Back 4 Blood - Review

Back 4 Blood is back for blood, guts, visceral carnage and foul-mouthed old ladies. Zombies pouring over walls and gross corpse nests. And a roller-coaster of quality and difficulty.

It feels like only a few weeks ago that I got to have a short play test of Back 4 Blood in their pre-beta early access weekend. I had a great time with the game, and heaped praise upon the ease of dropping in and out, playing with friends and just overall how polished the game felt. Now that we’ve been graced with a full release, including fleshed out cutscenes the full length of game content to play and a new game mode in Swarm to try out. How does Back 4 Blood rate?

Interestingly, only half the cast of characters is available from the word go. Whilst I thought it was cool that you could unlock the other characters, Hoffman, who was my favourite character to play in the early access was locked, and I had to shift to another character. Walker, Evangelo, Mom and Holly are all pretty decent. Holly and Mom being significantly deeper in personality, whilst Walker being my preferred character for play, I was left wondering how to unlock the other characters.

You will need to play part of Act 1 online, if you want to unlock the other characters, because I had played through all of Act 1 and 2, with no unlocks, so I decided to look up how to unlock the others. To my dismay, I discovered that they are meant to unlock after the first section of Act 1. Did this happen for me? Nope. I had only played the solo campaign and can only assume this. Solo campaign doesn’t let you unlock anything. You don’t get supply points; you don’t unlock the other characters. You get to play the game with bots and you’ll be damn pleased about it.

However, for those who don’t have friends to play with, and aren’t confident in playing with random folks, don’t be discouraged. I had an absolute ball playing the game via the solo campaign. The bots are both too good and completely useless idiots simultaneously. Which is both great and frustrating. Great in that they are competent enough to target weak points, kill fodder zombies and use their abilities to heal you. Frustrating in that, they often just wouldn’t help each other out. They don’t self-heal, occasionally temp health healing an ally and that they very rarely help each other get out of being pinned down. They also regularly walk in front of you when shooting, so get used to hearing the damn voice lines about not shooting at each other. Actually, the AI bots are good way of practicing for playing with random people. Because all the ones I played with, were about as actively helpful as the bots were.

The campaign however is an up and down affair. For a good 80% of the stages, there is fun gimmicks, interesting new things added in, new zombies (or variants at least), stacking corruption card debuffs by the Director to keep things different and interesting for each time you play. One of the best moments in a game I’ve had in ages involved starting a jukebox up to call the horde of ridden (the name they give the zombies) to you. So, whilst “Black Betty” is blaring, and people are being loaded into a bus, you find yourself fight back waves and waves of zombies inside a retro diner. It was a fantastically put together section. It was tense, it was fun, and it got me excited for future scenes.

Then the chapter ended on a mission where you have to load 4 bullets into a Howitzer. The AI can’t do any of the interactions, so it’s up to you. Thus Act 1 ended with me loading 4 bullets into the gun whilst my AI teammates had all the fun killing the zombies. Even when playing with real life friends, this is one of the most boring and lazy stages in the entirety of the game. You can essentially bum rush the cannon and fire it the 4 required times, in less than a minute. Act 1 is a great ride, until that point. This is a problem that finds itself repeating. Great earlier sections within a stage, but then a problematic, boring and subpar ending to finish off the act. 

The main upside is that there is a sheer limitless amount of replayability due to the random nature of the deck cards, and the corruption cards by the Director. It’s nice that there is an in-game canon explanation for why the ridden behave like they do, and what is affecting them. The Director will stop at nothing in irritating you with mist and crows that summon the horde down upon you, that you accidentally trigger four more of whilst fighting the horde, thus getting stuck in a loop until all hope fades from you… I may have been really frustrated by the birds.

Something that will have you repeating the same stages over and over will be the difficulty. Playing with 3 other friends, we had a real hard time getting past the second stage of Act 1 on anything higher than recruit, but getting through a stage is great, and it’s such a relieving feeling. The further you progress the deeper into an act, means that you can start future runs from those points and more progress lets you experience more of the game, but damn, it can be difficult to progress. Having a good balance of characters, with a good group of players is essential for higher difficulty play. It will also be incredibly helpful to have unlocked more useful cards with the supply lines to make runs easier.

I would have also enjoyed a larger variety of special enemy types. There appears to be 3 main occurring ones, with 3 variants within. Exploders, Retchers and Reekers are all big boys that explode upon death. Stalkers, Hockers and Stinger are all quick and zippy that either spit or lock you down. Tall boys, Crushers and Bruiser are tall and hit like a truck. There are few others, Sleepers which pin you down after launching from a wall hive and Shriekers who alert the horde if you go near them. The boss type unique ridden were nice but would have liked to have seen another few. The Ogre is a giant bullet sponge who knocks you across the area and throws gunk at you. The Breaker is a big tanky boy who jumps and smacks you around, though he just felt like a souped up version of a hybrid enemy, of a Exploder, Bruiser and Stalker. Whilst having none of the cool unique parts, but the more mundane general parts.

The Hag is probably the coolest of the unique enemies, in that there is a loud crescendo of music and sound to denote her being nearby, and her rapid attacks that involve her trying to devour whoever she catches. There is a corruption card that makes the Hag into a boss type enemy in a level she would appear in, which made her even more fun to fight. The pure chaotic nature of trying to run around her and gun her down, whilst being thrown up on by Retchers and slammed by Bruisers. It’s a whole lot of fun, and it’s something I wished that every stage would do. The best sections are the ones with huge amounts of enemies piling in that you can just eviscerate and carve through.

Finally, Swarm mode. I am not a PvP fan. I don’t like competitive gameplay, I don’t do PvP in MMOs, and I try my hardest to avoid multiplayer games that have heavy focus on the PvP element. Whilst Swarm is interesting, in that you get to pit survivors against AI and Player controlled ridden. I didn’t personally get much from it. If you enjoy competitive play, or you want to punish your friends as a ridden, then you’ll have a ball with Swarm. If you don’t enjoy PvP, that’s perfectly fine. Swarm is entirely optional and sometimes is fun as a way to warm up, or cool-off after a high intensity session.

Back 4 Blood is a really great attempt at reviving the Co-op zombie shooter genre. Technically Left 4 Dead 3 with a fresh coat of paint, Back 4 Blood is a ton of fun and easily one to look out for and pick up. The game is great to play with friends, great to play alone, and decently okay playing with strangers. Though with plenty of randomness, with a huge amount of unlocks to be made, there is so much replay value to be had with this one.

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by Warner Bros Games

The Pros

+Some great set piece stages

+Great amount of replay value

+Interesting characters and good enemy design

The Cons

-Lack of enemy variety

-Some incredibly lacklustre sections

-Solo Campaign doesn’t reward you with anything

-Almost too punishing with difficulty at times