➤ Back 4 Blood, the Left 4 Dead spiritual sequel review 🎮

We approached the Back 4 Blood review a little hesitant, to be honest. The feeling we experienced during the beta of the new zombie-based cooperative shooter developed by Turtle Rock Studios was in fact that of a product unable to offer anything new, despite thirteen years having passed since the release of the original Left 4 Dead.

Fortunately, the full version of the game turned out to be much more multifaceted and interesting than the preliminary tests, both in terms of gameplay and its strategic implications, and in terms of the variety of situations staged during the campaign; which in absolute does not last very long, but which in fact must be completed three times, one for each level of difficulty, and is able to offer an experience that is always different.

Story

Back 4 Blood, the Left 4 Dead spiritual sequel review — Back 4 Blood, the protagonists in the introductory sequence

La history of Back 4 Blood revolves around the classic post-apocalyptic scenario in which the world has been destroyed and the population decimated by an unexpected and ferocious zombie invasion. In this case the person responsible for the infection is a parasite called, not by chance, the Devil's Worm, but among the survivors there are people who discover that they are immune to the infestation and decide to react decisively, taking up arms and trying to clean up the streets. from the undead.

It is about the Exterminators: a team that in the game is made up of eight characters quite different from each other, each equipped with a specific equipment (although variable during the game) and peculiar abilities that make them more than just a simple skin. Under the orders of an army officer in charge of the resistance, the protagonists of Back 4 Blood accept the important task of vanquishing the Infested and investigating a weapon that could change the tide of the battle.

Characters

As mentioned, the eight characters that we can use in Back 4 Blood are not simple skins, but have features that make them unique and that we can clearly perceive during the game, especially at the highest difficulty levels. Evangelo, for example, is a chatty but quick-witted young man who can regenerate stamina more quickly and help increase the speed of the entire team, as well as free himself from the grip of special enemies.

Walker he is instead a silent man, of action, very precise with the rifle, capable of inflicting additional damage and slightly improving the health of the team, while Holly She's a tough, steadfast chick who wields a Harley Quinn club by default, is more resistant than average to damage and her presence enhances the group's stamina. And if you need a mother figure, it certainly isn't Ma'An elderly but badass Exterminator with an instant revive bonus and an extra life for the team.

Doc stands as the traditional support unit as it can bandage wounded companions once per mission, improves healing effectiveness by 20% and also adds a stamina bonus for the whole group. Hoffman, for his part, is a middle-aged conspiracy theorist who, however, has spent time at the shooting range and has managed to survive so far: he can count on an additional slot and increases the ammunition for his friends too.

Finally there are Jim e Karlee, respectively, a very precise hunter, very fast in aiming, and a punk capable of perceiving dangers in advance, which once added to the team improves the speed of use for all the characters. Each of the Exterminators can carry two weapons, one main and one secondary, which can be upgraded by grafting extensions to find around or buy from safe rooms, as well as three types of objects including bombs, medical kits and extra tools.

Structure

Back 4 Blood offre una campaign fairly full-bodied, consisting of four acts divided each into a variable number of stages with the exception of the last, which is practically a single, long boss fight. It is possible to try your hand at a quick game or create a new session, even private, by selecting the difficulty level among the three available: Recruit, Veteran and Nightmare, which see the progressive increase of the Infested and their resistance to blows, a friendly fire more harmful and a greater incidence of Corruption Cards (we'll talk about it in the next paragraph).

The game unlocks gods checkpoint with each completed internship, thus allowing us to start from there instead of always having to start over. The progression between the levels is however tied to the degree of challenge, and it is no mystery that the developers have bet with conviction on the replayability of the campaign, which we will have to aim to complete three times, one for each difficulty level, and which in general will offer always different situations thanks to the random mechanisms and modifiers that will come into action from time to time.

It is also possible to play in single player, with bots that will take care of controlling our companions (a possibility that also occurs when human participants are missing in a cooperative game), but without obtaining rewards. This is a choice that has caused discussion and we imagine will be questioned shortly to avoid controversy, but which once again underlines how Back 4 Blood was designed exclusively for the co-op.

Tackling the game alone will prevent you from fully enjoying the many facets of this experience and we must also consider that in the more advanced stages the contribution of the bots will prove to be rather limited, preventing you from completing the missions successfully. Then, inevitably, there is the downside represented by users who do not play for the team, go ahead and end up killed or blocked, grab coins and objects and then abandon you at the best.

The only way to remedy similar situations is to get organized together with friends: a rule that applies to all games with a cooperative component and that becomes fundamental when you decide to try the higher difficulty levels, because without careful collaboration you will end up dying in no time at all. Fortunately, the free game on Xbox Game Pass and the cross-play represent two factors of great importance to ensure that the servers are always well populated and you can also connect with friends who have a different platform from ours.

In Back 4 Blood there is also a competitive option, the Swarm mode, which in a very similar way to Left 4 Dead 2 (here the review) puts us in turn at the command of the Exterminators or the Infested, in the context of a match in which the team that manages to survive the longest wins. Frankly, he didn't convince us: fighting as the villains takes a lot of trial and error and there is some concern about balance (see the permanent monster upgrade system) which often makes games frustrating. In short, we would have preferred that these resources were used to enrich the campaign rather than intercepting a need that other titles satisfy in a much better way.

Gameplay

In short, Back 4 Blood is a title that focuses on replayability of the campaign but not in an end in itself, since the developers have included characters with peculiar abilities and a large amount of weapons including pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, clubs and bombs . In addition to the normal zombies, there are also nine special enemies and two different bosses, including the huge Orc, to revive the situation.

It is clear and evident that the mechanics are the same as in Left 4 Dead and those who have spent hundreds of hours on the shooter produced by Valve may feel an inevitable deja-vu, maybe even a little tired. At the same time, however, it has been literally years that a large number of players have been desperately looking for such an experience, enough to reward a product like World War Z (review here) despite its many limitations.

Controller (or mouse and keyboard) in hand, the gameplay of Back 4 Blood is exactly as we expected: you start from the inevitable safe room and, in an attempt to reach the next, you travel a path full of undead, perhaps with some object to find along the way. The scenarios express a certain degree of variety and some original ideas in the final stages of the campaign, but it is the fighting that reigns supreme and the gunplay seemed very solid to us, with an excellent enhancement of the weapons even in the context of an arcade approach.

Experimenting with the new creature of Turtle Rock Studios is therefore like finding an old friend who, however, in the meantime has gone to the gym and pumped himself up a lot, offering us substantially richer content: double the playable characters compared to Left 4 Dead and with an effective distinction, more than double the special Infested (some simple clones of the various Boomers, Spitter and so on, others more fresh and interesting), the bosses who arrive by surprise, the houses to explore in search of ammunition and objects, the hordes that leave at random and, above all, the carte.

At first you don't notice that much, but the deck that we are given the opportunity to create and that we can enrich by unlocking the structures of the military base that acts as a hub between one game and another, substantially influences the experience by adding important bonuses for our Exterminator or the entire team , with the possibility of calibrating the fishing in order to coordinate with the progress of the stages and therefore find the most useful cards to face certain situations, with an eye to team balance.

We will also have to take into account that while we play there is a game master virtuale that will try to make us the party and that has its own deck of malus to be activated according to our behavior: fog, poison, unprecedented armor and more will be able to become part of the game, making our life more difficult. However, we too will have a role in this sense with the selection of Corruption Cards, some of which increase the challenge by granting us greater rewards in case of success.

Graphics and sound

La graphics of Back 4 Blood stands as a synthesis between the need to focus on 60 fps both on PC (at least) and on console, managing with ease hundreds of enemies at the same time on the screen, with a netcode as solid and reliable as possible and the due technical upgrade compared to previous works by Turtle Rock Studios. A successful synthesis, one could say, and with very few blunders, including a decidedly old-gen water realization, some bots files and some interpenetration.

The characters in the game are well characterized and enjoy a good set of animations, as well as special enemies. The zombies that are sent against us in huge quantities are instead linked to geometries that are necessarily simpler and in practice there are no dismemberments as happens instead in Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (here the review), but the scenarios appear rather large and some of them also inspired from the visual point of view, able to go beyond the stereotype of the American horror movie.

On PC we were able to play at 2160p with all presets set to the highest setting, Epic, achieving a stable 60 frames per second once an AI-based upscaling technology such as the DLSS or the Super Resolution. In truth, it was the latter that convinced us the most, thanks to the possibility of using the highest quality without incurring small stutters as is the case with the corresponding NVIDIA feature.

Il sonoro of Back 4 Blood can count on an essential soundtrack but capable of going into action at the right time to adequately accompany the most frenetic situations. The game finally boasts an excellent dubbing in Spanish, very well performed and with a really convincing cast, as per tradition for Warner Bros.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Processor: Intel Core i5 10400
Video card: NVIDIA RTX 3070
Memory: 16 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows 10 64 bit

Minimum requirements

Processor: Intel Core i5 6600, AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Scheda video: NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti, AMD RX 570
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Storage: 40 GB of space required
Operating system: Windows 10 64 bit

Recommended Requirements

Processore: Intel Core i5 8400, AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Scheda video: NVIDIA GTX 970, AMD RX 590
Memory: 12 GB of RAM
Storage: 40 GB of space required
Operating system: Windows 10 64 bit

Comment

Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Windows Store Price 59,99 € / 69,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (6)

7.6

Your vote

Back 4 Blood is the spiritual sequel to Left 4 Dead and as such it won't disappoint those who have long been waiting for an inspired, solid and fun zombie-based cooperative experience. The game does not revolutionize the original formula in any way and therefore at the beginning it might seem something that has already been widely seen, but the innovations introduced on the front of the characters and their abilities, the interesting found of the cards and their strategic implications, as well as the multiplication weapons, enemies and scenarios will be enough to convince even skeptics of the value of the new title from Turtle Rock Studios.