Back 4 Blood Review (Haruka)
Back 4 Disappointment, Back 4 Failure, Back 4 Generic & Forgettable and Time 4 Retirement for Turtle Rock Studios, a soulless imitation and a disgrace to the Left 4 Dead series.
I was ecstatic when I heard the announcement for Back 4 Blood (B4B). That’s because it was being made by Turtle Rock Studios (TRS), the ‘original creators of Left 4 Dead’ (L4D), and also because L4D remains one of my favourite games of all time. However I was still a bit skeptical due to their previous failure of a game which was Evolve, but even then I remained optimistic that they would regain their reputation with B4B, since they were the ‘original creators of L4D’. But little did I know that this would be one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my entire life. There are so many things wrong with this game that I almost wanted to quit playing this game halfway through because it was SO BORING but I decided to give it a fair chance and thus finished the game, and with that I can now vomit all over this game, Boomer style.
First, the game mechanics are too complicated. One of the great things about L4D is SIMPLICITY, you just need to worry about your health, your team’s health and your ammo, that’s it. However in B4B, not only do you need to worry about all the above, you also need to worry about stamina, copper currency and cards, all of which takes away the simplicity of the game in a bad way. The stamina takes away intense moments in the game and can be annoying especially when running from threats, the copper system ultimately makes exploration and scavenging items useless since almost everything can be bought from the item box in the safe room using copper, which also promotes selfish behaviour as everyone would just care about their own money and items. The card system is a complete mess, creating confusion and a lack of teamwork as everyone would just create powerful decks and not care about working as a team at all, the corruption cards are also stupid and make the game not fun to play at all.
Second, and this is the worst thing, everything and I mean EVRYTHING in this game is GENERIC and BORING. The survivors are boring, they look boring, they speak boring and they lack a personality, unlike the survivors in L4D that are outstanding and have a personality to them.
Similarly, the special infected are also a giant disappointment. The designs are bland and generic, they don’t stand out in any way even when compared to the common infected. Also the special infected are just carbon copies of those in L4D, most of which are just hybrids, there’s no innovation whatsoever. The Hocker is basically the Spitter and Hunter combined, the Ogre is a lousy version of the Tank and the Retch is basically the Boomer but more disgusting. What a joke.
Audio cues are also non-existent in B4B, meaning the special infected just pop up out of nowhere with no indication whatsoever, which means the player has absolutely no way to know when a special infected is around the area. In L4D however, each special infected has a specific audio cue when they’re around and they also have their own unique sound they make. The locations and level designs are also generic and boring, they don’t stand out in any way and are mostly just copy and paste.
The game is also poorly balanced in terms of difficulty and is unfair if you’re playing on anything higher than Recruit difficulty. The Swarm mode is also so ridiculous that I couldn’t even bring myself to play an entire match of it as I was facepalming the entire time, how is this the equivalent to the amazing Versus mode from L4D?!
So what does all this mean? Simply put:
No, this game is NOT the spiritual successor to L4D as it fails in so many ways possible in comparison to L4D, it is merely a L4D clone.
No, TRS is NOT the original creators of L4D, TRS only came up with the initial concept for the game, it was VALVE who did the implementation and the necessary work to make L4D the success it is today.
But does this mean it’s a bad game? Not really, because this game is still quite fun to play especially with friends, at least for the first time but it just gets boring quick, there is also no mod support for this game as well which is a HUGE disappointment as one of the main reasons why L4D is still so popular today would be its active modding community.
It has also come to my attention that this game finally added solo progression, meaning that you can now unlock things by playing solo, so you don't always have to play with others every time. This is great, but still something that should have been here in the beginning and not added only a few months after launch, thus still proving that this game is poorly designed.
Of course, there is still a possibility that all these flaws will be fixed with future updates but at this point I don’t really care anymore. I’m not going to wait for months or years for fixes to things that should not have been there in the first place due to poor game design and management.
Overall, another failure and another disappointment from TRS. It is truly a shame because this game had so much potential and hype but failed miserably to deliver. Maybe next time don’t call yourself the ‘spiritual successor to L4D’ if you don’t even understand why L4D is so great and loved to this day.