Back 4 Blood Review (bones)
Do NOT purchase at full price. It regularly goes down to 3.99-7.99CAD.
If you want L4D, go play that instead, this is not the spiritual successor people wanted.
Now that you've removed the L4D expectation from the game, it's actually really quite an enjoyable game. The gun play is fun, the movement is lively, the graphics are pleasant. It has an almost arcade-y feel to it, but from the comfort of my PC. The deck system in combination with the character abilities allows for different gameplay styles and cohesive team builds. As you increase the difficulty, strategy and teamwork becomes more and more important. The slight RNG of each mission helps replayability, and oh *boy* have I replayed.
HOWEVER .... You can see the effort and time allotted decreases in every Act. This is mostly from a No Hope perspective, since I've played far too much to be good for me.
-Act 1, well balanced, phenomenally paced progression, everything gets harder as you get stronger, and the difficulty is relatively balanced even at the highest difficulty.
-Act 2, overall a little more difficult and significantly shorter, still pretty consistent progression.
-Act 3? Even shorter, and in No Hope, we see a pretty out-of-pocket difficulty jump about half-way through the act.
-Act 4? What act 4? We do not talk about Act 4.
-Act 5 is a steep upwards difficulty spike, and it continues to trend upwards as you work through the act itself.
-Act 6? Oh do I have things to say about act 6, but simply put, I love the stage design (dinosaurs!!), but gods, I hope you have the burn cards to keep your continues going, because it is significantly worse than all the previous acts stacked upon each other.
And then ... there's the bugs. Most are just annoying or funny visual issues or wanting to 1v1 the bots in the pit. Some are entirely gamebreaking. The one specifically that comes to mind happens upon failing a 'stand your ground' mission in Act 1. Die after you've started the event? It doubles the special spawns for you, since surely that will help (sarcasm). There are also bugs in which you can just stop entire events from happening (spamming Jeff's whistle in an Inner Hive, timing certain hordes with setting off others, etc).
There is also the problem that arises with the fact that all the cards for the deck building component need to be grinded out, and the handful of cards and the pity deck you're supplied with in the beginning is not good enough to take into anything above Nightmare, and that relies on you being a good shot. Be prepared to have to grind for a couple acts before you can really build something specific.
Other notes from someone who played too much:
-The PvP is now non-existent. It was there and honestly pretty fun at the start, so if you have 7 friends you want to set up a game with give it a whirl, but good luck queuing up for it.
-Bots are incredibly powerful. If you are having trouble with a part or an act, queue up for a private run and watch them destroy everything.
-If you're having trouble and don't want to go the bot route (because you're playing with friends), the more copper you have, the easier the run will be. Everything is for sale from health to random cards to item slots and upgrades.
-The combat knife is a noob-trap, I advise removing it from the starter deck. If 4 zombos run at you, combat knife will kill one and 3 will get to hit you. If you punch one, they knock each other back and you won't take that damage.
-Max health after a certain point and certain difficulty is also a noob-trap. At higher difficulties, your bar is almost always going to be more than half 'trauma'. The mobility to not get hit in the first place will save you more trouble.
-Do not double/triple/quad-melee, unless its for the bit. You will regret it.
-Do not the birds.
Overall, an incredibly fun game that got overshadowed because it's connection to L4D was blown out of proportion. Really fun, chaotic zombie shooter. A shame it ended the way it did, but it still has hours and horus of gametime for new players.