Hands on with Back 4 Blood - Preview
Back 4 Blood is full of zombies, excessive gore, awful one liners and a co-operative game that we have been screaming for since Left 4 Dead 2 released almost 12 years ago.
Back 4 Blood is currently in the midst of its early access and open beta opportunities, and I got to go hands on with it, with a friend of mine. This was an interesting opportunity, as someone who was never hugely into co-op shooters, and played a total hour of Left 4 Dead, I was intrigued to see if the hype that is coming towards Back 4 Blood is justified.
Back 4 Blood is an exciting experience. It’s not too stressful, but has a level of challenge to it. The matchmaking is seamless, and the ability to drop in and drop out at random allows for easy, quick play sessions. I never ran into any bugs or glitches which was surprising for what is essentially an early access bug test run.
There is a variety of characters you can pick from, all of which have their unique character abilities, such as “Mom” giving the team an extra life, or Hoffman giving the team more ammo to work with. On top of that, there is a deck system, which lets you load a deck with ability cards. At the start of each section of the runs, you get to draw one of these cards and apply its effect to the pool. It adds a bit of randomness to the game but also keeps it excited. Some are underwhelming, such as more healing efficiency or increased reload speed. But there are some more interesting ones, such as health recovery from melee at critical health, or a card that changes your melee to a boot knife, making it more effective at clearing enemies who are swarming and you need to reload.
The one thing that stood out to both me, and the friend I was playing with, was the sheer amount of gore. The game is BLOODY. Really bloody. Getting up close and personal with the melee weapons will result in your character being covered in blood from head to toe. Visually, you can see your characters hands covered in the viscera, and looking at your allies been drenched in it, is really surprising. It also doesn’t seem to go away, I didn’t ever notice the blood disappearing once it was on the characters, except between checkpoints.
The guns are also really impressive. They all feel impact and realistic. The Assault Rifles are somewhat disappointing, as they chew through ammo really quickly and don’t seem to make as much of a dent as they should. However, the shotguns blowing zombies heads off, the desert eagle sidearm dropping zombies in one shot really adds strength to them. The best part was the melee weapons. Hacking into the zombies with the machetes, axes, tomahawks feels great. The visceral carnage you want, is the visceral carnage that you get with Back 4 Blood.
I can’t fault where Back 4 Blood is at currently. The cross-play is a fantastic way of ensuring that public lobbies are always filling up pretty regularly, and it isn’t punishing for a player who has to leave early. The deck system seems interesting, and the more you get into the game the more variety you’ll have. There is a substantial amount of gameplay, and a huge amount of enemy variety outside of the general fodder zombies that get thrown at you. The first boss, the Ogre, is intimidating. Really intimidating. My friend and I got absolutely ruined by the boss several times before we managed to get through that section.
Back 4 Blood is in an exciting place, and it’s definitely one to keep an eye on. If you missed out on the early access, keep an eye out for the Open Beta coming up and give it a try for yourself. There’s a really good game here, and there isn’t much more that needs to be tweaked to ensure a solid, exciting experience.
Back 4 Blood is set to release on October 12 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, with the game releasing into Xbox Game Pass on day one.
