Back 4 Blood Analysis

Back 4 Blood gets the brilliant formula L4D to add new products with great potential but unpolished release.

From the first trailer, a little less than a year, Turtle Rock and Warner Bros. have been clear from the outset that back 4 Blood should be submitted as the natural successor of Left 4 Dead. Valve does not seem willing to dispose of the franchise, so it made sense to recover a paradigmatic title that is impossible to avoid when designing cooperative. In fact, it is almost shocking naivete with which they have recovered the wordplay of the title so that there is no doubt what awaits us: same developers, same experience. The result is somewhat different because some new features that try to give new life to the formula, but they do not get better.

Basic information

Developer: Turtle Rock Studios Editor: Warner Bros. Games Platforms: PS5, Series X / S, PS4, One, PC Version tested: PC Availability: 12/10/2021

Blood takes us back 4 a zombie apocalypse in which we have to survive with three others. This time our heroes are not ordinary guys who try to escape the situation as they can, but a team of exterminators with extensive experience in removing infected. There is little point spread over the history of this world: besides being terse and present little interest, the truth is that is so badly told that most of the time we ignore without much effort. It is clear that it was the last priority of a cooperative shooter focused on talking to our friends for a microphone, but the truth is that almost had preferred even less dialogues; interactions between protagonists end up being more irritating than funny.

The star mode the game is the campaign, which recovers the L4D experience as we remember. It is divided into three acts about ten missions each, some of them connected by a common thematic thread, plus a last act is reduced to a single encounter. Each mission lasts five to fifteen minutes, so in theory the duration of the campaign should be around six hours (before we start to repeat again and again, as in the original) but the way in which the difficult progress organizes we spend levels on the first attempt, as we shall see. A little tip: if you want to unlock new levels cread Series in Campaign and you do not go to Quick Departure until you have completed the game.

The basis of the game is just as simple and effective as the original: four people arm themselves in a shelter, open the door and head to another safe area by a road filled with zombies. Sometimes you have to take some object or protect a location, nothing we have not seen before. The matches are dressed with Special Infected with unique abilities, from vomiting acid to paralyze Terminators guard. There is not even excessive differences between both games; It is easy to draw connections between the roles of almost all species: Stalker and Jockey, spitting and Smoker ...

Turtle Rock seems to have followed the advice of if it works do not touch and instead of touching up the foundation, what he has done has been to build a series of systems above. For example, he has incorporated own mechanical properties of a looter-shooter; weapons now have degrees of rarity and several spaces for accessories that allow us to modify them. In addition to searching ammo and come, it is important to find coins for the maps which then has certain uses, such as obtaining recoveries of certain kits. Its main use is to prepare before levels buying weapons, ammunition, life, accessories and objects.

However, the main novelty of back 4 Blood vs. Left 4 Dead is the system deckbuilding. Each character has a unique card associated that gives a special ability (Doc can heal free to each player once per level, Evangelo rid of the grips) and is activated automatically, but the rest of choose us. Let s pause a little to explain it, because the game does a pretty bad job when present and give us an importance of its magnitude. If you expected it to be a minor addition, I have some news that will be good or bad depending on your interest in the genre: Create a deck is not trivial, but an essential mechanics of which will depend on our progress.

Before joining the action we must create a deck of up to 15 letters that allow activating skills between mission and mission. These cards sometimes have as simple effects as improving our amount of maximum life or ammunition, but also more complex as increasing damage if we point out several seconds or recover health to all classmates when someone falls injured. The method of getting letters is to finish missions to get delivery points with which to access an in-game store that offers them. Progress is quite directed; Back 4 Blood gives us access to three different supplies and each of them has eight sequential unlocks (in addition to letters includes cosmetics and sprays), so to get new letters we have to go by completing them. It is easier to experience than to explain; In practice we look at the cards that we want to unlock first and prioritize that path.

Although technically it is possible to play alone, the experience is quite different. We have all the cards available from the beginning and, at the time of writing these lines, playing with bots will not give us the supply points that allow us to progress in the campaign. It has almost more training than a player, the truth. I take this opportunity to emphasize that, again remarking that it is the release version, the bots are quite stupid: they are stuck in the corners, they are not very efficient with special infected and tend to leave us sold when we need a healing.

At first we can not make the letters that we unlock, but after a couple of acts we will start building specialized decks that adapt to our style of play. For example, my main deck is based on creating synergies with body-to-body attacks: I recover life after killing mele, high multipliers of temporary damage whenever I get a low, etc. The system hides more depth than it appears and allows to elaborate builds that give us more freedom to adapt to each situation instead of relying on systems of rigid classes present in other recent titles.

The counterpart of the system is that it limits the rhythm of progress artificially. At first I decided that among the three difficulties with which the game opens (recruit, veteran and expert) made sense to start with that of in between, but the truth is that without a powerful deck it is difficult to advance even in recruit. The differences are also very evident; I brought me a friend who had only played at Act 1 to accompany me at Act 3 and it was hard for him to keep up because he had almost a third less of maximum health than me, and that counting only the easiest statistic to compare. I understand the intention of encouraging the use of letters, but at times is frustrating not knowing if failures are the fault of your strategy, your ability or from your deck (or even worse, from Matchmaking s companions).

This brings together that Back 4 Blood has a fairly evident problems of equilibrium. Throughout the adventure weighs the feeling that the appearances of the special infected are too numerous and end up being unstageable moments. They are killed more easily that in the Left 4 Dead, so except for the final bosses, that feeling that everyone has to row in the same direction when a tank appeared in L4D. In fact, the solution posed by Back 4 Blood to raise the difficulty in that final stretch is to throw special infected five in five. It works as bad as one can imagine: Two enemies appear in the back with the ability to block our actions is an effective way to upload the challenge of the mission, but it is not especially fun to play.

In general, the sensation given by the director does not end up reaching the level of the equivalent presented by Left 4 Dead ten years ago. The base idea is great: Before starting a mission, the game presents us infected letters that are transformed into main and secondary objectives, in addition to certain special conditions such as flame or special infected zombies with a species of armor. It serves to give variety and to counteract our perks (as our session is prolonged, the principal takes more infected cards), but not always accessed with balance and poses missions too easy or difficult.

The cloud mode, the equivalent to the versus of L4D, presents an approximately close to a pure PVP. Instead of going through normal and current maps, successively assuming the position of survivors and infected, here we have closed areas of reduced size where encounters are constant. To compensate for the letters and the categories of weapon, the infected gains experience when attacking and knocking down the other team that is invested in statistical improvements. We do not compete for points, but to endure more time alive, but the base is the same: to make the role of exterminators better than the other team. Experience is more concentrated and focused on action; I personally liked the positioning and surprise game that is lost here for pure scale.

It bothers me a lot that almost all the notes that I have made about Back 4 Blood while playing are negative, because when the pieces fit and looming the Left 4 Dead DNA in all its splendor is understood why some we have been waiting for a decade to a third . Climb and lower tension with master s degree to get 10 minute missions become eternal and emit a sound sigh of relief after achieving escape. The foundations on which the new Turtle Rock game is based are so solid that at times seems easy, but as soon as it peeks one of those less polished details we see that achieving the level of the original is an authentic challenge.

A brief note that I did not want to leave me out: although control with keyboard and mouse is very much, in the command I have not found myself comfortable at all. It is not a subject of habit lack (rather the opposite) but there is something in Back 4 Blood that does not end up liking me. I have the feeling that the acceleration or sensitivity of the right stick should be reduced a little more when we are pointing to facilitate the most accurate shots, but it is the same thing.

Back 4 Blood has a solid base with a hilarious gameplay and a pump-proof structure. You should be singing your praises, but the new Turtle Rock raid in the PVE does not end up refining in the details with the novelties. Pamña the virtues of him with some problems of progress, balance and clarity that sometimes get us to forget how great the starting material is. I honestly believe that this negative impression of the launch can be reversed; In its novelties, great potential is appreciated to create a varied ecosystem that invites to play again and again. He or not, at the end his cooperative shootings are still as fun now as they were a decade ago.