At the outset, I would like to point out that as a longtime fan of the Left 4 Dead series, I will not avoid comparisons to this one in my review. I don’t think it makes much sense to avoid this point of view, as Back 4, Blood Turtle Rock Studios, was formerly part of Valve and is made up of people who worked on those titles. Their latest production is full of references to that old hit, and most of the publicity it gained on the web even before its premiere came from the fact that it was hailed “unofficial Left 4 Dead 3 “. To what extent, however, can the new game build its own identity, while satisfying the expectations of fans who are eager to continue the series from Valve? Let’s find out!
The old school takes a step into the present day
The core of the game immediately looks familiar – four people equipped with firearms, handguns and other gadgets, such as grenades or bandages, break through hordes of zombies, traveling from the safe room to the safe room and completing minor story objectives along the way. I admit that I appreciate this approach: we do not change what was good, but we build additions and novelties on proven ground. In simple terms – the same, just more! More of what?
Characters, because this time we choose from eight heroes, whom we can mix freely, composing a four that will go on a selected mission. Skins, because each of them has three or four full outfits to choose from on the day of release, as well as a handful of individual clothing items (head, torso, legs) that we can use to create our own variant of the look. Weapons, because we have five categories of main weapons and two types of sidearm, to which we can attach improvements that modify their statistics and the way they work (someone who by mistake did not put on a highly zooming sniper scope on a shotgun knows no life).
In addition, in Back 4 Bloodthere will be some ideas and gadgets that were not available in older productions at all. The most important of them is the skill system that personalizes the chosen character. On the one hand, each of them has its own unique ability and this cannot be replaced (for example, Karlee receives warnings about threats and has an additional slot for items, while Holly significantly increases both her and her team’s endurance), on the other hand, before the game, we can create a deck of fifteen cards, each of which improves our avatar in some way. Cards add a tactical element to the game, because during the campaign they are unlocked for us according to the order in the deck, and – as a result – placing poor cards in it or their careless ordering may weaken us and make it difficult to pass the scenario.
Mutant Menagerie – Rich or Secondary?
As for our rotten antagonists, my feelings are very mixed. Although there are many of them and they are diverse enough to significantly influence the dynamics of the game and force players to flexibly change tactics as needed, it’s hard not to notice that I’ve seen almost everything somewhere. The most original creation here is Sleeper – a human torso, hanging quietly on walls, cars, etc. inside a bizarre, meat cocoon, which torso will jump out on every carelessly approaching player at great speed and pin it down to the ground. The creature is rather a trap than a full-fledged opponent, nevertheless it performs well in gameplay and does not seem to be copied out of nowhere … which cannot be said about the rest.
Standard mutants are divided into three types, each with another three specialized types. These subcategories are not much different in appearance, but have slightly different abilities. First, we have monsters that are big, slow, and attack with their secretions (yuck!). These barrel-shaped enemies will try to get closer to the players, then use their subgroup-dependent attack: Reeker sprays our entrails, summoning weaker zombies to us, Exploder – surprise! – explodes, injuring us and throwing us high into the air, and Retch will flood the area with gastric juices, creating burning puddles. Does it only seem to me to combine Boomer and Spitter with Left 4 Dead 2 ?
When brute force is required, the hosts of the infected take advantage of oversized guys with one arm much larger than the other. Tallboy will withstand a lot of damage and without further ado he will come to the team to hit her with his club-like hand. Bruiser will behave similarly, but he can charge and perform a slow but devastating area attack. Meanwhile, Crusher does not like to fight – instead, he prefers to grab single players in a huge hand and crush them alive. Here again, the association with Left 4 Dead comes to mind : aren’t these Charger abilities, but distributed among three different creatures?
The last group, in turn, is made up of female zombies, who have agility far exceeding the capabilities of the rest of the opponents. They can jump high and far like the known from Left 4 Dead Hunter, and also stick to walls, pillars and other objects to be able to attack from above. Hocker will spit a ball of tentacle flesh at the heroes, immobilizing the player when they hit, the Stinger will shoot them with a series of spikes that deal immediate damage, while Stalker will have to jump to his victim, then grab her with four strong arms and pull him away from his companions. Needless to say, which of these variants look like equivalents of Valve’s Smoker and Jockey?
At the end, there are bosses and a quite passive Snitcher, who simply wanders among ordinary zombies, and the shot one starts screaming in the air, summoning the horde. This doesn’t sound like something from Left 4 Dead , would we have an original here? Unfortunately, no, an identically functioning zombie called Screamer has already appeared in the State of Decay survival sandboxfrom 2013. As for the bosses, let me take a shortcut – Breaker is like a Tank, only covered with bumps that are vulnerable points, and Hag is a Witch, which instead of tearing the unfortunate with her claws, she grabs him by devouring and running away. The last and most spectacular of them, the Ogre, is simply an even bigger and stronger Tank, throwing a ball of meat from time to time instead of a chunk of concrete. The clashes with the Ogres are rare, difficult, and generally I associated them with something straight out of the slightly older versions of Resident Evil – the not-so-popular ones, i.e. 5 and 6.
What’s not working, what’s missing?
Surprisingly, a few quite important things are missing, which unfortunately had a negative impact on my reception. The biggest surprise for me was that we won’t see a full-fledged counterpart of the Versus Mode, which kept Left 4 Dead alive long after its premiere. I thought that including something similar in Back 4 Blood would be a so-called “obvious obvious” for the people at Turtle Rock Studios, but apparently I miscalculated. If you don’t know it – the Versus Mode in Valve productions allowed you to complete story campaigns in two teams of four playing against each other. The first four controlled the Survivors, the second controlled the Infected, and after a level was completed, roles were changed, played again, and points were scored. In Back 4 Bloodcontrolling zombies in campaign missions is not possible; we only have a four-person cooperation between human characters against AI-controlled enemies.
The only chance to play with rugs is the so-called Swarm mode, which unfortunately refers to the far less popular in Left 4 Dead 2Survival mode. As in the older game, four heroes are trapped on a small section of one of the maps known from the campaign and try to survive as long as possible in the fight against hordes of ordinary zombies and the four players of the opposite team controlling Specials. The gameplay in this mode can only end in one way – the death of all members of the human team – and in my opinion it is not very satisfying. Matches are short, usually very difficult for the team controlling the Cleaners, and the mode itself does not support bots, making the game completely pointless if any of the eight players leave the competition prematurely – three against four have no chance.
I also definitely miss the interactivity of the surroundings. Left 4 Dead 2 offered minor changes to the layouts of the rooms inside the campaign maps, as well as alternative paths to choose from, which generally consisted in choosing a short and safe path, or a longer and full of zombies, but most likely rich in valuable items, like weapons or first aid kits. The new production of Turtle Rock Studios unfortunately gave up these solutions, and also limited the possibilities of the infected in their impact on the environment. Left 4 Dead had, for example, slightly silly “ladders” allowing the Special to climb walls or clearly marked walls through which they could break through, creating additional routes to reach the Survivors. Back 4 Bloodfor some reason there is neither one nor the other, and the title does not replace these solutions. We do not experience any destruction of the environment here. Why was Tank so dangerous in Left 4 Dead ? Because he could hurl cars, containers and other heavy objects against them, this created a great deal of confusion and was potentially lethal as the object thrown immediately knocked the Survivor to the ground. And although the Ogres from Back 4 Blood are many times larger and stronger than the Tanks, somehow they do not know similar tricks, and the cars in their path remain mysteriously attached to the ground …
Where is the pace schedule, where is the director?
Even leaving the topic of Versus Mode behind us, the story campaign still doesn’t look its best. Although it seems that there is more content than in the older titles, because we will find thirty-three independent levels divided between four acts (well, basically three, because the fourth act contains only one final stage), while Left 4 Dead 2 on The premiere had only twenty-three maps, the feeling during the game is rather opposite. Campaigns in Left 4 Deadthey contained only 4 or 5 levels, but they were long and varied, moreover, each of them, although loosely related to the other narratives, took us to completely different surroundings. So we could visit various neighborhoods, from apartment blocks and city alleys, through small towns and farms, to forest areas and an amusement park. While Back 4 Blood also offers some environmental changes here, it’s much less noticeable. While playing, you have the impression that you are constantly moving through small towns and wetlands. I would love to welcome anything like the Dead Air campaign from the first installment of Left 4 Dead . Well, maybe in some future DLC?
Unfortunately, I also have a few comments about the comfort of playing the campaign, which is, after all, the flagship mode of the title. First of all, Left 4 Dead stood out from the competition by the existence of the Director, widely praised by the creators, i.e. a system that tracks players’ progress on an ongoing basis and reacts to their style of play and current condition. A well-coordinated team efficiently breaks through hordes of zombies, almost without taking any damage? So let’s generate fewer healing items and release the Tank! The team is barely coping – someone has just died, the rest are badly injured? We will reduce horde attacks and slow down Special respawn to give players some breath. Although officially Back 4 Bloodhas its counterpart of the Director, not to feel his presence at all. As you progress, everything only gets more difficult, and the artificial intelligence has no mercy – even a decimated team will be eager to tighten the screw.
It doesn’t help that the difficulty levels are very exploded, unlike in Left 4 Dead . There are only three – Recruit, Veteran, Nightmare. The difference between them is drastic. The recruit has a very low entry threshold, after we initially grasp the controls and the rules of the game, most of the time we will destroy the dead without much thought. The Veteran, on the other hand, is a big challenge from the beginning and, in fact, it cannot be completed without a well-coordinated team exercising the utmost caution – if you launch it with randoms from the network, you will most likely die. So far I have not even tried to get into the Nightmare …
The very structure of this mode, in terms of division into maps, is also not the best in my opinion. Completing a single four- or five-stage campaign in Left 4 Dead typically took around an hour, which allowed for relatively easy session planning, be it with friends or on your own. Meanwhile, acts in Back 4 Bloodthey are just too long. Playing one of them from cover to cover is rather a time expense of 3-5 hours – an adult player can rarely afford such a meeting in one go. Of course, you can stop the game and return to it later, but it is much harder to find friends in the series starting from the middle of the act, because most people want to play the whole thing – whether it is because of the desire to experience the plot in a consistent way or to catch achievements.
Was the return successful then?
Overall, Back 4 Blood has many advantages, but also many disadvantages. The game is not bad, but it is likely to disappoint at least some of the expectations of those who are thirsty for Left 4 Dead 3. The gameplay is fun, and the additional variety of weapons and characters increases the tactical potential of the title, but if you just stop this carousel of bloodthirsty excitement for a moment, it will turn out that this production is not difficult to point out errors or shortcomings. Although I myself did not resist a few – I think deserved – tingers in the above text, I am glad that the game saw the light of day and even if I am relieved of the review obligation, I will certainly come back to it. As the developers have already announced at least three DLCs expanding the title in the future, I keep my fingers crossed that they will be successful and solve at least some of the problems I mentioned.
