![]() ![]() The campaign also does a great job of highlighting the power of the card system, occasionally taking you through familiar locations with modifiers that drastically alter the experience. ![]() ![]() ![]() The basic foundations are intact and it’s still as fun as ever to tear through hordes with friends (and even with bots).īack 4 Blood’s campaign is lengthy and diverse, taking you through suburban and rural environments, infested buildings and sewers, over highways and fields, and through more distinctive locations like a school, police station, and plane wreckage. Hell, there were times I’d hear nonstop mutation call-outs for an entire stage. To make up for the reduced threat (at least on Recruit and Veteran difficulties) there’s a much higher frequency of mutated ridden. The basic ridden go down quickly, while the hordes are smaller and usually tied to specific actions or a visible timer that allows you to prepare. There’s a much stronger focus on the mutated ridden, which come in a greater variety than the L4D games (albeit still filling the same basic roles) with several boss variants. That’s not to say the gameplay loop is identical. Slaying hordes, adapting to deal with the appearance of a mutated ridden, sharing supplies – in that regard Back 4 Blood is just as good as its predecessors. The level and enemy design encourage you to stick together and rewards teamwork, disincentivising lone-wolf tactics, but I’d always recommend playing with friends if you can. It might sound simple but it’s a timeless formula that still makes for a great cooperative PvE experience – with a slight competitive edge thanks to the scoring system that tracks several statistics. Thankfully, Back 4 Blood sticks to the original design of short, intense sessions between each safe-house, ensuring failed runs are never a major setback. To spice things up, you might need to complete a simple objective (interact with something or carry an important MacGuffin) and sometimes there’ll be a dramatic finale that requires you to hold a point for several minutes. You team up with three other people (or bots) before running and gunning through branching, ridden-infested corridors to the next safe-house. Small details in the environments still do a decent amount of storytelling, but Back 4 Blood has a structured campaign, with multiple briefings in safe houses or on-the-fly radio updates.ĭespite the time that’s passed since L4D2 launched, describing the basic gameplay loop almost feels redundant as it’s been repurposed for successful titles like Vermintide 2 and World War Z. To its credit, it has an actual three-part structure to the campaign – think rescue, rearm, and fight back – but I still preferred the discrete scenarios with more unique dialogue in L4D and its sequel. There are less genuine interactions, few fleshed-out backstories, and very little connection to any of the locations you fight through. Personally, I found none of the characters as fleshed out or memorable as in L4D and L4D2. If you’re a fan of ‘90s or early ‘00s action movies, you might enjoy it more. Unfortunately, the move to an experienced group of “cleaners” – all of them quirky archetypes we’ve seen before, working for a generic military man – does not make for compelling dialogue or interactions. Of course, these ridden share many similarities with the L4D roster, down to their behaviours and weaknesses (such as being drawn to noise and weakened by fire). Unlike L4D, Back 4 Blood picks up sometime after the initial “collapse” as the remnants of humanity – slowly rebuilding – are hit by a sudden resurgence of the “Ridden”, parasite-ridden humans and terrifying mutations. The bulk of the storytelling is handled in-game – through briefings in safe houses, dialogue between the protagonists, comments about the locations they pass through, and environmental storytelling. As with Turtle Rock Studios’ prior games, the overarching narrative and several flashy cutscenes quickly fade from memory. ![]()
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