Back 4 Blood Reviews
Back 4 Blood is another great multiplayer zombie game, but some serious balance issues force it to stumble out of the gate.
A blistering return to zombie-slaying nirvana, Back 4 Blood is an excellent spiritual follow-up to Left 4 Dead that ticks almost all of the right boxes, except for the one labelled 'solo progression' – if you're planning on playing offline on your own, you might want to steer clear for now. Otherwise, jump right in.
Back 4 Blood edges past the competition in the packed cooperative shooter landscape by offering players a creative card system buffered by tight gameplay, just be sure to bring some friends along for the massacre as solo play features limitations.
Back 4 Blood wastes no time trying to divert your attention from its obvious influences, but it doesn’t need to when it nearly lives up to the expectations its spiritual predecessors set so high.
Back 4 Blood doesn’t just imitate the Left 4 Dead formula like these titles, it elevates it past its predecessor. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia for the 12 year old title, or maybe just poor memory, that fuels our rose-tinted retrospection and distaste for something new. Regardless, Back 4 Blood takes the concept to the next level and builds in layers of cool ideas and just plain fun gameplay.
But for what it is, Back 4 Blood proves that what made Left 4 Dead good is still a lot of fun, even if this new iteration doesn't make use of every innovative convention to spring up since the series' original release. And there's something to be said for aging gracefully and not shoehorning in everything at once. As the old plastic surgery adage goes, sometimes it's best not to remake but maintain.
Whether it’s your first time shooting zombies or you’re a Left 4 Dead veteran, Back 4 Blood is frantic action that you’ll love.
A tedious, time-consuming playing card mechanic, frustrating bug crashes and a repetitive, near-endless onslaught of Ridden enemies led by an uninspired AI Director, collectively drags this spiritual sequel to Left 4 Dead down from the heights it could have reached.
It's hard to fault the moment-to-moment gameplay of Back 4 Blood when all of its pistons are working in tandem and you're running with a good crew. Though the effort to contemporise and grow beyond its roots is commendable, just about every other aspect of the game feels like a misfire. The campaign isn't fun and, more offensively, it pays no regard to solo players.
Back 4 Blood is a good game, it improves on the Left 4 Dead formula in a way that is challenging and creative. However, the move to forcing people to advance the overall game by going online, being forced to work with randoms in a very badly connected cross-platform multiplayer games where without a solid communication base, resulting in Back 4 Blood being an experience in frustration rather than a very enjoyable game. If Turtle Rock allows for private games where you can do under 4 players with bots instead, then maybe this game can truly be something that is a must-own. But at the moment Back 4 Blood is only worth playing if you have a premade group of friends.
Back 4 Blood is one of those games that you don’t have to particularly worry about grinding, which is incredibly refreshing. Between grinding for in-game currency for dungeon gear in FFXIV, and trying to level up my weapons in Dauntless, it’s nice to have a game I can jump back into with my friends at any point in time and just play. It’s fast-paced, creative, and just all-around good fun. What’s not to love? The game has been out for a while, but that just means that the developers have had more time to listen to feedback and start fixing some of those bugs that have been bothering players.
With Back 4 Blood available on Xbox Game Pass on PC and Console there’s reason to jump in if you’re looking for something new to play with friends. The look and feel is familiar and the action is engaging and chaotic when played with a group. For a while that is. Thanks to the sameness that permeates across most levels and backdrops and the predictability of the pace, it doesn’t take long for this Left 4 Dead spiritual successor to wear a little thin.
Back 4 Blood certainly improves upon the gameplay formula of Turtle Rock's earlier Left 4 Dead, with a deeper feature set that allows for greater strategy and customization while fending off Hordes of the undead. But the world of the game and its characters lack the charm of its spiritual forebear, and a few curious design choices keep it just shy of greatness.
Back 4 Blood is not just a new coat of paint. It tries new ideas to shake up its legendary formula, mashing together their learning to create a cohesive, insanely fun co-op experience.
Back 4 Blood is more than Left 4 Dead 3 with another name. It presents a strategic use of cards and a well developed progression system that guarantees a lot of fun and replayability.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Back 4 Blood comes after a decade of L4D-likes and from the studio that made the timeless original, but it fails to capture the same magic even as well as some prior imitators.
I’ll reiterate: Back 4 Blood isn’t a bad game. But it could have been so much better. Its difficulty needs balancing, as does the amount of enemies thrown at you at any one time. Ultimately, most levels simply have too much going on to be enjoyable – and each Act would have benefitted from being substantially shorter. Get a competent group of friends together and you might have some fun, but chances are zombie fatigue is going to set in long before you reach the end of the campaign.
Back 4 Blood is a fun survival game that hits nostalgia points where other games like Grand Theft Auto Trilogy The Definitive Edition fails to do so. Whether you are looking for an enjoyable holiday gift or a new game to play on Xbox Game Pass, Back 4 Blood should scratch that itch. The gameplay is a bit rough at first but once you get a hang of the mechanics and card system, you are off to become a true cleaner.
You might think that these days the online gaming market is saturated and there's no need for games like Back 4 Blood, but you're completely wrong. If you are a fan of online team shooter games, be sure to play this great game.
Review in Persian | Read full review
It's not perfect, but it's successfully fulfilled L4D's spiritual pursuit by adding modern systems.
Review in Turkish | Read full review