The creator of Lukewarm Stream once said:

Originally posted by мяFunreal:

Can't polish a turd, can ya?

so I’m going to try and review this without comparing to any campaigns other than Cold Stream itself. Since this is a campaign *remake*, I don’t really care about spoiling anything, additionally because Cold Stream itself is over a decade old now.

• The lighting is scuffed. This could be from the regular updates to L4D2 over the years, but it does not feel like an improvement over Cold Stream’s lighting as it is now. Dunno if it’s using a colour correction either.
  
• I was surprised to see uncommon infected, only to realise they’re in Cold Stream too. That is how rare I play that campaign. They do seem to be more common in Lukewarm Stream though, which is a good thing; Keeps it interesting. I don't really like the placement of Mudmen in Lukewarm/Cold Stream though, since the water ain’t all that muddy, but that’s its own suggestion.
  
• Loving and hating the saturated paint jobs on every single car, including the alarmed ones. If they were more natural colours, alarmed cars blending in with the rest would have worked very well in the rest of the game, but I know the whole “avoid red” game thing has to be respected.
  
• Something must have been done to the size of hordes as some reaction to Cold Stream’s vicious crescendo events, because either that, or the size of locations alone, has caused hordes in any form to be very light. This might explain why at crescendo events, every wave announces itself, as if Lukewarm Stream mimics a long event by spawning multiple hordes - All speculation.
  
• The bags containing medkits and ammo feel very extra. Dunno why they couldn’t’ve just been laid on the floor. Perhaps this was to make Lukewarm/Cold Stream stand out more?

• Lighting is especially bad here
  
• I like that the intro animation was changed to not make that weird movement through the house, but it gets very cramped in the hedge next to it anyway. Perhaps just fly through the windows opposite one another on the second story?
  
• I don’t see why the bridge had to be destroyed. It’s wooden - makeshift, so it doesn’t seem all that out of place to me.
  
• Thank you for removing the random slowing effect on that log. If I wanted to move slow, I woulda done that myself
  
• While I do like that we have to hold out, rather than let the bunker open two inches before jumping in, I don’t like that it’s a switch activation. If it could be done in a way where someone still has to open it fully before we can jump in, I’d like that very much. Of course, since the bunker is blocked, it will be something else a survivor has to hold on to open the bunker, rather than the entrance itself. Perhaps a Valve? (tm)
  
• I like that the bunker’s saferoom has unique doors. Although, for a split second, I didn’t realise that was the saferoom (Again, I don’t play Cold Stream often). Perhaps if the doors were highlighted like normal saferoom doors? That’d help a lot.

• The light at the end of the tunnel sure was blinding. I think the intention was to see the silhouettes of the infected in front of it, but Source lighting just doesn’t allow that. Oh well. You will be missed, Ark of the Covenant.
  
• The wooden staircase change to a rope ladder is perhaps the smallest change made in Lukewarm Stream that I have no real opinions about it
  
• Why you would take out the badass tank-boulder encounter I have no idea. Wasn’t too bad of a fight on Realism Expert. Plus, the tank would take so long to come down to us, that I would have time to back up to safety.
  
• If I wasn’t aware of being able to climb up onto military trucks from the back, I would have to climb up onto an alarmed car, now placed next to the one before the bus at the traffic jam, for some reason.
  
• That one Humvee with its lights on before the outpost on the bridge always stood out to me. Kinda glad it was replaced with a tent lol
  
• The truck driving off without the CEDA trailer is so funny, and it’s way better than shooting the barrels. Never knew why those things wouldn’t explode instantly. I almost didn’t know they were the next step. If I could change two small things about the truck…
  
  • Let me climb the steps right next to its doors
    
  • Open the doors or window so it makes sense that I could grab the wheel
• SO glad the crescendo event itself isn’t infinite anymore. This was perhaps the worst one - worse than the damn finale! Normally you would have to push through an infinite horde into the tunnel, knee-deep in water, through the smallest stairways, into your saferoom.
  
• I do miss the possible fall at the end of the tunnel. Added a lil something to the level. I wouldn’t really worry about it without infinite hordes anyway.
  
• Afaik witches are now enabled, and I happened to run into one wandering in the stairways right before the safe room. Hell naw

• I like that the staircase is fixed at the spawn, and there’s a door instead of a ladder. I don’t know why Cold Stream needs to go all extra with the first few seconds of this chapter, tryna trip you up with a broken staircase before climbing up to an S.O.S sign that nobody woulda seen.
  
• Helicopter :)
  
• I get that the concrete staircase up to the bridge was changed to match the metal staircase on the other side, but for some reason I really miss it :3
  
• I don’t see why the surprise tanker explosion, an unskippable event, was changed to an unskippable car alarm event. Was it just that the bombing was out of place? What if the tanker explosion was done by hand instead?
  
• A Tank spawned during the new car alarm event. Going down the end staircases, another spawned. I don’t know if the first one was scripted and the second’s spawning didn’t account for it, but one tank after another was crazy.
  
• Lukewarm Stream makes every attempt to keep us out of the water. There is now a link between the staircases on the other side of the bridge to this boat clubhouse just under it. Whether or not that makes sense, *infrastructurally*, I don’t know.
  
• The scaffolding next to the ladders at the far end of the bridge in Cold Stream could have entailed the *infrastructure* of these staircases was incomplete. Maybe they *were* going to link to the clubhouse; they were just unfinished. Maybe that’s something that could stay in.
  
• If the first surprise event on the bridge was made into a manual one as suggested, I wouldn’t’ve minded keeping the second one under the bridge. One surprise after another was a bit much, sure.

• Since there is now no run through the creek, I don’t need to locate that tiny-ass walkie-talkie. Yay
  
• I do somewhat miss the run through the creek. Some campaigns have the issue where you had to fight up to the finale, so if you died, you would have to start allll the way back. I worry that Cut-Throat Creek’s change to a normal journey, and then the finale extension at the base, has the same issue.
  
• The rescue copter’s relocation felt unusual. It seems Lukewarm Stream was going for a wide area, where all the supplies are separated; Ammo in one location, medkits in another, weapons in another. Didn’t really mean that the copter had to be at a different location too.

All-in-all, the worst aspects of Cold Stream have been improved. Other aspects have received some changes that might seem unnecessary, but they still work in the context of the campaign. Solid remake. I give ye a 7/10