Back 4 Blood

[Mantis]

Should be alright for me.

[Sly Boots]

Thanks for that chaps, another fun session.

And apologies to all those that rezzed me only to get a bullet/machete in the face by way of a thank you

[Raid]

Oh you weren't injuring me, I was just commenting on the animation looking pretty funny.

[Mantis]

Yeah that was good fun, thanks chaps. I dread to think how much tougher it will be on the harder difficulties given how many times I hear the friendly fire voice lines playing.

[Raid]

Yeah, I think I spend about a quarter of my ammo on you guys by mistake

[Sly Boots]

Glad it's not just me then

[Animalmother]

You guys using voice comms?

[Sly Boots]

You guys using voice comms?

Yeah, via the forum Discord channel

[Snowy]

So when is the next session then? I can do most days, but will be available a little later on Wednesday as will be in the office.

[Mantis]

Any time other than today and Thursday for me.

[Pew-Pew]

So what do you guys think of this game, then? How does it compare to L4D?

[Snowy]

For me, the jury is out. It IS a lot of fun, but L4D has it licked in some regards. The maps and the characters in L4D are a lot better for starters. Everything in B4B feels a lot more generic - there is no No Mercy or Dark Carnival that I have seen yet. There are less enemies too - L4D really gave you hordes - though that is not to say that B4B is easy, it isn't and I bet at higher than 'n00b' level it is brutal.

One of the game features is that you get covered in gore, and I mean covered. The problem is at a glance you can look more like the enemy than the enemy! When you have friendly fire in play, that could be a real pain.

Enjoying it a lot, but if I had to choose I think L4D would inch it.

[DjchunKfunK]

I've been playing a fair bit of this with friends and we are having issues with balance. On the whole the easiest difficulty is a bit too easy but turning it up to the next difficult often ends with us being swamped with Specials and going from coping pretty well but not breezing through the game to suddenly all being dead in the blink of an eye.

I'm not a huge L4D fan but I agree the level design is a bit wonky, there are some that are good fun but then there are others that just feel really naff. Overall it feels like an uneven game which I think it a symptom of two things, budget and no clear design goals. In some ways it feels like they made L4D3 and in others that Turtle Rock are trying to make something a bit different and these two goals often come into conflict which shows in the final game. I don't know whether this is the goals of the publisher butting up against what Turtle Rock would rather do or not. The developers have said that they made this game because this was the only thing publishers wanted to sign.

[Animalmother]

I am enjoying it more than I thought I would but am a bit tired of playing the same opening levels over and over. It can be hard to get a game so you just have to go with what's available. The change from rookie to the next difficulty is excessive and I can't imagine what the hardest must be like. If you get good squad mates then it's great fun, not so much if they just run ahead and won't revive or help with large groups.

The gore spattering has made me empty entire mags into teammates thinking it was a zombie, luckily friendly fire is reduced. The weapons feel good and punchy and I've used all except the sniper rifles which aren't much use at the ranges involved.

They really need to ease off on the amount of special zombies. I was utterly clobbered by 3 tallboys and a fat bursty one yesterday and the entire team got overrun trying to revive eachother.

A few niggles aside that could be fixed it is good fun.

I haven't seen any micro-transactions yet which is very surprising, have I just missed them or have they seen the light and kept them out?

[Mantis]

We've just hit Act 2 and I'm hoping that the level design picks up in quality and variance a bit from here on. Act 1 was very long and quite samey throughout, though some of the levels were bizarrely short with very little that actually happened in them. The sprawling nature of the Act means that there are no standout set piece levels which are clearly defined in the same way L4D had, certainly nothing beats the brilliant No Mercy, Dark Carnival or Dead Air in terms of interesting design so far, though there are hints of it here and there with certain map objectives.

Overall I think the gunplay feels slightly better than L4D, and the card system is growing on me now that I'm a few supply lines in and have been able to make specific decks catering to melee or healing.

The biggest problem it has are the special mutations though, none of them have the same distinct personality that the lineup in L4D has. They all look very generic and each one has a variation that changes its ability, but it's very difficult to tell which variant you're up against on appearance alone.

I will only play with people on voice over co-op though. It is an utterly miserable experience with randoms or bots.