Same Old Same Old...But New!
Stacey and I have repeatedly wondered why Valve never made a third instalment of the co-op zombie survival game Left4Dead (2008) and the sequel L4D2 (2009). After all, even to this day the games remain very popular and we often enjoyed a Dad'n'Daughter game night hacking and slashing our way though levels of undead mayhem.
That question may never be answered, but it now remains moot as in 2021 Warner Bros. Interactive released the suspiciously named BACK4BLOOD!
To all intents and purposed this is the Left4Dead threequel that we all wanted but with a '4' in the title.
There's No Place Like Home, Auntie Em...
Like returning to Oz, everything is the same, but strangely different and I had to pull up one of our old game session video just to remind me quite how different - and the same - things were...
Straight away I noticed of course how the graphics had obviously improved, but the gameplay was remarkably similar and we were able to jump into the new game with the minimum of acclimatisation...
Amusingly, while the army of undead got a make over we quickly became to identify just which monster in B4B had supplanted which monster from L4D! In fact, they weren't even trying that hard to mask the slight of hand that was going on; so the 'Boomer' from L4D was now B4B's 'Exploder', the 'Charger' was now the 'Bruiser', 'witch' from has now been replaced by 'the hag', etc, etc!
It's all like when you go to a competing fast food chain and discover their flagship meals have suspiciously similar names to another famous brand! (I won't name names but you get the idea!)
Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
I don't see anything wrong with plagiarising a game format when the player community is keen to have it but the previous developer doesn't want or can't continue the franchise. Well, anyway, we are glad to have more of the same.
That said, there are some small differences between the games which are intriguing. Back4Blood introduced a card deck building system which allows you to customise your player and your team's attributes...
I can't say that I have my head completely round how best to use the card, and I have found that they aren't exactly critical to the early game and being adept at their use won't hinder your enjoyment of the game. But in later chapters of the game - as the missions get more challenging - the cards and your players attributes may very well make the difference to whether your cleaners can make it through unsaved.
So Far, So Good...
Well, Stacey and I have been been enjoying our game sessions, Back4Blood is a terrific cooperative team game. So far we have been running private server games with two other AI 'bot' team members versus the campaign mode. As we get better at the game and our confidence gowns we will ramp up the difficulty and join other real players online.
We really enjoy these sort of co-op shooters - like Borderlands and Hunt - and are looking forward to next week's Dad'n'Daughter night when we might try increasing the difficulty a notch, as we were just starting to blaze our way through the game's 'acts' a little to quickly by the end of last week's session!
We give Back4Blood 7/10...Its fun where you don't have to think too hard and has plenty of scope to have a laugh among friends. 😉
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