I'm interested to see how much harder Back 4 Blood can get once we're ready for a second playthrough.
We're sticking to Recruit for now because levels unlock individually at each difficulty. We've noticed a pretty constant supply of ammo and Copper that made much of Act 1 breezy and fun (usually as a party of two with AI companions), but we're starting to sweat a few levels into Act 2. The game defaults to the lowest difficulty level of three, Recruit. Turtle Rock seems to have smartly tweaked the difficulty since I last played, too.
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So far I've been maining Doc, a support character who can heal each teammate for free once a mission and starts with my favorite pistol, but I'm seriously thinking of switching to Holly, a bat enthusiast who earns stamina back for every melee kill, essentially making her a never-ending weed wacker of zombie heads. Every cleaner has a few different ways to say "why the hell did you shoot me" and the person they're talking to has several versions of "chill, it was an accident." But unlike L4D, I'm not only choosing a character based on whose hands I'd like to see for the next 30 minutes. Like the L4D survivors before them, a lot of personality comes through in the situational banter.
(Image credit: Turtle Rock Studios)Ĭleaners are another aspect of Back 4 Blood I didn't expect to like so much. New cards and cosmetics are unlocked with supply points earned just for playing. Karlee's signature is her ability to see special infected through walls, a technique that came in clutch when we were navigating a pitch-black house with Sleepers around every corner. Cleaners have a unique personal ability and one team bonus that benefits everyone. Those nasty Sleepers were giving our group a lot of trouble the first time we encountered them, but on a subsequent run, my friend was playing Karlee, one of Back 4 Blood's eight "Cleaners" to choose from. My favorite new monster is the Sleeper, a zombie that asks, "What if Left 4 Dead's Hunters hid inside fleshy wall sacs until you walked near them and then pounced on you?" And within these variants, the director may serve a Corruption Card (a random world modifier) at the start of the level that makes them more aggressive or gives them thick armor around weak points. There are a lot of them-Turtle Rock has essentially taken the infected archetypes from Left 4 Dead and expanded on them in every direction.įor example, there's basically a Boomer that spits horde-attracting acid and blows up in your face, but there are also two or three other variants with different weak points that may explode into fire instead or, as seen in the gif above, throw you 40 feet backwards into an early grave. Once you're out in the world, you can swap attachments with ones you find on the ground, but you can't dive into an Apex Legends-style inventory screen and decide you want this scope on your other gun.īack 4 Blood is more about making quick decisions and moving on, both because its simple loot makes it easy and because the AI director will send a fresh wave of infected your way if you dilly-dally for too long.īack 4 Blood's special infected (called Mutations here) are a big reason the shooting is so consistently fun.
And since everyone's doing it at the same time, you organically get a few-minutes-long buy phase before everyone is comfortable leaving the room. For one, the beginning of a level (while you're still in the safe room) is the only time you can really buy stuff and micromanage your kit. Turtle Rock made a few smart design choices with its customization and looting that keep it from bogging things down. Do I spend the last of my Copper on a suppressor that grants a sneak attack bonus on zombies that don't see you, or outfit my shotgun with armor-piercing rounds that can penetrate a bunch of zombies at once? I wasn't sold on the idea of fiddling with my weapons at first, but the upgrades are so varied and transformative that they won me over. At the start of each level, you can spend Copper found in the world to purchase healing items, grenades, guns, attachments, and upgrades that apply to the whole team. Wait, buying and looting in my Left 4 Dead sequel? That's right, better guns aren't always handed to you at the midpoint of a level in Back 4 Blood.
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