An automatic Glock that vomits bullets with a compensator to help control its wildness? Of course. That’s not new to the Left 4 Dead formula, but with subtle things changing each run and the promise of concrete character progression every time you play, it’s always rewarding to just jump in and get to the zombie killing.Ī shotgun with maxed range and a sniper scope on it? Sure. This is a decently challenging game and it will take some really good decks and teamwork to succeed at the game’s highest difficulty levels.īecause of this system, Back 4 Blood has a real sense of replayability. Even on the game’s easiest mode it’s not uncommon for teams to fail, especially in the early going. Getting more cards enables new, more powerful builds, which in turn will allow you to take on higher difficulties. This system gives you something to replay for too. They change the way you play and give a good sense of progression through a play session. You can put together melee decks or decks that make you into a walking armoury, or maybe you want to be nimble and speedy or able to take a ton of punishment. There is a boatload of these cards too, that you can then put together into distinct decks before a mission.Īfter every subsequent mission you’ll draw three cards and choose one new one to bring with you. Some might be as simple as getting a straight buff to your health or deeper ammo pockets but there are more novel and utility-based cards too – things like melee kills giving you health or being able to shoot while you run. That does make some of the quite lengthy cut scenes seem a little out of place, but they are thankfully few and far between.Īs you play more and more, you’ll unlock cards that offer in-game bonuses.

The drop in/drop out approach is very accommodating and in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter where you are going or why, you just want a gun in your hand and zombies to plough through. The game has a quickplay mode where it will just throw you into a game at a random point, often into an ongoing match where someone had previously left. There’s a story leading through each of the missions, chapters, and acts but it’s so incidental, it’s hard to remember what’s supposed to be going on. While you and your team are always moving around from location to location, it can sometimes fail to feel truly distinct. The colour palette remains similar throughout and no matter where you are it’s all plastered in pus-filled, noodly entrails. However, while it hops between a number of different locations – from schools, libraries, military bases, town centres, lakeside retreat, and spooky quarantine sites – in longer play sessions it can all begin to feel a little samey. If you want something to work through with your friends, Back 4 Blood offers more than enough to get lost in over multiple play sessions. Missions can take anywhere from 15-25 minutes on a normal run, and there are 33 in total. Those acts are broken up into subchapters, that are then split up again into several missions. The story campaign is split up into four acts. This game doesn’t just pay homage to Left 4 Dead, it’s swimming in its identity. Making your job harder are special variant zombies that are tougher to beat than the normal horde and require teamwork to take down. How that translates into the game is you and three others play as characters who whack, shoot, and dismember hordes of zombies, as you hop from safehouse to safehouse. You play as a Cleaner, a member of a small group tasked with going out into the world to complete essential tasks and kill a whole bunch of undead. In their place, Ridden (aka zombies) shamble around causing havoc wherever they go. The pitch is this: the world has been infected by a parasite that has already wiped out much of the human population. Even so, there is nuance here, with Back 4 Blood bringing more than a few new ideas to help modernise the vintage formula. The game’s trappings and mannerisms are so closely tied to Left 4 Dead it’s hard to think of it as anything other than a direct sequel. If there is a short version of this review it’s this: Back 4 Blood is as close to Left 4 Dead 3 as we are ever likely to get.

Back 4 blood review