Back 4 Blood

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Snowy
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Back 4 Blood

Post by Snowy » Thu Aug 05, 2021 9:11 pm

Am in the closed beta and see that Vampyr and DJ both are too - basically it plays just like L4D which is no bad thing. Looks very nice (pink sploogey blood notwithstanding), plays well - yeah looking forward to getting some TGA co-op going on once this releases onto Gamepass.

Oh, and some of the specials make the L4D tank look like a small puppy...

https://imgur.com/4WGgCiK
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
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Animalmother
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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Animalmother » Fri Aug 06, 2021 12:40 pm

Is there a non shite single player to it?

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Mantis
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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Fri Aug 06, 2021 12:52 pm

It's just the same thing with bots I think.

I've been given a beta code so I'll look into getting it downloaded, though I think it's only available until Monday so I might struggle to get time to play with you chaps this weekend. I'll be all over this game when it releases fully onto Gamepass though, I clocked about 500hrs on Steam between L4D1 and 2 back in the day, love this genre.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Fri Aug 06, 2021 1:34 pm

Though got to say my enthusiasm is tempered somewhat by reading this Eurogamer interview:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021 ... ard-system

Looks like they're hinging a lot on this built in grindy progression system, something which I don't think this style of game needs at all. Does my head in when you spend half your time on ingame menus going through various unlock trees and having DLC pushed at you from all angles. The card system sounded like a nice little thing to add extra flavour, not something I would want the whole game built around.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by DjchunKfunK » Fri Aug 06, 2021 3:32 pm

I played some last night and on first glance the card system seems neat, it appears to allow you to create a specific class type by customising your deck around what you want to do. So with the starter cards I kept playing my stamina card over and over so that I could use my melee weapon a lot without getting out of breath and when I went to buy more cards I looked for ones that would give me more melee power. How deep this can go and how powerful it can become remains to be seen but first impressions are positive. You get a fair amount of currency from a full run which allows you to unlock a number of cards for your deck so it doesn't feel grindy, at least early on.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Sun Aug 08, 2021 12:38 am

Played through the available act now and it seems fairly solid, the gunplay feels nice and chunky. My main concern with it at the moment is that it doesn't seem to benefit from having an AI director like L4D did, so each run through I've done has basically been exactly the same every time in terms of the enemy spawns. The variation from the corruption cards doesn't seem to really make up for that.

The versus is very disappointing too. No more running through the campaign with the opposing team controlling the special infected. Now you just play a standard wave defense mode in a small arena.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Snowy » Sun Aug 08, 2021 10:21 am

I have also done a full playthrough of the beta offering. Agree with Mantis that the gunplay is good and meaty. The guns have more character than before, with hip fire and sights for all variants. It is also nice to be able to pick up a gun and rather than bin it when the next one comes along, instead find/buy modifications for it to improve it throughout the campaign. I picked up an M249 at the start of my campaign and used it start to finish, but the end gun was loads better than what I started with.

I too have some reservations though. The rank and file zombies are a bit of an irrelevance and do not swarm in the same numbers as they do in L4D (which I also played yesterday to get a Back 2 Back comparison :) ). Even when I had a mutator which upped their aggression and damage resistance they offered no real challenge, they just feel like they are there to be shot. They are also too slow and when swarming are far too predictable, often coming from a single source. I took position by a shipping container that they were piling over yesterday, left the cross-hairs in the same place, and wiped the lot out just tapping the LMB every time another dropped to the ground into my sights.

The game doesn't feel AI generated like L4D either, again as Mantis says. The Ogre pops up at the same points for example. I guess with the size of him they are limited but knowing it is coming robs the experience of any excitement after the first time. The other specials are very stupid too, often just spawning with the rest and coming straight at you. Playing the AI in L4D even knowing there was a smoker out there, they could still catch you. Likewise the Boomer would often lurk where killing him couldn't help but splash-damage you. A big void is that there is nothing like the Witch from what I can tell.

Finally the characters - it is early days but it feels like they have deliberately included some absolute dicks whose commentary will really annoy. I liked all the characters in the L4D series (Francis hating everything always making me smile the most). The idea that you are playing some kind of bunch of professional zombie slayers is also a bit shit, stranded survivors resonates far more in a zombie setting.

I wonder about the campaigns too - with the L4D beta you had the mighty No Mercy, battling through Mercy Hospital had so much character and that rooftop finale was a classic. The campaign in the B4B beta felt quite generic to me, so I hope they have something more cohesive for the other campaigns. Also each 'level' in the campaigns in B4B seem quite short, not the desperate battle to reach the safe-rooms in L4D.

So not all rosy, but that said it is a solid co-op experience and looks lovely. Will I play it as much as I have the L4D series? The jury is out (but with over 200 hours in L4D 1&2 and stats for L4D2 of 136 games played, 84 finales survived and 55,423 zoms killed it is a fairly big ask) - I suspect I am looking at the pretty newcomer through eyes which have loved the originals for over a decade, so any perceived flaws stand out all the stronger. I am not hugely concerned, first off it is included in Gamepass so I won't be shelling out for it, secondly if they include mod support it will soon become the game we all deserve.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
08/10/2003 - 17/08/2018
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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Sun Aug 08, 2021 11:05 am

The level design definitely didn't seem quite up to the same standard to me either, Ian. But then L4D had the odd dull section, so hopefully they're saving all the best stuff for the full release.

I didn't hear much in terms of annoying characters, but the women were quite amusing and the UFO conspiracy believer had some good dialogue, I think his name is Hoffman. The special infected on the other hand definitely did not have the same character as the original designs from L4D.

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Snowy
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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Snowy » Mon Aug 09, 2021 6:45 am

One of the characters in my playthrough was a young guy who said (amongst other things) something to the zoms along the lines of "Right that's it, once I manage to cram some more bullets into this gun you are in REAL trouble" which jarred initially. He then went on to repeat the line on several reloads throughout the game. Another +1 for the originals, outside of "Reloading!" I don't recall dialogue repetition.
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
08/10/2003 - 17/08/2018
10501 :-({|=

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by DjchunKfunK » Mon Aug 09, 2021 8:55 am

What difficulty were you all playing on?

I sometimes wonder with the AI Director whether as human do, we subscribe more intelligence to it than it actually had because we are told the AI is behind the scenes doing stuff and then when it comes to this game we feel it is formulaic because there is no AI Director.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Mon Aug 09, 2021 10:12 am

The middle difficulty, though as with L4D I don't think it actually affects the number of spawns, just the damage they do.

The director in L4D wasn't exactly highly advanced, but it made every game completely unpredictable as it was always monitoring the ebb and flow of your progress and distributing hordes or items appropriately. B4B doesn't seem to have that at all as I've found pretty much every playthrough to be identical so far.

The only thing that seems slightly more flexible is the special infected spawn, though as Snowy says the AI on them is pretty much non existent as even the ranged ones just charge at you in the open.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Snowy » Mon Aug 09, 2021 11:23 am

Mantis wrote:
Mon Aug 09, 2021 10:12 am
The middle difficulty
Same
RCHD wrote:Snowy is my favourite. He's a metal God.
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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Can't think of one » Mon Aug 09, 2021 3:04 pm

£89.99 for the ultimate edition on steam :shock:

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Raid » Mon Aug 09, 2021 3:36 pm

Jesus, you can almost get a year of gamepass for that much.

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Re: Back 4 Blood

Post by Mantis » Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:26 pm

Good job it's coming to Game Pass on day one then.

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