Back 4 Blood by Turtle Rock Studios is an upcoming team-based zombie shooter cheekily similar to the very well known and beloved game, Left for Dead, made by the very same developers under Valve.
Since it’s announcement, it has been touted across the internet as the spiritual successor to the Left for Dead franchise, a position left vacant by Valve with their tendency to abandon their intellectual properties after the 2nd installment. The question remained: would this game meet the high expectations of thirsty Left 4 Dead fans and become the rightful spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, or should it be called Back 2 the Drawing Board? Luckily, I got to try the game recently during the Open Beta, and after many months of waiting, the results are in!
Before I lay it down, I wanted to talk about some of the things I liked about this game and could be fun to have access to in a Left 4 Dead title. First off the game has crossplay, which is always a huge bonus as it brings friends together. Back 4 Blood establishes a unique difference from Left 4 Dead right away with a card-deck building system. Essentially you have a deck of cards that represent bonuses to your stats and abilities, and during the beginning phase of each chapter of the game, you select one from a randomized handful to use along the way, eventually accruing multiple as you go on. I thought this was interesting because it added strategy and another dynamic layer to the mix that didn't exist before. One card, that seemed particularly strong, switched your shove ability and replaced it with a 1-hit kill knife stab. Another card awarded health for every melee kill, and I was able to pair the two together to effectively become a walking lawn mower. Since all the cards were not unlocked automatically, the deck building seemed to introduce progression to the game formula as well, which when done right can add a lot of fun to a game.
Instead of 4 static characters, Back 4 Blood offers 8 to choose from called Cleaners, each with unique abilities to offer. Like the card-deck system, this adds another strategic and dynamic element that can spice things up for repeated playthroughs.
Now for the bad, and if you played and liked the game, you may want to stop here.
One thing I hate is the name they gave to the zombies, which is the Ridden. This follows the popular trend of calling the zombies in your game anything but zombies, a la the Walking Dead. In my opinion, this trend is stupid. We at home all know what zombies are and you are not amusing or fooling anyone, or being original by pretending otherwise! Ridden just sounds plain stupid and to me and also sounds like an unlikely name that real people would come up with. In Left for Dead they are not afraid to do this as the survivors often refer to the Infected as zombies like everyone else.
Speaking of the zombies, they look TERRIBLE, looking like something from Mars instead and definitely do not inspire fear like Left for Dead zombies do. They are severely lacking in the design philosophy that worked out so well for Valve, which includes distinct silhouettes, colours, and sounds of the Specialized Infected. The common Ridden are also slower and less populated than in Left for Dead, which again takes away a lot of the fear and therefore retracts from the excitement when playing.
The game unfortunately was quite ugly in every regard, with textures and animations that look like they came from a clearance bin and simply inferior to Left for Dead from 2008. To top it off, it also doesn’t run as well and was giving my older PC a hard time.
Another nail in the coffin: there is no Steam Workshop support like in Left for Dead, which means no easy way to enhance your game experience with mods. I personally use over a 100 concurrent mods in Left for Dead 2 that you can check out and use yourself here.
Honestly the game seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, taking so much from Left for Dead while also trying to be its own thing. In my opinion the whole thing seems overly ambitious for their budget and ends up falling flat on its face in practice because of this.
Some will say that this is just the beta and not the full release, but I would argue that the vast majority of game companies do not make many, if any, changes during an Open Beta. Unfortunately, Open Betas these days are almost entirely used for marketing purposes and bug/stress testing of the final product, not for actual changes to the game.
I take no pleasure in delivering this message, except to potentially save you from a game I very strongly believe isn’t worth your time compared to other games that are available (such as the game it is copying). I was so hopeful for Back 4 Blood as Left for Dead is one of my favourite games of all time and a masterpiece in many regards. Sadly, it looks like I'll have to reserve my prayers for the mighty Lord Gaben once again.
