Some of the more interesting, top-tier ones offer both pros and cons for example, “Mean Drunk” awards 75% additional melee weapon damage but also disables sprinting. Building the deck offers both short-term reward and long-term incentive, as the cards (which are chosen between levels as the player progresses) add boosts to everything from stamina to reloading speed. The latter are specific gameplay tweaks that will layer extra challenges on the upcoming campaign level, while the former are awarded for progressing in the game and comprise a greater deck that the player can draw from as they play. In Back 4 Blood, this is at least somewhat buffered by the addition of cards, divided into two classes, Active and Corruption. Levels were designed more as isolated shooting gallery environments than a storytelling setting, and while there were key events and climaxes to rally around, for the most part, you knew each chapter’s highs and lows.
For a game that focused mostly on surviving waves of zombies, this was suitable. With a barebones narrative premise, an impermanent inventory system, and only the simplest weapons and healing items, the experience was not unlike its on-the-rails forefather House of the Dead: don’t stop, don’t look back, just keep moving forward. There were many things that made Left 4 Dead a novelty at the time of its release, but the pacing was where it excelled. Of the two most significant changes to this formula, both add variety in a seeming bid to make the game’s natural repetition more palatable in the long term. The player must keep moving forward and take their chances if they’re going to survive. Supplies are minimal, disappearing from the inventory between playthroughs there is no stockpiling or hoarding for those rough combat moments. Environmental hazards, from tattletale door alarms to flocks of birds, threaten to tip-off the hordes. Each level is loosely tied together by this premise, pushing the characters from place to place as they seek out other survivors and search for safety. As with Left 4 Dead, players are put on a team of four that must endure waves of incoming zombie hordes by moving between safehouses, which serve as a rest stop of sorts, allowing the player to stock up on health and ammo before setting out again. Back 4 Blood is an appeasing mix of the old and new.
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What have players come to expect from games now as opposed to when Left 4 Dead was originally released? How has Back 4 Blood adapted to those expectations?Īt a glance, Turtle Rock Studios seem to have an instinct for how to make the series work for a new audience.
But with a few zombie series still alive and kicking (the sequel to Dying Light releases this upcoming February), there’s clearly still an audience there. As zombie games have petered out in popularity, perhaps the lack of Left 4 Dead the past decade was timely. But how has that format aged? The last Left 4 Dead game, a sequel released in 2009, came hot on the heels of 2008’s original, making its over 10-year absence from the games scene a little out of character, if not baffling. From the name itself to its basic structure, it may as well be called Left 4 Dead 3. While not a reboot per se, Back 4 Blood, a new multiplayer zombie game made by Left 4 Dead’s original developers Turtle Rock Studios, is not trying to deny its roots.
Often, in trying to catch up, too much is forced in at once, alienating the player while betraying the original look and feel of a game. It’s always interesting to see how a rebooted series adapts to new conventions after a long absence from the games scene.
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