Should You be Back for More!? - Back 4 Blood Beta Impressions

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Peter Bytes

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Published on August 20, 2021 4:15:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rLt9hLhB7I

Game:

Back 4 Blood (2021)

Duration: 6:30

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5

My Back 4 Blood Beta Impressions and comparing it to Left 4 Dead and debating whether - Should You be Back for More!?


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I've just finished the Back 4 Blood beta with friends and I want to share some of my experiences as well as debate whether you should be back more, is this going to be worth picking up at launch?
There's going to be some inevitable comparisons with the Left 4 Dead games, this the successor to the series from the same developers.
The beta was split up into two parts, there's an act of a campaign which I thought was pretty good with some concerns and there's the Versus mode, which I've gotta be honest with you - I was really a disappointed with, I'll get in depth with the Versus mode later.

So my beta experience started in the Hub area, this serves as a lobby where you group up with friends, and you can purchase your upgrades. I want to say the Hub feels a little bit unnecessary, but there's actually a pretty neat little training area that lets you test the game's weapons. And there's a pretty huge selection of guns available with different tiers of guns and attachments, but in contrast there's very few melee weapons available.
The hub also let's you manage your cards and decks, that's right - they've added in cards that give you power advantages, you get to pick one card from pool of drawn cards between every round. It's an addition that adds a layer of luck and rng to the gameplay that's just going to be frustrating when you don't get the optimal cards in higher difficulties. I'm not really a fan of the card system, the way you level them up even feels like battle passes and the whole system just feels ripe for microtransactions and pay to win elements later down the line.

But I gathered up my crew and we tried Act 1 of the campaign. Straight away the visuals and environment were fairly impressive.
When you get a bit further into the level things become a bit more grotesque, I wasn't expecting the levels of gore in the environment and I love it. You're climbing over mounds of corpses, covered in blood, and there's fleshy mutinous body parts like intestines stretched across the landscape. I'd say the visuals and the gory level of detail in the environments are one of the strengths of this first act and fingers cross the rest of the game maintains this standard.

The first act easies you in with a few straggler zombies before it starts throwing larger hordes and special zombies at you. I call them zombies but in this universe they're technically called the "Ridden" which might be the lamest name for zombies yes.
Gun play feels like a bit of an improvement over Left 4 Dead, you can actually aim down your sights. But I was using a shotgun as an effective long range weapon so I can't praise the realism with the gun play, despite the huge number of guns available.
I'm personally more interested in the melee weapons, I had a few moments where I was surrounded by zombies, so I'd pull out my melee weapon and chop them all up - it was really satisfying. There's a bit of weight behind your swings leaving zombies staggered and allowing you take on entire hordes provided your character has enough energy. Pity there's no Katana weapons this time around.

A few familiar mechanics return from Left 4 Dead, you'll need to collect items for objectives while attacked by waves zombies, if you damage cars you'll trigger alarms and alert more zombies, you've got your fire crackers and pipe bombs which were really useful when we were overwhelmed, and this time we've got swarms of birds and if you disrupt them it'll summon in hordes of zombies - but we'd usually just purposely trigger these because dealing with hordes was so fun.
And speaking of Left 4 Dead, there were a few locations that felt reminiscent of old levels, in particular a familar church.

So you've got your regular zombies which can sprint, but there's special zombies too, The Reeker is a big boy who explodes on death with added knockback. Tallboys have massive mace like arms and are deadly in close quarters. The Ogre is a massive bullet sponge with visible weak points. And Snitchers will alert hordes to your presence when aggro'd.
My favourite is the Stinger, which can crowd control you with their phelgm this require your teammates to break you out of the crowd control . Very familiar stuff but the specials didn't feel quite as iconic and dangerous as their Left 4 Dead counterparts.
There was one new special that hides on walls and it's kind of terrifying when it jumps at you, I'm not sure if this is a form of a Stinger or an entirely new special, but pretty cool.

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