Between levels in the campaign or rounds of Versus, you get to pick one or more cards from your deck. This means that you can gather and build a deck of cards, where you unlock more with points, which you get for simply playing the game. Back 4 Blood uses an overall “card” system, which could be seen as deck-building mechanics. Where the Versus mode and its progression might need a little bit of tweaking, a different progression actually got us quite excited. Here you can make your special Ridden of choice stronger, but when a team picks the right types of Ridden in the first place, they don’t even need upgrades as they can basically hammer down on a single person with ease. Back 4 Blood uses multiple progression systems, including a small one in Versus mode. So far, the multiplayer feels a bit hollow and perhaps even somewhat broken. Survive longer and you win the round, where winning two out of three rounds on multiple maps wins you the game. Here, the other team needs to beat that score by surviving longer. One team tries to set a survival time versus multiple waves of Ridden, including enemy players controlling special Ridden. The Beta does, however, have a mode where you can play as Cleaners versus Ridden, in a wave-defense type of game. Where Left 4 Dead also got known for its multiplayer mode that simply replaced the special zombies with the possibility to let enemy players get into the game, Back 4 Blood does not have this so far. It wouldn’t be the first time that a game uses paid DLC to grossly extend its life and bank account. Where the original Left 4 Dead’s content and gameplay quantity seemed somewhat disappointing for about 60 bucks, there’s a reasonable fear that Back 4 Blood will follow the same formula. One of the questions we have so far is that, while this single campaign experience was fun and it seems rather balanced aside from some Beta bugs that should be avoided (instant death when touching water), we wonder how many campaigns will be available eventually. Nightmare is exactly what the name indicates. Survivor is quite accessible to everybody, where veteran is already a whole jump up in difficulty and includes friendly fire. There’s survivor, veteran, and nightmare. The difficulty settings seem about right as well. This already felt like a huge improvement, and every little act (level) felt special in its own way. In the beta we played, there was only a single campaign available, but it instantly had eight different levels, doubling the content you would generally get in a Left 4 Dead campaign. Where Left 4 Dead felt a bit unsatisfying at times when purely judging the amount of content in a campaign, Back 4 Blood brings you an upgrade. You start with four “Cleaners”, which are the survivors, and you need to bane your way through a whole bunch of “Ridden”, which are the infected a.k.a. Watching the trailers for Back 4 Blood and grasping the general gameplay concept, you’d think this is definitely another Left 4 Dead down to the bone. We were very lucky to try out the Early Access open Beta, because who doesn’t love a good Left 4. That it’s at least a spiritual successor is abundantly clear in everything the game presents itself to be.
As the developers did officially develop the first Left 4 Dead under Valve’s contract, this may be the reason for the game not bearing the official title of Left 4 Dead 3. After almost 12 (!) long years since the release of Left 4 Dead 2, people are eagerly awaiting the new four-player co-op gameplay where you get to blast your way through hundreds of zombies on your way to a safe room.
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