I just got done playing my first run through of Death Toll in versus mode. Although we didn’t get to the finale due to time constraints, I can sum the Survivor experience up in two words: FRIKKING HARD.

Raining Death

The Death Toll levels lend themselves very well to long range hunter pounces, similar to the first level of No Mercy. Even in seemingly enclosed spaces such as the tunnel and the drains, there is a lot of vertical space for the Hunters to use to gain height and therefore damage. The only disappointing factor here was that some of the rooftops in the town were out-of-bounds, seemingly at random. This broke the immersion somewhat when playing Infected, especially given the large expanses of rooftop that you are allowed on.

Infected Paradise

The entire campaign seems to be a cross between the hardest sections of No Mercy and Blood Harvest put together. You’ve got the tall buildings from the former interspersed with the wooded  pathways of the latter. Hunters reign supreme in the built up areas, while Smokers and Boomers can easily ambush the Survivors from the cover of the rocks and trees elsewhere.

The Going Gets Tougher

Two sections of the map really stood out as extremely difficult. The first of these was the Crescendo event in the drains. In our runthrough, there was a Witch spawned right beneath the pipe where the Survivors enter this area. She was deadly to both teams, as there was no way to spot her unless you were standing right on top of her. Both times she was able to incapacitate and kill the first Survivor out of the pipe, and then the rest of the Special Infected cleaned up pretty quickly after that.

Second was the bottleneck leaving the trainyard as the Survivors head toward the Church. Getting over the fence on top of the train car proved insanely difficult for the first team to try it. Each time, a Smoker on the roof of the building dragged a Survivor down onto the floor, meaning that everyone else had to go help him then run all the way back round to the stairs to try again. By that time, the Smoker had recharged and the process was repeated. Three times. Every time the Survivors seemed more and more desperate to get across as the Special Infected ate away at their health. Finally, they managed to get one Survivor over, but the other three got Huntered or Boomed or Smoked on the other side of the fence. The Infected took them all down pretty quickly.

Thoughts

So, given the higher difficulty level the Death Toll campaign posed compared to the existing  versus maps, was the experience still fun. Damn right it was! The most fun games for me are the ones where no-one makes it to the end of a level, thus keeping the scores tight and meaning that every extra step towards the safe room really counts. There are limits to this though. Our survivor team didn’t even make it to the other side of the bridge at the beginning of the first level due to an exceptionally good ambush right as we left the cars. Still, with a bit more skill, luck, and knowledge of the levels, I think Death Toll could well become my favourite versus map.

Everything Old is New

Besides the game experience itself, I want to express the pure excitement that is exploring a level that you’ve been through many times before from a different angle. Before each level even started proper, the Infected team was running around, trying to find new and exciting places to spawn and ambush from. Is that rock over there climbable? I wonder if I can drag a Survivor off that ladder over there? These questions never cross the mind of players in campaign mode; They’ve got more important things to think about. I’ve heard several complaints that Valve was skimping on content by only offering existing maps as new versus options. I would disagree. There is a whole new process of learning the best ambush spots, the best places to hold out while you heal, the best place to kite the Tank. All of this without a single new piece of geometry. I adore it.