Back 4 Blood is basically a lesser version of Left 4 Dead, despite having way more content. Turns out personality is way more compelling than simply having loads of stuff.
Also, it’s really annoying. And slow. And just not as good as Left 4 Dead.
Back 4 Blood – Left 4 Meh’d (Jimpressions)
Back 4 Blood is basically a lesser version of Left 4 Dead, despite having way more content. Turns out personality is way more compelling than simply having loads of stuff.
That is the first time I saw gameplay of Back 4 Blood, and am shocked by how L4D the game is. Like those are the same zombie sounds, are they not? Here I was being afraid it would be too different.
Tried watching some gameplay recently. Got bored about 10 minutes in cause it just seemed a bit bland in comparison to the LFD games, which is weird because I also found it far too busy design wise.
Also it’s worth pointing out that if you play solo with bots ALL progression is locked. I’ve never seen that in a game before.
Why would I buy this when I I could play left for dead 2 for free with endless mods that are free
My friend and I tried this on Game Pass, and I was baffled at the lack of normal zombie hordes. We played on recruit and then on veteran, and both times it was like someone mixed up the programming of spawning hordes and instead spawned those obnoxious specials where the hordes should be. Mowing down hordes is the main draw, and they somehow missed that when copying Left 4 Dead?
Something that made me skeptical of this game from the beginning is not everyone seems to realize that L4D’s simplicity was a big part of its success. You get a primary, secondary, throwable, small and big support item and that’s it. There are just two tiers of guns. As an infected you can basically only do one thing. But there was a tremendous amount of depth in how you applied your very limited kit and most importantly, coordinating with your team was the real skill.
I just couldn’t see a triple AAaaaAAAaa game in modern times embracing that same simplicity. They have to tack on something, anything.
So basically it’s a game that takes good ideas from everyone else but in doing so ends up not really having a strong self-identity.
One of the few things I think B4B does better than L4D is encouraging active healing instead of hoarding med kits until you get downed. However special Ridden spawns are ridiculous (and have been nerfed) in addition to some of them feeling very bullet spongey if you don’t have teammates actively using snipers and/or weak points to take them down.
Miss steph, please just play Vermintide 2 if you have any interest on these types of game.
Victor Saltzpyre is a character that feels like it was made for you.
While playing this during the beta I couldn’t help but think… “Damn, I should reinstall Vermintide 2” and “I’m looking forward to Darktide”
Not much personality in the characters or the enemies and getting hit with 5 special infected at the same time that all had methods to incapacitate you felt… Pretty awful.
Back 4 Blood looks like the kind of game that would be advertised on mobile using Left 4 Dead clips.
I’m surprised it’s a full price release with how sparse and repetitive elements of the game are. But I’m also expecting MTX within 6-12 months for sure, just by how few customization options for guns and characters are present. I don’t necessarily agree with your comments on the characters though, Mom already stands out fairly well. The card system is really cool, it’s essentially a perk loadout with some randomness to change things up, which is fun. But I do agree with the Special Ridden, not being Special at all? When like 2-3 of the same one are on you or there’s 5-6 spawned at once it just loses the danger element and the game also gets absurdly hard out of nowhere – even on recruit difficulty. But the moment to moment gameplay I would say is basic, but good.
The more I see of this game, the more I think it’s actually trying to be a bit more strategic than your L4D style run & gun. Where you position yourselves & how much noise you make & how well you prepare the environment beforehand seem to all carry more weight. The game appears to be selling itself as not that though, & the mechanics don’t really go deep enough to make it obvious that it could be a viable way to approach things.
I felt the generic comment. It feels like the soul of L4D with a lot of crazy events were kind of… removed. The characters don’t matter, the personality is just generic, and it’s just throwing as many status effects and zombies at you as possible. I don’t feel the same kind of attachment to the environments, nor the kind of tension usually found in L4D in this game. I dunno. There just seems like there is less to actually play. The cards are kind of fun though.
The best thing about Back 4 Blood is all the people playing it and going “Damn, I should play Left 4 Dead again”
L4D2’s player numbers have been thriving since B4B’s beta
I like what they did in PSO2, working together well with your teammates rose a meter which offered various buffs and bonuses, and after reaching a certain amount would spawn a random boss. I remember early on it had like maybe 7-8 different bosses excluding rare variants with better drop rate and stats. Co-Op games should all do that now to encourage working together well and make gameplay more varied and interesting.
I do like the card system once you actually build up enough of them, and it’s probably the only real stand out feature worth complimenting. The cards with drawbacks are also decent because they stack on top of cards without them. So you can really specialize into one very specific build while your teammates do others. So one person can be a powerhouse of a melee character that mows through normal enemies while healing the entire team per kill. While another armed with a sniper rifle and loads of weak point damage can take out any special infected, err ridden, in 1-2 shots. That’s when this game shines, but it takes a long time to get there, and the copy pasted content isn’t really that engaging in multiple runs.