Back 4 Blood

"Back 4 Blood fails to capture most of the magic from the Left 4 Dead series. It ends up being a pale comparison. Despite some moments of zombie killing bliss, you'll be left with a disappointing feeling."

- Angry Joe

Back 4 Blood is a first-person shooter game developed by Turtle Rock Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for mh:awesomegames:Microsoft Windows, mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 4, mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 5, mh:awesomegames:Xbox One, and mh:awesomegames:Xbox Series X/S. It is a spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead series.

Plot
An extraterrestrial parasite called the "Devil Worm" infects most of humanity, turning them into vicious undead mutants called the "Ridden". One year later, a group of veteran survivors called the "Cleaners" fight the Ridden and defend Fort Hope, a settlement within fictional Finleyville, Pennsylvania, United States.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Most of the mechanics that made the Left 4 Dead series so memorable aren't utilized here. It makes this game feel like a cheap knock-off, rather than a spiritual successor.
 * 2) * Despite the marketing claiming that this game was "from the creators of Left 4 Dead", it was revealed that only seven developers of Left 4 Dead was involved in the development of the game, while the rest predominantly worked on Evolve, 2015's biggest flop, making it a case of false advertising.
 * 3) * Since speaking of being a cheap knock-off, it seems to take some noticeable elements from The Last of Us series. When it comes to the aesthetics of half of the Cleaners, the setting, and the Riddens' abilities and biology, which look almost exactly like TLoU clickers, and their mutation types. Way more so, than Left 4 Dead's zombies and their mutation types, as supposedly the marketing claims.
 * 4) Speaking of the mechanics, many of them have been horribly (no pun intended) downgraded from their predecessors, including the shove back being reduced to a weak fist, and there is no option to manually turn on your flashlight, a feature that's been in Left 4 Dead since 2008, which, itself, the functionality remain unchanged and existed since the original Half-Life (in 1998).
 * 5) * In fact, the game doesn't have interactivity, such as openable doors including fridges, destructible objects such as gravestones, and water physics.
 * 6) The story, tone, and many of the characters are cookie-cutter and generic. Notably, the origin of the Devil Worm parasite is never explained, despite the setting taking place in a sci-fi horror universe, and the tone is too lighthearted (via zombie comedy on steroids) for a game set in a zombie apocalypse when compared to the Left 4 Dead series' grim atmosphere (granted, Left 4 Dead 2 did have lighthearted moments, but they were balanced).
 * 7) * Also, the Devil Worm parasite seems it doesn't want to act like a parasite, and instead sometimes like a fungal infection, as seen with its gameplay during the later maps in some campaigns.
 * 8) * The characters aren't much better, as they are poorly written and often make unfunny jokes at moments that don't need any, and they don't bring the same charm as the eight Survivors from the Left 4 Dead games.
 * 9) Another mechanic this game uses is the item rarity system, which feels out of place. There are many weapons to use, but all of it is based on RNG so you may never get the weapon you need. Same with the weapon attachments, you can get high-tier mods, only to get stuck with poor-tier versions, and worse still, you cannot remove them on the fly while playing a level.
 * 10) Terrible and unfair AI for both the Ridden and Special Ridden that is outright broken. Many of the infected sometimes don't move when they see you, or they'll get stuck on objects such as doors, cars, lamps, etc. The Special Infected also have this issue, but it's reversed, as they sneak up to unfair places and land a cheap hit on you.
 * 11) * The AI for your teammates is even worse, because not only do they suffer from the same problems as above, but they can't throw grenades, use melee weapons, and provide callouts very poorly. While these issues did also occur with the AI teammates from Left 4 Dead and the second game, modders managed to fix them with mods such as the Improved Bots mod.
 * 12) The difficulty and balancing in this game is needlessly brutal, even on the Recruit setting. On the Veteran and Nightmare settings, the game doubles the spawn rates for the Special Ridden and rapidly spams higher tier enemies such as the Bruisers, Retches, and Breakers, making progress extremely difficult. Nightmare Mode especially, is so broken and poorly designed that only 0.05% of the playerbase has completed the achievements/trophies for beating all of the acts on Nightmare Mode.
 * 13) A new addition to the game is the divisive Supply Card system, but despite it's an interesting idea, it is executed poorly. Firstly, the cards you stack and collect are based on RNG, so you may never get the card that you want. Then there's the Corruption Cards that modify and upgrade the Ridden, but because of the game's ridiculously brutal difficulty, they often make the Ridden too strong, or spawn Boss ridden at the most unfair places.
 * 14) * Also, most of the cards you get often make the others obsolete, like "Glass Cannon", but then others are useless, such as "Dash".
 * 15) Many of the Special Ridden has poor design choices:
 * 16) * Three of the Special Ridden, (Tallboys, Stingers, and Reekers) have two other variants, but they outright look identical to each other (aside from some aesthetic differences), making it difficult to tell who it is.
 * 17) ** Tallboy/Crusher/Bruiser: Despite having similar melee mechanics to the Chargers, this infected is a bullet sponge, as it can soak up to two magazines from a assault rifle to be put down. The Crusher is the most irritating, as it can grab you constantly, even from behind, and combined with it being a bullet sponge, makes this enemy variant a chore to defeat.
 * 18) ** Stingers/Hockers/Stalkers: They act like the Hunters, but they suffer from many problems. This enemy has a spit attack, but it has a machine gun firing rate, and the range of a sniper rifle. Hockers are considered as the worst enemy in the game, because they often have aimbots and immobilize you from across the map, making them on par with the Jackal Snipers from Halo 2.
 * 19) ** Reekers/Exploders/Retches: These Boomer like enemies have balancing problems. These infected types may look squishy, but they can take many bullets just to be put down. The Retch has the same problem as the Hocker, that it can throw it's acid attack right across the map, giving them an unfair advantage.
 * 20) The soundtrack hasn't got any musical cues for the Infected, making their spawns outright unpredictable, even though said games had such a feature where infected spawns had musical cues and sounds so that players could predict them, and both those games were released 13 years back.
 * 21) * Some of the sound effects can be irritating at times. The most annoying example is when you are being immobilized or downed, the game plays an loud beeping noise that can hurt the player's ears.
 * 22) Unlike Left 4 Dead 2, which has a large modding community with the Source engine being capable of modding, this game has a crippling lack of mod support even through Unreal Engine also known capable of modding. There's not even a level editor, which is disappointing because custom campaigns are the reason Left 4 Dead is remembered today.
 * 23) False Advertising (kind of): The advertisement for the game and even the game's Steam page, claims that this is from the same developers who made Left 4 Dead. However, Crowbcat found out that of the 184 people who worked on Left 4 Dead only 6 of them (actually 7) are still with Turtle Rock. So in reality, this is the same team who made Evolve.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The visuals and environments look pretty good, aside from the animations. The zombies, for example, have multiple varied models like in Left 4 Dead.
 * 2) The designs of the Special Ridden are pretty good, and each one has different mechanics and attacks, and there's even a Screamer type infected (an enemy that was going to appear in the first Left 4 Dead, but was cut due to complaints from play testers).
 * 3) Its class system is pretty well done for the most part, and thankfully, you don't have to deal with players choosing the same survivor.
 * 4) Despite the weak writing, the voice acting is decent for the most part. In fact, Dr. Rogers is played by Tony Todd, who also voiced the Vortigaunts in mh:awesomegames:Half-Life 2: Episode Two and mh:awesomegames:Half-Life: Alyx.
 * 5) The guns, despite having some issues with balancing and attachments, feel decent and have punchy sound effects.
 * 6) The soundtrack includes great songs that are played on the jukebox in the Bar Brawl Blitz level in Act 1, including "The Devil Inside" by Daniel Murphy (previously used in the Reveal Trailer), "Black Betty" by Spiderbait, and "Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother.
 * 7) There are many cleverly hidden easter eggs and callbacks to its predecessor, such as a sticky note on a wall having one of Coach's lines ("This used to be a nice neighborhood!") from Left 4 Dead 2.

Reception
Back 4 Blood was met with mixed reception from critics and players. AngryJoeShow gave the game a 4/10 for solo play and a 5/10 for playing with friends, calling the game an "average zombie game at best when playing with friends, and a disappointment at worst with solo play." They later featured the game as #3 on the Top 10 MOST DISAPPOINTING Games of 2021! list.

Originally, the game has had over 6 million players since its launch, but due to the issues previously mentioned, the player counts on Steam had been dropping significantly to ~2,000, while Left 4 Dead 2 still has a higher average player count of ~16,000.

On 17 December 2021, Turtle Rock's parent company Slamfire Inc. was acquired by Tencent for an undisclosed amounts. According to Tencent, Turtle Rock will remain autonomous under the new ownership.

Videos
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