the car/boat/copter or whatever and the credits starting to roll, particularly after a series of failures, is one of the best feelings in gaming this generation. That feeling is missing from The Passing, as it is not very challenging at all.


In previous campaigns - The Parish, I'm looking at you - I've sometimes spent as long on the evac chapter as I have on the rest of the campaign put together.  On The Passing, we completed the evac level on the first attempt with no-one even getting incapped, let alone killed, even though we made a few mistakes along the way (it is a petrol can collecting level and there was lone wolfing at times) .  In previous campaigns, that standard of play would have taken the team out early on - this time we weren't punished.  I was disappointed with this lack of challenge because without that challenge, it's just not L4D to me.  I was also surprised - I don't think it could have been intentional dumbing down (like, to skip to another series, Super Paper Mario on the Wii), as this DLC package is only of interest to those that liked the, bloody hard,  parent game.  Weird.


There are a few minor gameplay tweaks in the package - an extra melee weapon (a golf club), a new gun (M60), the obvious extra achievements and, probably the most major tweak as far as the campaign is concerned, an extra uncommon infected, the 'fallen survivor'.  This latter addition, as the name suggests, is a survivor that has succumbed to the zombie plague and, unlike all other infected, when they see you they run in the opposite direction.  They also drop items - health packs, molotovs etc - if you manage to catch up and kill them.  Again.


I'm not a big fan of the other game modes in L4D2.  Playing as a special infected (spawn, get killed quickly, wait, spawn, get killed quickly, wait) isn't my idea of fun.  I did try the new mode included in the DLC, 'Mutation', which, as I understand it, is intended to be a regularly updated  mash-up of other L4D2 game modes.  When I played it was a mixture of 'Realism' and 'Versus'.  I didn't find it much fun but if you like either it may be for you.


All in all I found this quite a disappointing slice of DLC, certainly when compared to the DLC from the first game, which I really enjoyed.  It also didn't compare favourably to the recently released 'Desperate Escape' DLC for Resident Evil 5, which I thought was excellent (and will blog about soon).