Greetings and Salutations, Blog Readers!

Continuing in chronological order, when the creators of Left 4 Dead put the second one together and catered to fans who wanted a continuing story line (like myself, for example) they created Crash Course, which also served as a way to introduce the old players to the new game, allowing the new character types and weapons to be featured in the game.

Crash Course served to offer a bridge gap between No Mercy, when the characters fly off in a helicopter, to where it picks up in the woods with Death Toll, which previously, didn’t have a smooth “how they got from blank to blank: story.

I find that people either love or hate Crash Course, either finding it massive, immersive, fun, and a also great quick game that can be played longer if desired, or they hate it for being way too long, while also being way too short, with only two chapters.

I personally love this campaign, not only because it provides a story line and makes the game more of a story line, but it is a fun game you can take a short while with, or a long time with, and has plenty of traditional nods to other horror movies, including the rescue truck being a nod to 2004 remake of Dawn of Dead.

So, the campaign opens up with the guys giving Zoey a hard time for having shot down the pilot who had apparently turned into a zombie, which we later find out is either because of his interaction with a zombie which he mentioned in the finale in No Mercy, or because the virus is, in fact, possibly airborne, and our characters aren’t so much immune as much as they simply are carriers of the infection. We find this out much later though, so…

Anyways, both chapters are fairly round a bout, and frankly, you can get a whole campaigns worth of raiding and searching, in one chapter. This campaign also has car alarms, some of which seem to appear random.

You end up, after a long or short, your choice, walk to through the campaign, at a bridge, which has a barricade, which conveniently has a giant gun.

The game forces you to fire the gun to destroy the barricade, instead of climbing the barricade as one would likely do in real life. After the horde dies out and the fire clears, you can make your way across, and then clear some cars, and a small walk down a hill, to get to a safe room, completing chapter one, and being halfway through the level.

The level can be long or short, depending on your choices, and is pretty fun, feeling similar yet different from the prevues campaigns. In real time, this is one of the later released maps with the Left 4 Dead characters, yet in the story, it is the second map…either way you get the feeling of the a separate and different type of place from other campaigns, to really make each campaign feel different.

So, second chapter has much of the same kind of stuff as the first campaign, with multiple pathways to get to every point, plenty of spots for looting, and plenty of spots to pick up the new guns for the second game, because remember, this is meant to be a crash course in the new game, as well as Crash Course the game.

Eventually, you find a choke point to allow you to jump over into a truck yard, where you find an awesome heavily armed van. And, at this point, the game has only ever had “radio for help” finales, but in this one, you turn a generator on to lower the vehicle. Also special to this game is the generator not working halfway through, allowing someone to jump down and restart the generator…foreshadowing the other new campaign the creators ported in when Left 4 Dead 2 was being released: The Sacrifice.

The campaign is a bit boring in some ways, but, look, walking through boring cities can be boring. This level is fun, enjoyable, and a quick run that can be made long. You can also use the space to film Left 4 Dead videos if you need, because of all the random paths to take.

So, it isn’t all bad.

The finale is like the rest, minus the restarting of the generator, and after two waves of hordes and two Tanks, the truck is lowered, you hop on, and trip the light fantastic on out of there.

I would give it like, 3.5 to 4 stars, because it is pretty fun, while also chill. I do see why it can be boring, but over all, it’s a chill little campaign, and isn’t the worst one in the franchise.

Give it a play and tell me what you think

Thanks for reading

❤️

Abbi

PS- If you want to play the game yourself, you can click this link, to buy your own copy, and at no cost to you, I get a percentage! Huzzuh!