The founding fathers of Left 4 Dead have finally allowed us into the beta of Back 4 Blood – the ideological heir to the cult game. Wes has studied the game inside and out and is ready to share information with you – both good and not so good.
Back 4 Blood
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Oh, the review came out sooooo weak. I haven’t heard any actual criticism at all, except for the version. So I’ll put in my two cents.
Not even close to the director from L4D. Spawns regular zombies in rooms that you have already cleared (in L4D spawn was blocked, but zombies could get into the room through a window or ventilation. Spawns bosses in inadequate quantities.
Initially, footage of the version was shown as part of the campaign. “We decided to approach this differently” is just an excuse. The state of the game shows that they don’t have time and they just gave up on this work. In L4D, maps were made taking into account the version, which made them more interesting, but also more difficult to develop. Scored.
NOBODY will play this version. Yes, you did it in 10 minutes, but now people don’t care about it so much that half the players just quit after the first round.
There is no smell of any tactics in it on either side or the other. Players simply run around the arena and shoot at everything. Infected bosses are made uninteresting and not skill-dependent: here’s a big pool of HP and go deal damage, or here’s a ranged ability – sit and spam it on the roof. No tricks on the hunter, tricky spots on the smoker and other good things from L4D.
3. Workmanship:
Wildly out of sync, zombies spawning before our eyes, constant rubber banding, weak dismemberment (when the pipe explodes, you can’t even believe that it’s a bomb). Yes, you can say – “But this is beta!", but there are 2 months before the release of the game, and we weren’t even allowed to look at all the zombie bosses. The game will be released in poor technical condition or will be delayed – that’s a fact.
The Revenant is too easy and not interesting
Veteran – without a bunch of cards, too difficult in the second half even for a party in discord. “Oh, they gave us enhanced Kumers, Boomers and ordinary Zambians? Well, apparently we won’t go further than the safe room.”
Knightmare is absurdly difficult. I didn’t see anyone who could even get past the first half.
They donate very few suply points and the most effective way to accumulate them is to speedrun the same level on easy difficulty… Very interesting.
5. Boss Design:
Another shortcut in development.
Take a look at the following pictures
3 Zombies of completely different species look almost EXACTLY THE SAME. I read the reddit and people didn’t even realize that this is not 1 and the same boss who has many abilities at the same time. They can only be distinguished by their critical zone. In fact, the most effective way to tell them apart is to turn on the subtitles and use them to identify them! THIS IS ABSURD!
I would not buy the game and would not recommend it to anyone if it comes out in its current state. Just a game pass game.
Well, what about the gamer?. In fact, you stumbled really quickly (in less than 30 seconds, lol). Turtle Rock created only the first part of Left 4 Dead. Valve has already worked on the sequel on its own.
It’s a little sad that we only played on the survivor, because then another problem would have been revealed – how many of these builds will even work? For example, already on the second difficulty I don’t know how mileage builds will work, simply because they suddenly discover by the middle of the act that their maximum HP is already half as much as it should be due to injury. And no matter how much health cards you collect, you will still receive damage from zombies. The same goes for Molotov – you have resistance, but your teammates..
Thank you for such detailed feedback. When there is a release, it will be convenient for the author of the review to go through such cool comments and directly focus on these elements. I’m already really interested in what will be on release.
In the beta it was just interesting to figure out what was introduced, to share my feelings about the first hours of the game.
The fact that the game almost completely copies left-touch is more of a problem. She simply has nothing to stand out from her competitors (the card system is such a trick t.To. does not fundamentally change the gameplay). Vermintide – emphasis on melee; WWZ – huge crowds of zombies; Deep Rock Galctic – procedurally generated locations and complete destructibility of everything; GTFO – emphasis on stealth, teamwork, and difficulty (although GTFO specifically is difficult to attract to left-handed games like.To. she’s talking about something else altogether). And B4B doesn’t stand out against their background at all and looks more like another clone of L4D.
Well, a few words about balance: it’s https://nodepositbonuscasinos.co.uk/review/spinscastle/ terrible. Okay, even on normal and hard, there + is tolerable, but on maximum RNG hell begins. It largely depends on what modifiers you get. At best there will be fog, light, and sleepers, at worst – explosive zombies, sirens, and a bunch of crows. Well, my “favorite”: special infected have no restrictions on the number of subspecies. T.e. as it was in leftach: there could be a maximum of two special zombies of one type (this is if we are talking about the 1st, in the second there is generally one subspecies and that’s it, the rest of the special ones were different), and in B4B – at least 3 vomiters and 2 thugs. And they can spawn almost 10 seconds apart.
But if the balance can still be corrected (after all, this is a beta), then the lack of individuality is already a much more serious problem. After all, over the past 5 years, a sufficient number of co-op shooters have already been released that can stand out from the left-handed game. And Back 4 blood is not one of them.
In this regard, it is ironic that Valve immediately understood what players needed and what to add to the game. =)
For me, this is already the main disappointment of the year after the beta. Two months before the release, nothing will change.
It’s a cardboard game, they don’t make it like that anymore. There is almost no physics, the maps are static and at the level of amateur parodies of L4D – there is no mercy or carnival in terms of integrity and elaboration, it doesn’t even smell, melee is simply no good and you can’t even cut off a head, like in L4D2. Pleasant shooting and weapon impact? We were exactly playing the same game? Turn off the hit indicator and see how this weapon feels. The sounds are very weak – the AA12 shotgun, for example, does not sound like itself at all.
Variations of mutants are indistinguishable when playing with special types of enemies, which can be critical on high difficulties. You can most quickly recognize variations of the handy one by their weak spot, but you can hardly distinguish these multi-armed spitters in the distance until they spit. By the way, on high difficulties, a handy mutant, especially if several of them spawn in a row, can quickly kill the entire squad stupidly due to the fact that the cards are basically guts, the enemy walks straight and holds his hand with a weak point from behind, and without hitting it, you naturally pick at him and drain the cartridges. If there is no stamina, then this is 100% death. I don’t even know what to say about the vomiters who have been shooting for kilometers since the alpha version; in PvP this “balance” is especially clearly visible.
In addition to all of the above, we add cards that affect stats. Half of them will be of no use to anyone and will only be usable on easy difficulty. With randoms, you can already prepare for the fact that they will stupidly increase their stamina with all possible cards and run away from the team. If you took cards for a medic or something else, then blame yourself and be behind. Again, B is for balance.
I don’t know what to say about PvP. This is a shameful joke. You waste more time on loading screens and waiting with preparation than on rounds in which there is no scope for tactics, no interesting situations, or any meaning. "Survive longer if you can". It’s better to “never enter this mode”.
Why are they needed at all?? If you haven’t noticed, they are offered in exactly the same order in which they are in the deck. So any player who is going to go through knightmare or just be effective will stuff the card he needs into every 4th slot in advance.
Imagine that at Hearthstone you could create a deck in advance, cards from which would be given to you in the order you created in advance! =D
I want to play a cool zombie campaign? Please give away World War Z for free. I bought it with a coupon and did not regret it. The missions are interesting, the zombies fly away – my respects, the guns are different.
I want a good version? It’s useless to look for it in B4B. It’s better to run L4D2. And yes, it is quite playable.
But they took part in the development of DLC for the second! But it was worth mentioning this detail, ah gess.
Wow wow, the reviewer understands the topic, does not take extreme positions, asks the developer, indicates that the opinion of the game may change depending on the complexity. What is this – a quality review? You can always do this.
I would just like to clarify that the same teamwork in L4D exists only in Versus, while almost every campaign can be played solo without bots on any difficulty (except, perhaps, for realism and other mutator jokes). This only requires a good study of the game, any special one has a counter in solo, and if you also learn to react to sounds, then it’s a fairy tale. And the default crowds are pushed with a bang by the right button during reloading, only in the second part they added “stamina” to pushing and still it’s not that much of a hindrance
I agree with many things, but it’s debatable about leftach’s carbon copy. I understand that not everyone understands left-touch, but the similarity of the games is only at a quick glance. There is a lot of difference in gameplay. If you play b4b as you are used to in l4d, you will be a kill leader, but mostly suffer from the rest. And if your teammates are potatoes or the difficulty is higher than survival, consider death. In the left you run almost straight ahead, spreading out the zombies and use only one favorite gun, namely one of these four imposing ones: the XM shotgun, the shotgun saved, the Kalash, the rapid-fire sniper-whip, and there are also fans of the hunting sniper. Found your favorite gun and you run with it the entire campaign, annihilating everything. The special ones in the left are much less fat and there are ways to counter them, which allows you to solo almost any company. B4B doesn’t work like that and the game feels different in the end. Ammunition is more stressful if you play without friends, special ones are extremely durable, there is no pushing zombies, you have to change weapons because of loot, body kits have a strong effect on the sensations and change weapons, movement is slower if you don’t take the right card, zombies have fewer walks around you so you can pass less quickly, no one jumps on you, the presence of a magazine, etc.d. And you can’t say that this difference is either for the worse or for the better. At first glance, the games are very similar, but they just play differently
Requesting a re-review of Vermintide 2. 3 years ago they made it on, I’m sorry, fall out of love and threw it into the audience. We need a competent player, and not someone who “doesn’t understand the fanaticism that has developed around l4d”. I ask you, a new review, it is very necessary, not many people know about how good this l4d substitute is!
Crap, not a review. The author does not understand the subtle matters of such games as L4D. How many words in the review were spent on wanking elements, and co-op somewhere? The original was loved precisely for its team play. It was there that the subtle matters of interaction with people began. This is how it was developed? No way.
Moreover, we have an example of when loot and custom spoiled a team game – team fortress 2. In a time when there were no custom guns and hats, players had to unite to win. After introducing masturbation for sublimator cancer, the entire team game died, since now everyone adapts to themselves and it is impossible to adjust teamplay when there are so many stats and add-ons. This means that the complexity needs to be lowered and the window for space needs to be made wider so that it allows all these diverse numbers and graphs to come through. Separately, one could recall alien swarm, which also died due to overloaded mechanics. People just want to play stupidly, and not write a dissertation on artificial game limits.
At the same time, you shouldn’t put so much emphasis on “the creators of the original leftoch”. These same people made an evolve and could not pull it out. And now they sit in a puddle for the second time, which means they can’t do anything without the protection of the Valves.
In some interview about the creation of L4D1, the developers separately said that they made all the characters the same, so that skill and interaction, and not artificial limitations, would decide. Years later, the developers forgot their own wisdom under the pressure of trends. Yes, yes, exactly trends, since apart from donations and space for sublimation of schoolchildren, all these looters, cards and upgrades are not needed at all.
l4d3 is not needed in this form. Real L4D is a team game and overcoming difficulties with its help, this is not the case here. But l4d2 feels great thanks to custom campaigns. Not to mention the fact that after L4D a bunch of other games about co-op came out: Killing Floor 2, Payday 2, Deep Rock of Galaxies, Borderlands. And back4blood is just a luther add-on to the original l4d.
In general, there is too much hype about “HEIRS L4D”, in fact it’s just nothing, especially for those who are familiar with the industry and know how the co-op genre developed.
PS It’s also fun to watch how developers mess with engines. First the HL1 engine, then Source, then Edgenge, now here it is. Everyone can’t concentrate on one thing, and that’s why they end up being mediocre.
Apparently, a review from Karamyshev would be ideal, he stuck to this game too much. I once tried to play the first Vermintide, but it was against the backdrop of binge-watching L4D, so I wasn’t at all interested in fighting with these waves of rats and other crap. But I admit that I danced a lot there, I need company with the right attitude.
We rode on the second difficulty on the stream – the mile build still works. I was Holly, piled up cards and more than doubled my stamina. It’s a pity, the deck didn’t have a card to heal from kills with a little girl, it would have been even cooler. It seems to me, on the contrary, that on the second and third difficulty the builds work even better, because you already begin to study the maps more carefully and try to create a direct utility, rather than just rowing everything in a row, as we did on “Survivor”.
It looks like an extremely unimpressive service game with an emphasis on collecting and storing in-game loot, with typical problems when new map skills and weapons make the old ones useless.
And other delights of balance, in a game with gradation according to the rarity of weapons.
Left 4 Dead was an asymmetrical joker, without changing anything in this base, they locked in just the same mechanics that exclude any asymmetry in the mechanics of L4D in principle. Well, this concept is not tailored for a looter shooter
Of course, the first L4D immediately disappeared after the release of the second, so what, and Valve could still put the absorbed games in order
So the realism mode was introduced after the expert seemed easy to many. I don’t see anything wrong. Not all players are speedrunners. I have 200 hours in L4D1, and 600 hours in L4D2, but I still haven’t learned how to one-shot a witch, even though I’ve seen videos on YouTube. There are quite a lot of casual games and you also need to tailor the gameplay for them.
And stamina was in the first part, they just brought it later along with the patch, as the developers saw the abuse of the “mill” and players sitting in toilets.
Completely agree with everything. But just talking about some kind of “crappy team game” is a little incorrect then