Back 4 Blood

Back 4 Blood has the best water-cooler moments of any game released in 2021.

If you played Left 4 Dead, you’ll feel right at home. Back 4 Blood is a more mature and more bad-ass version of L4D, elevating every mechanic from the former series and making it better while adding in new features that makes playing far more rewarding.

Back 4 Blood is loads of fun no matter which mode you play. The game supports cross platform (and cross gen) play for both multiplayer and co-op modes. The campaign is easily the best part of the game, but the multiplayer mode is a good companion mode. So long as you don’t mind that the game is always online and that there isn’t much of a single player mode at the moment, the game is quite good. I’m not much of a fan of online multiplayer shooters, but this type of game with loads of replay value is what I look for whenever I do play one. Like I said at the start, I don’t know how the game compares to Left 4 Dead, but that really shouldn’t matter much since Back 4 Blood is its own game, and it’s a lot of fun.

Back 4 Blood is a gory party that begins as soon as you start the first level and never decreases in intensity. It still has some of the Left 4 Dead's essence, but it's a completely different game and the changes suit it wonderfully.

Turtle Rock Studios managed to successfully resurrect the original Left 4 Dead games formula, improving it with modern shooter mechanics, very fun gunplay and a lot of variety thanks to the new card system. It's not a very innovative game and it's got some technical and balancing issues, but it can be damn fun and addictive.

Back 4 Blood is the successor to Left 4 Dead, adding new enemies and an excellent card system with power-ups and new challenges.

Back 4 Blood is a fun co-op shooter and the perfect answer to a boring afternoon especially, if you have a friend to back you up. If you want to play solo, you're gonna have to look somewhere else.

At the time of this writing a few patches have gone out that have corrected most of the larger bugs, but there are still issues with spawning too many special infected at a time and other little issues. While these things can be frustrating, they don’t destroy the fun of Back 4 Blood when playing the game as it’s meant to be. That is playing multiplayer with a group of friends smartly navigating a nightmare filled world. Those looking to have a single player experience on the other hand may not find as much here to love, while Turtle Rock is working to fix the progression and reward issue for single players at the time of this writing there isn’t an ETA for those fixes. So, for that reason I wouldn’t recommend this for solo’s just yet, however for those folks who have been waiting for Left 4 Dead 3, or heard about how fun the original ones were and never tried them and have a team ready to face the undead… then what are you waiting for cleaner? Get out there and kill some ridden!

Back 4 Blood is a great successor to Left 4 Dead. Although it has some flaws, the title offers a fantastic experience when playing it with friends, which added to the mastery with which the progression system has been set up, make the title an absolute must for those who like the genre.

It is fast, brutal, punishing and can bring complete strangers together into a zombie mincing machine. Swarm is there if you have the PvP itch, and if you can play with others, this is an easy sell. If you play alone, things are more problematic, as a lot of the game seems to be locked away from you, but co-op up and you’ll be sorted with the zombie killing sprees of Back 4 Blood.

Despite a messy start, this spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead becomes more challenging and characterful the longer you spend with it.

Back 4 Blood certainly improves upon the gameplay formula of Turtle Rock’s earlier Left 4 Dead, with a deeper feature set that allows for greater strategy and customization while fending off Hordes of the undead. But the world of the game and its characters lack the charm of its spiritual forebear, and a few curious design choices keep it just shy of greatness.

Playing cards offer great build options and enough variety, the flow in the surprisingly long levels is fun and the zombie shooting feels good old-fashioned. Back 4 Blood is a challenging, almost sadistic evolution of the Left 4 Dead formula that will appeal only to hardcore fans of the genre. But that's why the lack of a PvP campaign is incomprehensible.

Back 4 Blood is the perfect way to end a long day doing something that almost anyone can enjoy: absent-mindlessly destroying zombies. The 'fathers' of Left 4 Dead are back with a full display of adrenaline, but also including strategic components that notably enhance the overall experience. If only the single player component weren't so poor.

A blistering return to zombie-slaying nirvana, Back 4 Blood is an excellent spiritual follow-up to Left 4 Dead that ticks almost all of the right boxes, except for the one labelled 'solo progression' – if you're planning on playing offline on your own, you might want to steer clear for now. Otherwise, jump right in.

Back 4 Blood is one of my comfort food games of 2021. It is an excellent time with friends that scratches an itch I’ve had since the glory days of Left 4 Dead. While it never reaches the heights of its inspiration, the addition of cards makes me hungry to play more, even when the game isn’t at its strongest.

Back 4 Blood wastes no time trying to divert your attention from its obvious influences, but it doesn’t need to when it nearly lives up to the expectations its spiritual predecessors set so high.

Back 4 Blood is the co-op survival shooter that we’ve been waiting for since Left 4 Dead took the world by storm. The introduction of Corruption Cards really helps the game stand out, while offering players varied gameplay that doesn’t feel stale at any point. The current issues surrounding solo play are certainly a turn-off, but not enough for me to not recommend playing it, especially if you have a group of friends ready to go. With a little TLC, Back 4 Blood has every ingredient necessary to flourish, and perhaps even dethrone its predecessors… maybe.

Is Back 4 Blood the Left 4 Dead 3 we've been waiting for? Yes! It's a worthy spiritual successor to Valve's classic zombie-slaying series of multiplayer games, and offers a well-designed Campaign mode with some impressive new features such as its strategic Card system. The difficulty perhaps needs balancing a little more, and the lack of meaningful progression when playing Solo Campaign needs addressing sharpish, but otherwise we've had a blast with Back 4 Blood so far, and we look forward to many more Campaign runs in the weeks, months and years to come.

Back 4 Blood is more than Left 4 Dead 3 with another name. It presents a strategic use of cards and a well developed progression system that guarantees a lot of fun and replayability.

So while Back 4 Blood isn’t quite a slam dunk when it comes to other co-op shooters on the market, it’s still a pretty fun zombie killing time that will be easy for people to pick up and play but may take some time to get acquainted with maps, objectives, and what can often feel like a steep difficulty curve. I’m sure there are multiple things that can be ironed out as the development team focuses on bugs, servers, and difficulty balancing, but out of the gate it’s a fun enough experience for sure, and worth checking out. Also worth noting that this is a Game Pass title, making it sort of a no-brainer if you’re on an Xbox platform.

Back 4 Blood is indeed the worthy heir of the first two Left 4 Dead games. There is no doubt about that. The title from Turtle Rock Studios offers nervous and impacting gameplay that knows how to reinvent itself as the players progress thanks to this successful deck system and these varied objectives that take place in many different places. Unfortunately, the production still lacks balancing. The game is either too simple or too punitive. We hope that a future update will correct all this.

You'll find a lot of fun in Back 4 Blood. Turtle Rock Studios managed to take something that was old and give it enough of a touch-up to make sure we recognized it but played with it differently. It's fun to hop on with your friends and blast away the zombies and compete to potentially take out the Cleaners, but you have to get past the first half of the game to get to the best parts. It doesn't help that the story gives you nothing to cling to, but once you get past those parts, the tension and excitement kick in. But sadly, playing solo hardly gives you anything like what you get playing online and with friends.

In the end, Back 4 Blood is indeed Left 4 Dead 3 under a different name, trying to recover the magic recipe that made the success of the two previous installments, without ever managing to surpass them. Indeed, the absence of a real versus mode on the campaign coupled with the fact that its scenario is less engaging make it a good game, but not a very good one. We won't neglect its hyper fun and bloody side which will delight a good number of players who will play it in co-op and especially with friends. As for the players who want to try it alone, we advise them to pass their way because of the lack of fun linked to the catastrophic AI of the bots.

Back 4 Blood isn't perfect by any means, but it's absolutely the closest we've gotten to a new Left 4 Dead game in the years since Left 4 Dead 2. Because of this, it's hard not to have fun with B4B, even if it doesn't always feel inventive and has some notable drawbacks. Despite some qualms, if you're hungry for a new co-op shooter to jump into with some friends, Back 4 Blood has more than enough meat on the bone to keep you entertained for quite some time.

If you can give Back 4 Blood a chance, then eventually the game will open up as a fun and original 4-player co-op based shooter.

At its best, Back 4 Blood offers a ton of variety to keep you and your friends interested for a long time. Even returning to levels you’ve already played gets interesting thanks to different cards, which can make major differences in how things play out. If you have three friends to play the whole game with, I highly recommend it. That its available as a Game Pass title is awesome because you can get a group of friends together without them all having to buy the game. If you don’t have that group though, a poorly balanced solo mode and issues with matchmaking will sink this one for most.

We have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original. This has less to do with its diminished darkness—Left 4 Dead was a far gloomier ride, lit by the panicked sway of torches—and more to do with us. And with the years. There is plenty to enjoy here, and I heartily recommend it to any who relish killing the dead. But Turtle Rock Studios wants to take us back to another time, and it’s 2 Late 4 That.

Back 4 Blood still comes out as the best Left 4 Dead-inspired game in recent memory, taking the core design and innovating on it just enough to keep everything fresh and fun. Where Back 4 Blood gets things right, it does them really well, but where it doesn’t is often quite obvious.

Back 4 Blood is the spiritual successor of Left 4 Dead but it's also more than this. Its sub-roguelike card system refresh the zombie-coop-FPS formula but the game needs some polish and a solid post-launch support.

It’s hard to fault the moment-to-moment gameplay of Back 4 Blood when all of its pistons are working in tandem and you’re running with a good crew. Though the effort to contemporise and grow beyond its roots is commendable, just about every other aspect of the game feels like a misfire. The campaign isn’t fun and, more offensively, it pays no regard to solo players.

A tedious, time-consuming playing card mechanic, frustrating bug crashes and a repetitive, near-endless onslaught of Ridden enemies led by an uninspired AI Director, collectively drags this spiritual sequel to Left 4 Dead down from the heights it could have reached.

As homages go, it's reverential yet poisoned by doubt. It doesn't trust Left 4 Dead's genius enough to let it stand alone. [Issue#365, p.106]

I so badly want to love Back 4 Blood, but its grindy nature and difficulty spikes out of nothing let it down, leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth. It has potential for those in it for the long haul, accumulating cards and building specialised decks to match the challenge, but right now I just have no desire to go back 4 more.

It's been more than a decade since Left 4 Dead 2 and Turtle Rock is now back to reclaim the throne. Back 4 Blood is not a revolution, though. Instead, it's an evolution of the developer's already excellent gameplay from before. Although we would have liked less of the small flaws we find, it does not stop the game from being a really entertaining and addictive shooter. With human teammates, that is.

Back 4 Blood isn’t a bad game. But it could have been so much better. Its difficulty needs balancing, as does the amount of enemies thrown at you at any one time. Ultimately, most levels simply have too much going on to be enjoyable – and each Act would have benefitted from being substantially shorter. Get a competent group of friends together and you might have some fun, but chances are zombie fatigue is going to set in long before you reach the end of the campaign.

It seems backhanded to say that a game is only worth playing if you can find people to distract you from the actual game, but if your group wants something mindless to wind down after an intense night on Warzone or Rainbow Six: Siege, Back 4 Blood is ideal.

With Back 4 Blood available on Xbox Game Pass on PC and Console there’s reason to jump in if you’re looking for something new to play with friends. The look and feel is familiar and the action is engaging and chaotic when played with a group. For a while that is. Thanks to the sameness that permeates across most levels and backdrops and the predictability of the pace, it doesn’t take long for this Left 4 Dead spiritual successor to wear a little thin.