Back 4 Blood after 70 hours: How good is the coop shooter really?

Zombie fan Cortyn from MeinMMO has Back 4 Blood extensively played and reveals what the co-op shooter is worth even after 70 hours.

I make no secret of the fact that I was extremely hooked after the beta of Back 4 Blood. I really enjoyed the beta. Accordingly, I planned a few days off with some friends to extensively play the new zombie shooter. Now, nearly 10 days later and with just over 70 hours of playtime on the clock, it’s time to evaluate the shooter conclusively.

Story – One steals the show

The story of Back 4 Blood is relatively simple and is, more or less, explained in passing. In the deep ice, an ancient life form was discovered – a special worm. However, it is a greedy parasite, eating into human bodies and spreading rapidly. Humans infested by the worm turn into mindless slaves, the Ridden – or simply zombies. As Cleaners, you are among the roughly 1% of humans who are immune to the worm.

A considerable amount of time has passed since the outbreak, and the remaining humans have gathered in camps – like Fort Hope, which is at the center of Back 4 Blood. From there, you repeatedly venture out to complete various missions. Sometimes survivors must be rescued, sometimes resources collected, and sometimes a location simply cleared of zombies.

Basically, nothing spectacular – just a solid zombie apocalypse. No more, but also no less.

Although Back 4 Blood has a few rendered cutscenes, there are actually only 4 of them. Two relatively early on and two more towards the end. They are really cool and well done, but for my taste, they felt a bit thin. I would have liked to see more of such scenes and can only hope that the DLCs will deliver a bit more.

During the individual maps, the characters occasionally tell a few lines from their past or explain their views on current events. That’s cool and breathes life into the characters, who otherwise only throw out (more or less) cool one-liners while smashing zombies.

However, there is one character who steals everyone’s show – and nearly exclusively.

The conspiracy theorist Hoffman simply has the best dialogues. Perhaps it’s also due to the current relevance that conspiracy theorists surrounding Corona are also a bigger topic, as Hoffman could come 1:1 from the camp of the lateral thinkers and climate change deniers. With the small but fine difference that Hoffman somehow still seems sympathetic and everyone in the group has more or less come to terms with the fact that he’s just a bit crazy.

A few short dialogue snippets where my team first has to take a laughing break.

“Ah, here it is. My university, where I graduated.”
“Hoffman, that’s an elementary school…”

“Here we find all the secret documents. Everything the government plans and intends. With all the knowledge and technology they’ve amassed here, they could easily stop climate change.”
Short pause.
“If it really existed.”

Although Holly, Jim, and Doc also had something to say every now and then, their lines and stories faded somewhat in comparison to Hoffman’s, where you simply always had to laugh. When Hoffman talks about the “lamestream media” or passionately recounts how the reptilians in government have obviously ensured that nearly 1% of all humans are immune to the zombie worm, one has to grin. Also because all the other characters then make fun of it, and you can almost hear the amused eye-rolling in the dialogues.

It is certainly possible that the other characters also have cool dialogues that give them a little more profile. However, in our first run, especially the interactions with Hoffman have remained in our memory, who has made some nonsense at most locations.

The Gameplay: Solid Zombie Action with “Left 4 Dead” Nostalgia

Those who play Back 4 Blood will have many flashbacks to “Left 4 Dead”. Sure, the principle of “4 survivors fighting against zombie hordes and special zombies” is simply not a new invention and exactly the successful recipe that Left 4 Dead has already made successful.

Back 4 Blood builds on this, but offers more variety. There is the card system. These are basically additional perks that you unlock throughout a campaign and customize your character stronger.

In the beginning, the cards are still rather trivial and the bonuses low, such as “25% more ammo” or “20% more damage from melee”, but these bonuses add up and allow for strong specialization. By the end of the first day, we had a highly specialized team in which each member had a fixed role:

• Our sniper in the team became stronger the more headshot kills he achieved without taking damage himself. He could send even the toughest special zombies to worm hell with a few shots or make Tallboys stumble so that the rest of the team could retreat.
• Our healer could provide huge healing even with small bandages, reduce the trauma damage of the team, and even drastically increase our maximum hit points. In addition, every time a team member went down, the entire group was additionally healed.
• Our Hoffman player was ready for each situation. He could carry two primary weapons and deal decent damage with a shotgun or assault rifle depending on the situation, with each of his kills having a chance to spawn ammo.
• I was responsible for melee against the regular zombies. Every kill in melee gave me stamina back and sped up my melee attacks, while simultaneously every melee kill healed me and gave my team temporary hit points (essentially shields).

These are just four of the possible roles – you can invent nearly infinitely by combining the cards. Whether you specialize or become an “all-rounder” is up to you.

By the way, there have been a few sensible changes since the beta – for example, the shop in the starting safe room can no longer be used after a few minutes. Previously, it was sensible to “backtrack” halfway across the map just to shop again right before the final fight. This completely made resource management unnecessary – in the release version of the game, that is no longer the case and it provided a better gaming feel.

However, those who think they can build a deck and completely play through the campaign – that might not work. At least on the difficulty “Veteran”, we repeatedly reached our limits later on and had to do a bit of “brainstorming” on how we want to proceed.

There is a mission, for example, where you basically have to sprint through and take out 12 different targets while special zombies appear without interruption. The map was simply unmanageable with our decks. We tried it probably 10 times and failed brutally every time.

So we re-planned. Everyone built a “sprinter” deck that completely focused on movement speed and stamina regeneration – and bam, the previously insurmountable map was suddenly completed on the first attempt.

However, Back 4 Blood still allows for some rather absurd strategies. With the right cards, you can have nearly infinite copper that can be invested in equipment. My team had fun simply investing several thousand copper in barbed wire – especially on maps where a specific location needs to be defended, this is powerful.

Back 4 Blood, however, allows for such absurd amounts of barbed wire that we could literally carpet the entire map with barbed wire. This ensures that regular zombies are so heavily slowed and damaged that they often never made it to us, but simply fell over on the way. This strategy makes even the toughest “holdouts” a joke and seems not intended.

These and other little quirks do not tarnish the image of Back 4 Blood. It’s fun to kill zombies, and even the repeated playthroughs of already known maps are exciting and varied – thanks to the card system.

I particularly liked the depiction of the world, which really feels cohesive and isn’t just loosely strung together maps. Throughout the campaign, you pass by the same gas station four times and have to visit certain areas multiple times. Yet it never felt like the “recycling” of a map, but was logically built. At the beginning of an act, you can already see the church tower in the distance that you only reach several maps later.

The game world of Back 4 Blood is coherent, and many little details make it enjoyable to look around in the brutal, post-apocalyptic world without completely losing humor. Those who take the time to look closely will find entertaining details – such as the “6 Down” soda cans or numerous amusing messages from other Cleaners in the safe rooms.

… and then there’s the PvP

As a PvP mode, Back 4 Blood still only has the “Swarm” mode. Here, two teams of 4 players each compete against each other, always alternating between zombies or cleaners. The cleaners must survive as long as possible, and then the second team has to beat the set time.

Basically, I must emphasize that the mode is more fun the more time you invest in it. Only when you’ve delved deep into the card system and had the time to examine all PvP maps for dangerous locations and good defense points, does the mode become really enjoyable.

However, the mode still suffers from the fact that teammates and opponents leave a match prematurely. This happens in nearly every second match and significantly dampens the fun of the game. Here, stricter penalties for “leavers” are needed, as they should simply be excluded from this mode after repeated misconduct.

Nothing has changed the fact that Back 4 Blood is literally crying out for a “versus campaign” mode like that of Left 4 Dead. The game is based on the same principles and works almost identically. With minimal adjustments – such as boss fights – Back 4 Blood would work great in a versus campaign.

Long-term motivation – The big question mark

I struggle a bit to talk about long-term motivation after “only” 70 hours, but I do believe I can identify a tendency – and it’s quite good.

After we completed the first run on “Veteran”, no one of us felt like the fun was over. We wanted to create new decks, try out different characters and playstyles, and tackle the nightmare mode.

But then the game pulls so hard that we quickly gave up on the thought. Because when the second map said, “By the way, everything is full of toxic gas and you will die if you don’t constantly kill zombies”, the journey was already over for us.

Now we are currently attempting to play through the game a second time on veteran with different roles.

Basically, Back 4 Blood offers several incentives to invest even more time into the game. We have not yet unlocked all maps and each character has several achievements that grant cosmetic rewards – and all of them take a long time.

The card system also has a positive impact. Every map feels different on the second run, and thanks to the different decks and numerous combinations, there are still many play styles that I at least want to try out.

Whether Back 4 Blood can still motivate after 200 hours, I don’t know – but after around 100 hours my thirst for “more” is still far from quenched.

Is Back 4 Blood worth it?

Back 4 Blood is by all means not a perfect game and especially the fluctuating difficulty between the individual missions is a big downside for me, just like the not so well thought-out PvP.

However, that cannot overshadow the fact that in every single session of Back 4 Blood I had primarily one thing: fun. It has always been a good time, with many absurd situations, cool boss fights, and plenty of action.

I know that I will definitely spend another 100 or 200 hours in the game and am already looking forward to the campaign DLCs.

Back 4 Blood is just fun in an uncomplicated way. At least when you go out with a group of friends.

But what’s your opinion on Back 4 Blood? Are you still having fun? Or have you not even checked it out?