Price: 560 MS Points/Free | Release Date: 29^th September, 2009

4 Stars - Good enough to buy.

It’ll be the Xbox 360 Left 4 Dead-ers that’ll be more wary of this review, considering there’s not much point worrying about the package’s value on the PC seeing as it’s already available as a free update. “Crash Course” is the most recent chapter in the Left 4 Dead world, and the last bit of Left 4 Dead content we’ll see before the release of Left 4 Dead 2.

Crash Course, more interestingly for some, is a two map chapter that bridges the first two campaigns of Left 4 Dead, “No Mercy” and “Death Toll”. Following their rescue from Mercy hospital, Bill, Louis, Zoey and Francis find themselves stranded once again when it turns out that their helicopter pilot was infected with the zombie virus. With the zombie pilot killed; and therefore their ride crashed – hence the title – the four survivors must find yet another way to get out of their dilemma alive.  

The new campaign is specifically designed for Left 4 Dead’s Versus mode, in which eight players (swapping between teams of four survivors and four infected) battle each map out to try and reach the safe room at the end of the map as survivors, and as infected, stop the other team from reaching their goal. Hence, Crash Course is designed for a quick, slick Versus experience featuring only two maps, rather than the five maps featured in other campaigns.

Crash Course is set in an urban industrial revenue, something we haven’t quite seen before in Left 4 Dead, but not altogether unfamiliar. Frequent Left 4 Dead players will feel right at home with Crash Course. Both maps are full of the usual exploitable nooks and crannies from which Hunters can make 25-point pounces and Smokers can pull back a Survivor unawares and, quite frankly, it seems that Crash Course makes things a lot more balanced in terms of Survivor-Infected competition, if not slightly biased towards the Infected.

Crash Course is a well designed campaign, and there are lots of advantages and disadvantages in each map that eventually balance out to be a fulfilling experience, and allow each team a decent shot at downing the other, but the first day of release hasn’t been all smooth sailing. Valve, no doubt busy with Left 4 Dead 2, have been a tad lazy with texturing, and the visuals certainly aren’t chock-full of the effort that was evident with Left 4 Dead’s original campaigns, as well as the “Last Stand” Survival map. Gameplay and balance certainly outshines the campaign’s artistic design, although the campaign also features some great entertainment from our favourite Survivors in the form of deliciously humorous quips and the usual clever remarks.

Valve have been a tad modest in their promotion of Crash Course; they claimed the campaign would be a short, half hour experience in Versus mode, but this is not the case. Crash Course, unless you have two teams that completely rush through the maps, actually stretches out to a length of around fifty minutes to one hour, and would only really last a half hour in the regular campaign mode: no complaints there.

The Verdict: To set it straight, Crash Course isn’t fantastic. Rather, it’s more of the same Left 4 Dead material, and it’s a whole heap of good, solid fun. If you’re a fan of Left 4 Dead and you want to get the 360 DLC, it’s just as addicting as the rest of Left 4 Dead, no better, no worse. Make your decision from that. PC users, of course, get it free of charge. All in all, Crash Course brings back our four heroes and heroine in completely likeable fashion, and makes an effort to turn Left 4 Dead’s story into a slightly more fluent narrative by bridging two previously unrelated campaigns. Great, balanced gameplay in Crash Course solidly adds to the Left 4 Dead experience while overshadowing a few small visual kinks; it’s really more of the same we’ve come to expect in a Left 4 Dead campaign, which is hardly any less than one could ask for.