Back 4 Blood Review

"Left 4 Dead 3"

Campaign

October 19, 2021 at 9:57pm
By Jason Stettner

It’s been quite awhile, and a long time coming but the style of Left 4 Dead has returned. In what’s essentially Left 4 Dead 3, Back 4 Blood delivers the expected coop zombie survival experience that I’ve been waiting a long time to once again enjoy. It’s not necessarily innovative in terms of going beyond the existing style of play but it delivers an expanded upon setup that kept me engaged well past the conclusion of the initial campaign’s narrative.

It does this by not only having a chunky story, but with its unique card system that creates dynamic scenarios each time you tackle the various chapters present within the game. With this being something that’s supposed to grow with additional content over time, I’m quite intrigued to see where this is taken in terms of expansion from the initial offering.

With that, we’ve got a set squad of characters to choose from that each have something special style wise to them. You see these folks within intense cinematic segments that help establish what’s going on. They banter, you get to hear background context and what not, it’s neat. This game is also a bit heavier on story bits in comparison to its predecessor, but still has that style of unique segments where you have to complete tasks while taking on zombies and ultimately trying to reach a safe house.

You do this with runs now to see your performance. You gain cards with each area you complete, and by grabbing some while playing on the chapter levels too. You get a couple chances depending on your difficulty and you attempt to make it as far as possible on each run. That is of course dependant on your team to a degree, but that’s the style they went with here. If you’re failing you can of course restart from whatever level you reach, but it’s neat to see a juggernaut run through multiple levels across an act in a clean sweep.

It’s meant to be played in online coop, but a single player option with the bots is present. Just keep in mind that at launch there’s no progression or unlocking for single player but that’s supposed to be changed swiftly after the initial release. When you’re not out battling through various levels there’s Fort Hope where you can chill out. Here’s where you invite friends, start runs and manage cards.

Outside of just getting cards in matches you actually setup a deck by unlocking parts of supply runs. When you play you get points, to finish parts of these supply runs to get new cards or unlock character cosmetics too. In general though, the campaign is fairly lengthy. It has great replay value as you battle through bosses or tackle scenarios again a higher difficulties or even the same difficulty as the situation will always be altered.

Swarm

This is the new versus mode within the game. It has two teams of four facing off against one another in a turn based sort of scenario. One team will play as the special infected whereas the other team will play as the survivors. The sides will shuffle as you battle to survive within this shrinking space for as long as possible. It takes various spots from the campaign as locations to survive and there does appear to be a ton of these options present.

So that means it’s quite varied offers lots of replay value. Not quite the same as Left 4 Dead’s versus but still a really neat and competitive style. I was surprised by how into this whole setup I was and found it fun to be replaying this multiple times over coming across such a variety of competition while doing so. It has a lot of potential, and doesn’t feel too limited.

Gameplay

This is very much a shooter type of setup where you’re blasting the zombie like creatures with various options that you pick up while playing. There are attachments for these weapons, alongside a melee choice too if you’d like. From there you can use medical equipment for healing or explosive type tools to distract. There’s even a special extra slot where you might have a stun gun to escape the grasp of foes or say barbed wire for some quick examples.

The cards will impact these options as you may be allowed say three med kits instead of just the usual one of them. You’ll go about blasting fairly dense hordes considering the largely linear spaces and tons of special infected. I’d say there were almost too many special infected at times, with it coming across as overwhelming. That’s the fun though, the randomness of what you have to battle against.

It can get quite intense, and once more it’s about the squad you have. Communication is important for taking down the many enemies that await you around the next corner. The levels are varied in terms of how they’re designed, with classic types of locations. Spooky cabins to dense city like spots and of course darkened sewers. They really do mix things up and send you off to survive in many locales.

Along the way you’ll have to tackle different challenges on those missions and even that is varied. Save survivors, or keep a jukebox going and even destroy nests. There’s a lot going on there, which was cool. I was also very happy with the performance, on the Xbox Series X it was running at a 4k resolution with 60fps while being smooth despite the chaos. There was HDR support and this has crossplay to connect with others very easily which is nice.

The Conclusion

Back 4 Blood is really Left 4 Dead 3 in all but the name, providing a worthy successor that is fun to play and stacked with content. The replay value here is fantastic and I had a blast surviving whether I was doing so in the story cooperatively with others or tackling Swarm mode to compete against squads.

It just doesn’t really get old and I spent so much time doing so. It was easy to watch the hours go by as we blasted through hordes of creatures. An achievement in coop zombie survival action. It really did bring back that style of play that I’ve enjoyed over the years, but in a modern format. The card system keeps things fresh and if they continue to add content to this I think it’ll keep a lot of people rather entertained.

It’s best in groups, but you can sometimes find randoms online to work well with. It’s got some thrilling action, intense zombie carnage and a wild set of scenarios to battle through. There’s good replay value here and I had a great bunch of fun working through it all. The splendid zombie thrashing thrillride I’ve been waiting for.

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Back 4 Blood Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 8.4