The Turtle Rock Studios team is back and throwing players back into the zombie horde! As the original creators of the Left 4 Dead series make a return with their new coop zombie game Back 4 Blood, fans and new players look forward to seeing if this return is worth getting into. With the help of Warner Bros Games publishing the game, this coop game is on all major platforms and features both cross-play and cross-gen capabilities. After getting into the action these past few dies before launch, this game definitely is a solid title for fans of FPS zombie action.

Story

Living in a world still threatened to be consumed by a parasite that turns people into zombie-like monsters commonly called “Ridden,” it will take a brave set of fighters to try and venture out into this dangerous world. Thankfully, the safe haven of Fort Hope has a team of people, known as The Cleaners, that are the brave folk who are ready to fight through the Ridden and find answers on how to get rid of the threat.

As the variations of mutations among the horde continue, the Cleaners set out to meet up with various people working on new weapons and researching the zombies. This adventure brings a mix of good and bad news, but in the end, it is up to the brave team to bring safety to the surrounding areas of Fort Hope.

Gameplay

As you would expect from most first-person shooters, this game has a variety of different melee weapons, guns, and gun types. You can find bats, axes, shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, and more to work with here. Even though there is a range of different guns, the option of gun types is a bit small. However, you don't really need a bunch of different gun types when you can get upgrades for the guns. All you really need to look for in these guns is how much ammo they hold, how much power the punch, and what their fire rate is. Then again, I'm a sniper-focused player, so this can also be a “to each their own” factor.

Playing through the levels, you will see that they are broken up into Acts and sections. These are directly related to the story itself. There are four Acts in total with the first Act being the longest and the final Act being a single level – yes, it is a final boss. That's not a spoiler, it is kind of obvious. I will say that Act three is the hardest one to get through, so get ready for that!

Before you dive into any action at all, you will want to check out the new and most unique factor that really makes this game better in many ways. That is the card system they have added. You can build your own deck and you are given a starting amount of cards to set up your first deck. As you complete levels, you will earn points that can be used to purchase new cards from different set types. When you get more cards you can personalize your deck a bit more. You can also have multiple deck builds giving you the option to have a different preset for different play styles. Note that whatever order you put the cards in your deck is the order that they will show up during your game run. I'm not sure if this is intended or if it was meant to be randomized, but I liked having control of when specific cards showed up.

Once you have your deck built and bring your party together, unless you are going to be playing solo or with randoms online, you can search for your first game. Play your first round of the game on the Recruit difficulty! This difficulty is not to be considered “Easy” and should be considered a strong “Normal” difficulty choice. By all means, this difficulty will not be an easy run of the game. It may seem like it will be at first, but one attempt on Veteran and you will quickly learn that you need to build up some experience first. You are also going to want to build your deck up with stronger cards before you aim for harder difficulties as they truly are a game-changer.

Every time a level loads up, players aren't the only ones getting cards. The zombies also get a set of cards and they are called Corruption Cards. These are randomly chosen cards that are meant to add a randomized difficulty and challenge factor to the game. This makes for a unique play-through of each level and makes it so you never know what to expect. These cards can be anything from adding armor to the heavily mutated zombies to making zombies have an extra damaging factor, like acid or fire. Among these cards will usually be a challenge to the team that gives them a chance to earn some extra copper for the next round load up.

When a game starts, you are given a chance to set up before heading into the level. Here you will find some base weapons of all the different types, a shop to purchase a variety of things, and possibly even a health box to use. The shop is your biggest asset as you can purchase lost health back, upgrade cards that affect the whole team, weapon upgrades, tools, and everything else you could need or want for your run. Definitely coordinate with your team so that everybody has a little bit of everything for the level! Tool kits are needed to open minigun crates and locked doors with goodies behind them, defibrillators will revive a player that has fully died, and the stun gun will let you break out of a heavily mutant enemies grab hold without teammates help.

Another thing to consider in your setup is your character choice. Each character has a different bonus ability that makes them useful in their own way. Jim has added damage when hitting an enemy’s weak spot, Doc is able to heal each teammate one time per game for a quick 25 health push without any items, and so on. Each character is useful in their own right and should have a deck build ready to go for your top choices to play as.

When you aren't playing the campaign mode, you can also play the new Swarm mode. This is a player-verse-player mode that can be fun for some. It is essentially a team against team battle where the team that can fight off against the horde the longest is the winner. One team will control the horde and play as heavy mutation zombies to try and kill the other team that will be fighting against the horde as the Cleaners.

Audio and Visual

The music style and sound effects used in this game are really reminiscent of the original Left 4 Dead series. It was a fine tune that matched the environment and brought out moments in the game that were either intense or calm, making for a well matched overall audio.

The same could be said about the visuals, except they have been improved rather greatly to match the quality we can expect from games today. Zombies, mutants, and especially the new ogre enemy all look very intimidating. Especially when a corruption card affects a zombie, you can always tell which ones are affected and which ones are standard. The level of details used on enemies, friendlies, and the environment is all aesthetically pleasing.

Replayability

Thanks to the different difficulty options and the new card setup, not to mention the player-verse-player mode they added, this game has a ton of replayability! Team up with different friends, set up a variety of deck types, try using different characters, the options are all there for you to take advantage of and have fun doing so.

What Could Be Better

I wasn't a big fan of the new Swarm mode myself. It isn't very inventive and isn't a great addition to this game. It would have been better if they brought back the old competitive option where players could join a random ongoing campaign and try to kill players in the middle of doing a mission. Those were always fun and would have been a great addition to the game. I can see some people liking the Swarm mode, but I don't see why we can't have both options in the game if you have the zombie controls added to the game already anyways.

Putting specific character costume options locked behind the card unlock list makes it hard for players to customize the characters they like to use. I found myself using Jim the most but despite clearing over five card unlock rows, I haven't seen any costume options for him yet. I think separating the choice to purchase customization options and new cards would have been better, even if they used the same currency to purchase both.

Conclusion

Back 4 Blood is a solid, thrilling return to the coop zombie series! It is a ton of fun to fight through hordes and take on challenging missions with a squad beside you. I love that it has a sense of nostalgia to it while giving a whole new experience thanks to a unique card system and enemy variation. The storyline followed through the levels, the enemies got harder as you progressed, the corruption cards could easily through the team through a hurdle of problems, and there is a lot of variation in a game that usually would only have a small amount of it. Not to mention the excellent reuse of level maps in a way that wasn't repetitive nor seemingly lazy, but rather understandable and fitting. Truly a coop FPS that is worth having!