The Back 4 Blood Beta Is Out: How Close Is It to Left 4 Dead?

Never in my life did I think I would see another Left 4 Dead game; as the internet saying goes, “Valve doesn’t know how to count to three.” Turtle Rock also believes this and decided to step away from Valve to make their spiritual successor to their famous zombie FPS. Entitled Back 4 Blood, following the same naming conventions of their previous two games, the team at Turtle Rock decided to play into the formula of their previous game, concoct a new story in a new universe, and bring players a new way to experience their zombie shooter. Being backed by Warner Bros., Turtle Rock put out a beta for their game. While fans are playing the game, it’s hard not to compare it to its predecessor, especially since the same developer makes it. So, how close did Turtle Rock get to replicating their previous zombie shooters in the modern age? 

The concept of both games is nearly identical; a team of four survivors makes their way through a level fighting the undead. In Back 4 Blood, the name of the undead is called Ridden. They’re the product of a virus that plants itself inside the victim’s brains, turning them into zombies and making them not only stronger but sometimes mutating them into special enemies. 

Both games also have players reaching the safe room at the end of the level, serving as a checkpoint until the end of the campaign. With a finale at the end, the characters complete a final mission to end the game, providing them with an escape from their current situation. Although this seems like the base gameplay loop of both titles, Back 4 Blood has more to it than what Left 4 Dead can provide. There’s more to do in Back 4 Blood, but is it enough to make the game a worthy successor to Left 4 Dead?

So, how does the Back 4 Blood beta look? Visually, it looks good! The weapons are crisp and the character models are serviceable. Lighting can be a little inconsistent at times, seeing that many of the maps take place during the day, and the characters you play don’t seem to have flashlights. Some of the game’s darker areas feel like they need a flashlight to make their way through. Some of the survivors look a little strange, but the models don’t look bad when you’re looking at them in the middle of combat. 

One massive gripe I had when I booted up Back 4 Blood’s beta is the view models of the game. They’re massive. I’m running the game on a PC, so I’m able to turn up the FOV of the game, and even with the FOV set to 120, the view models for the weapons feel way too big. It looks like my character is holding the weapon right next to his head rather than resting the weapon’s stock on his shoulder. I hope that Turtle Rock will make the view models smaller before launching the game for aiming. However, the view models are fine. 

Running the game worked just as expected as well, I ran the game on my RTX 2060 Super, and the game ran perfectly fine, with little to no hiccups. However, loading into matches did cause my game to hitch just a little bit, but I assume that these bugs will be ironed out within the next update for the game. 

After launching Back 4 Blood’s beta and completing the main setup for the game, I was immediately thrust into a survivor camp. Seeing that my previous experience with Turtle Rock had my friends and me starting on a title screen, making our way into the game through menus, it’s apparent that the developers are working towards a more immersive approach. 

The players and their party members start in a Camp and then start the missions from there. This is due to the character’s world and the part they play in the game’s story. The characters you and your team play are called “Cleaners.” They function as an extermination squad whose only focus is destroying the Ridden and making it out alive, as they’re immune to the parasite taking over the world. They can run around the world as much as they want and destroy the Ridden without and repercussions. 

There’s not much in the main area. At the spawn point, two NPC’s will start both the main campaign mode and the Versus mode. Aside from that, there’s a boxing ring, which you can play with other members from your party, and the shooting range, where players can try out all the weapons and supply lines. The supply lines are like tiny battle passes, where the points you get from reaching a safe room will be given to you like XP, you can then turn in the points to move a bit down the supply line, and this will net you new cards, as well as cosmetics like sprays and icons. 

While the main hub is cool for a second, I find it similar to something like Call of Duty: WWII’s Headquarters mode, where players can run around and compete in challenges, as well as try out their custom classes. Although, when I started the game, no one was there. The main hub for the game felt like it wasn’t necessary, especially because I can start both the campaign and the VS mode from both NPCs and the menu.

When it comes to the gameplay of B4B, I was expecting something more along the lines of a more optimized version of L4D. However, when I started the Back 4 Blood beta, I noticed that things weren’t the same, but it’s not bad. The game does a very good job of feeling like a spruced-up version of the previous titles. It feels smooth to play and includes good quality of life features, like being able to move while healing. 

While L4D didn’t need ADS in their game, B4B is starting to play more on the new conventions of an FPS game. This makes the gameplay feel buttery smooth, as aiming is precise but doesn’t feel stiff. Running, jumping, and aiming all at once feels like one fluid motion, and it plays great. With the new conventions of FPS games introduced, this also means that the game has included sprinting, and with sprinting, comes stamina. The stamina in the game is used by two key functions of the campaign mode, running and melee, or bashing. Bashing isn’t as useful as it was in L4D, seeing that being bashed doesn’t ruin the player’s aim, so being hit by the ridden doesn’t have that heavy feedback L4D used to have. 

I’m assuming this was made intentional. The melee button isn’t as accessible to players as it was in L4D, seeing that it was a primary function of the game rather than a secondary. I don’t expect this to be changed in the full release of the game. However, making a consequence for ridden getting too close other than taking health from the player should be considered. 

Cards are new to the game. According to Turtle Rock, one of B4B’s selling points is the addition of a cards system. The cards, which players will unlock through the game’s supply lines, are the mainline of defense between the player and the AI director. The director is a force of nature in the game and is an updated version of the director from L4D. Although the bash can be upgraded into a combat knife, players must play a specific card, which replaces the bash with a melee attack from the knife. 

This AI enemy will place zombies, special infected, and other characters in the game, making it fluid and sometimes more difficult experience. However, the players can add buffs in the game, making it easier for the players to make it out on the end. I was originally under the impression that the game would have players playing cards to outwit the director while playing. The truth is that cards are played during the beginning of each checkpoint, in a setup section, before opening the safe room door. Players will get a few cards to start with and then play one card before checking the loadouts in the safe room. These cards can be anything from giving the team more ammo, upgrading the bash, and adding more health to the characters. Some cards don’t feel like they’re doing much to enhance the game, but some, like the combat knife, do change the gameplay enough for players to want to use them. There’s also another set of cards the director plays, called “corruption cards” the ones I got while playing through the game came in the form of challenges, but they can also function as debuffs for the player’s team. One of the challenges I got while playing was called “No One Left Behind,” which awarded the team 500 copper each if the whole team made it to the safe room alive. 

Copper is something else added to the game. It’s a form of currency that players can find during the level and are awarded at every checkpoint. This means players are encouraged to look for copper, as a fundamental part of the formula has been changed from L4D. 

Instead of finding new weapons in the safe room, the game includes a CSGO styled buying phase. Opening the chest in the safe room will open a buy menu, where players can change their weapon or add attachments before moving on to the next section of the game. Weapon attachments are also new to the game. Seeing that ADS is now a thing, sights, stocks, and even suppressors are included, each costing some copper and coming with their rarity. However, the rarity system for the attachments doesn’t matter for something like the sights. It does matter for attachments like the extended magazine and the stock, which gain more ammo and stat boosts based on the player’s rarity—each of these costing copper in the buying phase. Also for purchase are items that can be used during the game, such as first aid, pain medicine, and pipe bombs, all making their return from L4D. However, there’s more. 

Items like tool kits will take up the medicine slot but award players with new special equipment if they use it on a marked orange box. This box could contain something like a minigun turret that the player could use. Other things like firecrackers can also be used. But the game doesn’t outright specify which items take up which slots. Rather than put them in a row which shows what slot a certain item takes up, they will highlight the slot on the opposite side of the screen when the player hovers over them. While it seems like a nitpick, organizing the menu might benefit the game’s buying phase. 

Another thing that B4B does which is similar to L4D is its inclusion of special infected into the game, while they’re similar to the previous incarnations of the special infected, aside from the massive behemoth called the Ogre in the level 1-2. The game includes its B4B version of the boomer, the Charger, and the Smoker. The beta doesn’t include an equivalent to the witch or cars that will alert the horde. Instead, the game has crows sitting around parts of the map in groups, and if the players disturb the crows, the horde will come and attack them, putting that function from L4D into the game.

While they function similarly, the one issue I have with the characters is that they blend into hordes too easily if they’re not malformed like the Charger equivalent. The Boomer type ridden also doesn’t have a specific distance that can be discerned for shooting it. I’ve been knocked back while standing farther than an actual boomer in L4D and wondered why I was still affected by the explosion. Regardless some of the special infected should be tweaked to stand out a little more, making them easier to spot. However, the addition of weak points on the enemy makes for an easier time dispatching them. 

Another thing I wanted to mention is the difficulty of the game. When I play L4D, I usually play on the hardest difficulty because who doesn’t love a challenge? However, when I started the Back 4 Blood beta, I was surprised to notice that I wasn’t asked what difficultly I wanted to play on. When I started the game, I was met with a surprisingly easy time, I found it to be a little too easy for my tastes, and after looking around a little more into the menus, I noticed that the game was put on easy. The game should’ve made it known how to change the game’s difficulty setting, as I wanted to play on a harder difficulty. 

Included in Back 4 Blood’s beta is the Versus mode. This mode is similar in concept to the Versus mode in Left 4 Dead. The mode has players put into an arena rather than a campaign mission from the game, and while the goals are still the same, outlive the infected or kill the survivors based on the team one’s on. The mode differs between the two games as the mode is more focused on survival time rather than completing a mission, which could be ran through, rather than being forced to fight the enemy. 

This puts the survivors inside the game world, with a preparation phase, where the survivors will purchase weapons and set up their defenses during the fight. Then, the game shifts into the mode, the survivors having to last as long as possible. At the same time, the enemy attempts to kill all of them before time runs out.

However, players can’t hold up in a single building and fight off the enemies, seeing that some of the enemy teams can’t fit into the buildings that the characters may be in. Thus, the swarm is introduced. In pure battle royale fashion, a ring of insects also carrying the parasite are closing in on the players, and they’ll be forced to move unless they want to take a one-way trip six feet under. This means that teamwork and planning are going to be the key to survival. When the survivors meet their end, the time they stayed alive is tallied up, and that time sets the bar for the other team’s survival. Whoever lives the longest wins and scores a point, best out of three. During my playthrough of the mode, I picked two classes, the Bruiser and the Hocker. While both of them have their abilities, it seemed like what I was doing playing as these characters weren’t enough to stop them, not that I wasn’t doing enough damage. Still, when I was playing the campaign, the Bruiser could knock players back, and the Hocker could stick players in place. Something that I had to happen to me during versus as well. However, when I was playing as the zombies, I couldn’t achieve these results against the survivors. While it was fun just to run around and shoot the Ridden, the enemy team forfeited the game when my group surpassed three minutes of survival, and for some reason, this counted as a defeat for my team. 

While this mode was fun to check out, it certainly won’t be my go-to choice when the game launches. It seems that Back 4 Blood is coming out to be a fun and interesting take on the Left 4 Dead formula. However, it seems like the game could use some serious tuning as the game is suffering from many issues in the gameplay department, mostly with visual feedback and difficulty scaling. It has the DNA of its predecessors, but I think the game is trying a little too hard to be something it isn’t, as the main hub feels more like Destiny than Left 4 Dead. Regardless, I found Back 4 Blood to be a fun game, and while I feel like it would be more enjoyable with friends, I think there are still some glaring issues with the title that need to be ironed out at launch.

For those who want to get their hands on this spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, playing the beta of Back 4 Blood might be able to scratch that zombie itch. However, the game isn’t going to be available forever. While the Back 4 Blood Beta launched, the beta will only last until Monday, meaning the whole weekend will be free for the game. The game’s out on all platforms except the Switch, so be sure to check it out before it’s gone. 

Source: https://www.esportstalk.com/blog/the-back-4-blood-beta-is-out-how-close-is-it-to-left-4-dead/