Dead Before Dawn Review

[[Worm]]

Dead Before Dawn is the long awaited "Dawn of the Dead" mod for L4D. Its been years in the making, originally supposed to be for HL2 under the name "No More Room in Hell". The mod was finally released the Halloween.

Frankly, I'm disappointed, majorly disappointed. At just over a gig, this mod was hyped beyond the moon and promised to perform miracles, being dubbed "better than l4ds actual campaign" and winning ModDBs "mod of the year" award before even being released.

So to begin - the level designs... are just terrible. In the outside maps are tons of dead ends and it is foliage hell. The maker also went ahead and went bananas on use of Tank sparsity. On playing the mall outside level, we encountered 3 tanks within the first 10 minutes... no joke. Open the safe room - tank one - kill him and enter the folliage junge - tank - kill him and reach the mall - tank. Just ridiculous, and to make it worse, hordes are triggered literally every couple of minutes. Sounds fun and frantic? Its not, its annoying as hell because the maker turned this map into a puzzle campaign.

So there are puzzles. many, many awful puzzles to solve. Whether it be fixing the AC unit or finding cogs, puzzles must be completed before a scripted door will open (and usually the door is back the way you came - confusing as f*ck) and you can continue. So youre looking around tryna figure wtf you do, as constant hordes and tanks harass you. The only clue to wth you do is a guy on an intercom giving you instructions but you cant hear what the hell he is saying half the time because of the constant horde roars drowning out his voice!

The shopping mall itself is horribly designed too. It looks cool, but its a maze. And not in a good way. More in a, hmmm, I was here 20 minutes ago and yet I'm non the wiser, maze. You cant tell wth you are supposed to be doing and it gets so boring just running in circles. IMO, the L4D feel is completely absent in this campaign.

Campaign is a fail IMO. Amazing campaigns are out there and I advise everyone to avoid the hype machine and enjoy some truly awesome campaigns like Death Aboard (could be passed as authentic campaign), Night Terror, Silent Hill, Vienna Calling and Suicide Blitz.

[[Worm]]

Now, let me go on about the makers. Look at the artwork. When the mod was announced for L4D, they went with this.



Cool, looks fun. Then, the hype snowball begins so the maker spices it up a bit.



Awesome, looks exciting. Then, the mod campaign becomes better than the original campaigns, even before release and the included final poster is this.



....................... am I the only one seeing this? wtf???? Its terrible. I think it just shows how big they got for their boots going with custom art and all. But its horrible! Why does Zoey look like she lives in a cake shop? And Bill looks like he was drawn by a different artist or something....

[[Worm]]

Finally, the last thing that's been bugging me is what I read on the maker, Darth_Brush. I hadnt realized this till recently, but when the mod was being made, this was posted on ModDB.

Today, me fellow Left 4 Dead fans, I bring you sad, sad news. Darth_Brush has been hit by a terrible ordeal. His computer has packed up he won't be able to work on Dead Before Dawn until he can buy a new computer. It is in this light, that we come to you, the Left 4 Dead community and Dead Before Dawn fans.

It will take roughly 6-8 weeks before Darth_Brush can afford another computer and this will drastically delay the release of Dead Before Dawn. If you have some spare cash, please donate so we can buy Darth_Brush a new computer in Germany so we can release the campaign on schedule.

We are planning on releasing the campaign on Halloween, if we can get Darth_Brush a new computer/laptop in a week or 2, we will be able to stick to our goal. Please spread the news if you can't donate, maybe someone else you know can donate. To donate, please click on the Paypal link to the left of this article or send donations to admin@l4dmods.com.

This sounds like bullshit.... Who knows, but its likely that Darth_Brush saw the potential in being dubbed the most awesome campaign ever before ever releasing much footage and prob decided to cash cow in on it. With so many followers, even if people donated 10cent I'm sure he'd have gotten way more than his new compy would cost. Incidentally, people donated more than 10 cent....

Chris Camuti $3
Pieter $12.03 (lol?)
Daniel Willenberg $2
ΔΑΝΙΗΛ $8
Heiko Wichterich $2.97 (Equalizer)
Graphics Blandishment $20.00
Chris Mussard $50.00
Douglas Oberle $100.00
Peter Stephan $10.00
jaffa59 $20.00
Steven Denner $10.00
Carsten Haertwig $50.00
Richard Booth $10.00
Justin Horth $4.05 (lol?)
Connor Griffiths $5.00
Jeremy Garrett $10.00
Aaron Willard $1.00
Andrea Ferrigno $5.00
Kristian Mansikkamäki $30.00
Luke Shaffner $100.00
Paul Eure $15.00
Matthew Simons $0.01
Jesper Åström $15.00
Brandon Lewis-Liles $10.00
Felix Hindemo $10.00
FireStorM $15.00
Christopher Garbowski $10.00
Pyronhell $10.00
Tu Tran $10.94 (Equalizer)
Spencer Berg $14.00
Eric and Stefanie $10.00
Michael Mathison $10.00
Sam Maddock $1.43
Stephen Rowe $20.00
Eduardo Juarez $6.66
David Hawkes $10.00
Kevin Le Tual de Laheudrie $20.00
Paul Henshall Jr $100.00
Richard Nazarchyk $24.33
Danny Thompson $10.01
Stephan Vandenborn $43.21
James King $15.00
Christopher Anderson $10.00
Steven Antash $2.91
Cezar Lutac $8.91
Roberto Manunta $20.00
Craig Lonsdale $20.00
Maximilian Dengler $15.00
Morten Kroknes $10.00
Stephen Eardley $10.00
Greg Culbertson $15.00
Kevin Bobbin $11.00
Thom Western $25.00
Bryan Schulz $50.00
Adam Hooper $10.55 (Equalizer)
Jacob LeVan $10.65
Murat Dagdeviren $10.00
Daniel McGowan $10.00
Richard Barcelo $5.00
Jakub Tylewski $20.00
Justin Aramian $10.00
Leo Gubatina $12.00
Ryan Walton $10.00
Lor Thao $10.00
Lisa Keaton $15.00
Derek Marcoux $12.00
Kyle McWhirter $10.05
Brian Schmitt $15.00
Ben Baden $10.00
Anna Chekmareva $12.00
L4Dmods $100.00


That's $949.09 by Sept 14th, and that's only the ones hes mentioning. He took all those peoples money and delivered a shitty campaign that couldn't meet its hype whilst excellent mapmakers like those behind Death Aboard and Night Terror ask nothing and remain humble about theirs.

[[Stuka69]]

ppl really didnt give that guy $100 did they??????? what a bunch of idiots

[[NaloaC]]

I was hyped up for this. I had heard that the levels were fecking huge and I was kind of looking forward to that to be honest. Getting semi-lost and wondering what the hell to do next. However, if it is on a repeditive cycle, then.... meh.

Also Tanks, I dunno. Played the Crash Course level there last week on Expert. We barely got out of the spawn site and a tank came running towards us. That was within 2 minutes of starting. Needless to say, he annihilated us, again and again and again.

I am gutted to hear that this is a massive letdown, beta or not.

Worm, can you PM me the details to some of those other campaigns please?

[[Worm]]

Worm, can you PM me the details to some of those other campaigns please?

PM'd ya dude.