MeinMMO Director for zombie affairs Cortyn is now heavily excited about Back 4 Blood after initial reluctance. It could become the co-op game of the year 2021. Read in the preview test how Cortyn felt about the time in the beta with friends.

When I played Back 4 Blood a few months ago in the alpha, my impression was bad. Really bad. I didn’t like the card system, the gameplay and balancing felt clunky. There was just no joy.

I actually didn’t want to play Back 4 Blood anymore, and only the Discord message from a friend made me check out the beta with a group of 4 last weekend. We subjected ourselves to the PC version of Back 4 Blood.

Now, after more than 20 hours of gameplay, my opinion is: Back 4 Blood will be my co-op game of the year 2021.

The deck system requires a bit of familiarization. But once you get the hang of it and unlock more than the first 7 standard cards, you can solidly customize your character and find your own playstyle.

Since my Holly regenerates 10 stamina constantly when she takes down a zombie in melee, I focused her on melee combat entirely. She got a combat knife, which makes even her “shoving” a devastating melee attack, plus a card that regenerates 2 health points with every melee kill.

Combined with additional stamina and later a heavy melee attack, I could hold my ground at the front while my teammates cleared out the zombies from behind with their rifles.

One teammate, on the other hand, opted for the conspiracy theorist Hoffman and was basically our ammunition depot. He had a chance to find extra ammo with every zombie kill and simultaneously increased the maximum carry capacity of the entire group.

Oh, and he could carry 2 Molotov cocktails and was nearly immune to fire damage while causing double fire damage himself. Yes, he set us on fire multiple times. Yes, he got away with it every time. The zombies did not. Neither did the rest of us.

In contrast to our team selection stands the “AI Director”. Veterans already know this from Left 4 Dead. This is a dynamic system that adjusts the gaming experience with every playthrough. The AI Director responds to a whole bunch of factors:

• How well is the team currently doing?
• How much ammo and equipment does the team have left?
• How well have the players managed the last horde attacks?

Based on that, the AI Director adds more and more “Corruption Cards” that change the game to disadvantageous conditions for the players. For simplicity, we have always called the Corruption Cards in the game “affixes” – in reference to similar systems like in WoW or Diablo. Here are a few examples of what Corruption Cards can cause:

• Zombies are more aggressive and have spiky mutations that protect their heads. They no longer die from a single headshot.
• Fog rolls in and out at regular intervals. The visibility is limited to about 10 to 30 meters.
• Numerous swarms of crows can be found on the map. If startled, they alert a horde of zombies.
• The whole map lies in deep darkness, and only flashlights reliably illuminate areas.
• The special zombies are more resilient, cause more damage, or come in deadlier variants with more abilities.

Especially the Corruption Cards, which significantly altered the appearance of the map – such as fog and darkness – created a completely different gaming atmosphere. When a normally well-lit swamp suddenly lies in deep darkness, it creates real atmosphere. The same goes for the cursed fog. Because in Discord, everyone screams like “little girls” when suddenly a giant Tallboy appears out of the fog and hits the group hard.

There is also a weapon and loot system that has taken just the right mix of loot shooter and fixed weapon designs. Like in an MMO, there are weapons with different quality levels (white, green, blue, purple, orange) and different stats. Thanks to weapon mods, ammo can be increased, a scope can be attached, or damage can be increased.

This way, it actually feels over the course of a campaign like you are progressing. Both as a character through the cards and through the weapons with their upgrades.

However, it was never the case that the game “threw loot at us”. Anyone expecting color explosions with dozens of weapons like in Borderlands is definitely mistaken. Loot is relatively rare and often a “bonus” when deviating a bit from the main path or cracking a locked door with a toolkit.

I don’t want to pretend that we played perfectly – we did not. On the “Veteran” difficulty (there are “Survivor”, “Veteran”, and “Nightmare”), the game was quite challenging, and despite communication via Discord, we died and had to start campaigns over multiple times. Because after the 3rd failure, it’s over. There is no endless “retry” like in Left 4 Dead.

Above all, I want to emphasize the atmosphere of Back 4 Blood. The different maps, the various zombies, and the soundscape are amazing. While exploring a spooky farm with flesh overgrowths, you can quietly hear the rasping snores of sleeper zombies, while the ominous swarms of crows nearby pick apart some corpses, and Hoffman tells the team that “this is what the lame-stream media wants to keep from us,” to which all the others on the team simply respond with a bashfully amused “Hmhm”.

Or to put it another way: I wanted to keep playing. I would have gladly played 2 to 3 more campaigns if it hadn’t suddenly turned from 6 PM in the evening to 2 AM at night. Back 4 Blood has stolen my time and got me hooked.

Back 4 Blood is not perfect, but the flaws are minor

However, there are also a few small criticisms that I want to address and must.

The “Corruption Cards” that the game threw at us sometimes stand in stark contrast to the game design. This was especially evident with the card “Speed Run.” This card rewards extra copper at the end of the match if you complete the respective level within a time limit.

Basically, there is nothing wrong with a time limit, but it clashes badly with the small “loot shooter” aspects. If you find, for example, a purple Uzi on the ground and want to compare it with your assault rifle, it just takes time. Being rushed in this aspect of loot selection feels like you are constantly making the wrong decision:

• If you take too long comparing the weapons, you won’t progress, and the timer keeps ticking down.
• If you just go by “feeling”, you might pick the wrong weapon, which could cost the team later.

A second aspect is the “AI Director”, which is supposed to keep the match exciting. While I previously praised it, there were also a handful of situations where it simply felt “unfair” and the experience was drastically different.

We had several scenes where we had to defend a point against the horde until a gate opened. The first time we were overwhelmed by the horde, so on the second attempt we took all the pipe bombs to distract the zombies.

Then the AI Director apparently thought, “Gotcha, I won’t make it easy for you,” and sent 3 Tallboys after us simultaneously. However, in this scene, only a very small area had to be defended, and there was no way forward or back, so we were completely taken apart – from 100% HP to 0% in the span of about 8 seconds. With our equipment, there was simply no chance to survive that attack.

A third criticism is the different difficulty levels. We played most of the time on “Veteran” and it felt challenging and exciting. However, it is completely different on the “normal” Survivor mode. There, the opponents are so weak and so dumb that the game feels completely different and is simply not fun. I can only advise against a “normal” run. That is, without exaggerating, simply “hold down left-click and run through the level.”

My last negative remark is regarding the level design. I find it terrible that in almost every level there is the possibility to go all the way “back” to equip yourself in the previous safe room. That ruins the aspect of resource-conserving gameplay and also leads to very boring passages, where the smartest decision is simply to waltz back to the entrance before the final fight to re-equip. I would wish for more “points of no return”, where the starting area is off-limits after a while.

A streamer has completely different problems in the game – he believes a zombie insulted him racially.

Although Back 4 Blood is still in beta, there are only a few months left until the release. Whether these issues will be addressed – or whether they will even be seen as problems by the broader public – remains to be seen. For us, they slightly dampened the fun of the game. But it was not enough to ruin the great weekend we had, even when the zombies coldly took us out.

Did you check out the beta of Back 4 Blood? What was your first impression of the zombie slaughter?

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