Back 4 Blood

If you can give Back 4 Blood a chance, then eventually the game will open up as a fun and original 4-player co-op based shooter.

At its best, Back 4 Blood offers a ton of variety to keep you and your friends interested for a long time. Even returning to levels you’ve already played gets interesting thanks to different cards, which can make major differences in how things play out. If you have three friends to play the whole game with, I highly recommend it. That its available as a Game Pass title is awesome because you can get a group of friends together without them all having to buy the game. If you don’t have that group though, a poorly balanced solo mode and issues with matchmaking will sink this one for most.

We have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original. This has less to do with its diminished darkness—Left 4 Dead was a far gloomier ride, lit by the panicked sway of torches—and more to do with us. And with the years. There is plenty to enjoy here, and I heartily recommend it to any who relish killing the dead. But Turtle Rock Studios wants to take us back to another time, and it’s 2 Late 4 That.

Back 4 Blood still comes out as the best Left 4 Dead-inspired game in recent memory, taking the core design and innovating on it just enough to keep everything fresh and fun. Where Back 4 Blood gets things right, it does them really well, but where it doesn’t is often quite obvious.

Back 4 Blood is the spiritual successor of Left 4 Dead but it's also more than this. Its sub-roguelike card system refresh the zombie-coop-FPS formula but the game needs some polish and a solid post-launch support.

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.

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.

As homages go, it's reverential yet poisoned by doubt. It doesn't trust Left 4 Dead's genius enough to let it stand alone. [Issue#365, p.106]

I so badly want to love Back 4 Blood, but its grindy nature and difficulty spikes out of nothing let it down, leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth. It has potential for those in it for the long haul, accumulating cards and building specialised decks to match the challenge, but right now I just have no desire to go back 4 more.

It's been more than a decade since Left 4 Dead 2 and Turtle Rock is now back to reclaim the throne. Back 4 Blood is not a revolution, though. Instead, it's an evolution of the developer's already excellent gameplay from before. Although we would have liked less of the small flaws we find, it does not stop the game from being a really entertaining and addictive shooter. With human teammates, that is.

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.

It seems backhanded to say that a game is only worth playing if you can find people to distract you from the actual game, but if your group wants something mindless to wind down after an intense night on Warzone or Rainbow Six: Siege, Back 4 Blood is ideal.

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.