Back 4 Blood Test

Back 4 Blood is one of the many Left 4 Dead-inspired games released recently, but it has one major advantage: Back 4 Blood is made by the same developer as Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios. The loose connection between the games is pretty obvious, as much of what made Left 4 Dead great can easily be seen in Back 4 Blood. However, the latter comes with flaws that are serious headscratchers. Back 4 Blood might be the best Left 4 Dead-like game on the market in terms of gameplay. It offers players a long campaign, especially for this type of game, and the replayability of its core design is quite high. The basic gameplay loop used in the campaign is straightforward but fun: advance through each mission, defeat hordes of “Ridden” zombies, and reach the next safe room. Some of the missions in Back 4 Blood play into this formula, offering enough variety that players won’t get bored doing anything too often. Sometimes, players have to take a defensive stance and fight off hordes of infected. At other times, players have to find a specific item on a map, spend time preparing it for something, and survive against an onslaught of hordes. The most common variations appear to be just enough to keep players grounded in the gameplay, while allowing for some levels to be more unique. By making sure that every variation of objective in the game isn’t overused, it helps elevate Back 4 Blood’s gameplay above the pointless killing of zombies (although there’s plenty thrown in, too). Different mission objectives, along with great level design, make each mission as fun to play as the last. Players may find themselves trapped by zombies in the woods, in a school, or in a mass grave, and while players will sometimes revisit locations more than once (such as the area in around Fort Hope), each environment stands out from the next. “Enough variety” to keep a Back 4 Blood player’s attention seems to be the goal, and it works. The same can be said for the various enemies that players will face. While the common infected are seen the most often though these creatures can be modified in the game to make them more challenging. Whether facing standard zombies or any of the variants like Tallboy, Retcher, Ogre, or Snitch, players will find just enough variety to keep gameplay engaging—especially when Corruption Cards come into play. It combines well with the gunplay and various card challenges in the game. Players will find a variety of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, light machine guns, melee weapons, and more in Back 4 Blood, and each weapon feels and fires differently. For example, it’s very easy for a game like Back 4 Blood to make sniper rifles seem out of place, since they often don’t survive against hordes of enemies, but that’s not really the case here. They can be just as destructive as LMGs in the right hands, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes a certain weapon isn’t better in a certain situation, though. Furthermore, Back 4 Blood features a card system that changes with each round, giving players boosts and influencing the undead in various ways. These cards can show a lack of power or an intense fog, it can change how each and every type of zombie works in Back 4 Blood, or it can show players new tasks like completing mission in X amount of time. Normally, the cards in a video game like this might seem out of place, but the truth is that Back 4 Blood is much improved because of them. Turtle Rock Studios could theoretically slap Left 4 Dead 3 with this game, and at its best, it would absolutely shine as a proper threequel to the previous two games. It scratches a few itches and, despite being a new title called Back 4 Blood, is full of nostalgia. However, Back 4 Blood is greatly let down by something not found in the Left 4 Dead series: a lack of respect for a player’s time. First, the lack of support for solo players is incredibly disappointing. Back 4 Blood players who don’t want to go online to play with strangers or friends are penalized for not doing so, as the solo experience lacks essential components. In fact, players can’t complete any of the progression-oriented tasks in the game, locking them out of everything from cosmetics to new Back 4 Blood characters to achievements. A good example is the need to kill 53,600 zombies for an achievement, but any kills made in solo play do not count towards this. RELATED: Back 4 Blood Would Be Perfect for Local Co-Op, But Doesn’t Support It Turtle Rock Studios is reportedly working on it and at some point after launch, these issues are expected to be fixed. Still, it’s undeniably a huge flaw in the game and a punishing one. This isn’t the only odd decision in the game, however, and it comes with other issues as well. Some of these are minor, such as no way to remove an unwanted weapon attachment without replacing it with another. Others, like the PvP mode Swarm, feel like there’s no emotional attachment to the base game. At the same time, Back 4 Blood is all about putting together a viable build to complete a run. If players struggle at any point in the run, losing all their “continues,” then they can repeat the same level but with a handicap in terms of cards and weapons. It’s supposed to add a “roguelike” element to the game, but it’s replayable enough without forcing players to finish at a certain point and can go back a few to get a better start or play the both levels disappear without all being built. until now. The story of Back 4 Blood is not revolutionary, nor should it be. It really takes a “here come zombies, shoot zombies” approach, and that’s good. It’s another zombie apocalypse game about the end of the zombie apocalypse, and it doesn’t reinvent the wheel of how it happens, why the outbreak happened, or anything like that. There’s just no characterization here. The main NPC that gives all the orders is forgettable, and while Back 4 Blood Cleaners has great designs for them, they don’t have any real charm or appeal. Occasionally there is dialogue that highlights some of their past and their connections to each other, but it’s not used much throughout the campaign. Back 4 Blood could use more polish for bugs, technical concerns, and more. Its technical issues aren’t a big deal all the time, sometimes resulting in zombies just running into walls or not responding to the player’s immediate presence. But when they are a big deal, it can be painful for players. Watching an NPC stand still and accept death by a horde of zombies is confusing and discouraging, while the game crashes before the last mission and resetting to the start of the previous mission is a bigger issue. In general, it has a lot of bugs, and acceptable or not, they are clearly there. Back 4 Blood still stands out as the best Left 4 Dead-inspired game in recent memory, taking the basic design and innovating it enough to keep everything fresh and fun. Where Back 4 Blood gets things right, it does really well, but where it doesn’t is often pretty obvious. Back 4 Blood is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The Xbox Series X code was provided to Today Technology for the purposes of this review. MORE: Back 4 Blood: All Playable Characters Explained