While playing, you may catch a stray, giggle-worthy joke about social distancing or getting socks for Christmas, but having so much pithy dialogue in a chaotic shooter where players are constantly talking means that it is often wasted.
Back 4 Blood involves plenty of human survivors outside of your troupe so that the apocalypse doesn’t feel so hopeless or lifeless. However, I will say that Tony Todd (Gary the Vortigaunt in Half-Life Alyx ) puts in a brilliant shift as Dr Rogers, who is easily the most memorable character in the game. There’s your big military man saying “get out of my house” as he blasts a zombie in the chops, so don’t come in expecting anything subversive. Pre-rendered cutscenes bookend major events in the narrative, but despite how gorgeous they look, it’s all very stereotypical talk about “fighting to survive” and “the real monsters are among us” that you’ve likely heard before. To get it out of the way, the story that frames the game isn’t much to write home about. It’s a great addition that punishes lone wolf looters, but ‘Wall Guy’ is just easier and more descriptive, I’m afraid. One of the more innovative enemy types are the ‘Sleepers’ that hide on walls and can pin a lone player if they’re caught out exploring. I yelled and giggled my way through the game’s four acts, barking orders through fits of laughter as we curated our builds, completed run-saving cheeky revives, and invented better names for ‘The Ridden’. It’s a very different game, but crucially, it doesn’t lose the necessary communication that a good cooperative shooter demands, which is why it’s so easy to recommend. Luckily, this doesn’t mean that Back 4 Blood is a bad game, it just feels insincere to bill it as the third coming of Left 4 Dead. I admire the variety of enemy mechanics in Back 4 Blood, but there are simply too many to make reliable calls about what to do with them on higher difficulties, especially when you want to avoid certain death. Due to how similar they look, I would challenge anyone to pick out which is which when they’re running at the party. One of the three families, the Reekers, will either explode, spit acid at you, or summon a horde with their guts if they get close. Instead of lurking chargers and smart smokers, there’s a cavalcade of special infected with spotty AI. While you can be thrown into the thick of it due to some innovative chokeholds and objective design, Back 4 Blood just doesn’t provide that same physicality or grit that Left 4 Dead would revel in. The bash – an important part of crowd control in Left 4 Dead – feels ineffectual here due to a stamina meter, with the addition of aim-down-sights shifting focus onto careful shooting from afar, and praying that nothing big gets close to your quartet. Zombie hordes clump up against the player but you still deal with them individually.
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It’s all very tight and Back 4 Blood feels great to play, but it’s not nearly as kinetic as Left 4 Dead as a result, and this is why veterans of the series may not get along well with it.
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