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Back 4 Blood

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Back 4 Blood

Oct 12, 2021

Main game

2.85 average rating based on 378 ratings

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Back 4 Blood is a thrilling cooperative first-person shooter from the creators of the critically acclaimed Left 4 Dead franchise. You are at the center of a war against the Ridden. These once-human hosts of a deadly parasite have turned into terrifying creatures bent on devouring what remains of civilization. With humanity’s extinction on the line, it’s up to you and your friends to take the fight to the enemy, eradicate the Ridden, and reclaim the world.
Release Dates
Oct 12, 2021 (Worldwide)
PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
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User Stats
1765
In Collection
142
Wish Listed
42
Playing
755
Backlogged
How Long Is Back 4 Blood?
Main story: 16.9 hours
Main + extras: 31.0 hours
Total completions: 17
Alfonso12349
Alfonso12349 gave Oct 29, 2021
Alfonso12349 gave Oct 29, 2021
Entertaining co-op, but very poor design

If you play the game with friends it's fun because of the type of game it is and the budget with which it was created, but otherwise I think it's a game with a lot of design flaws:

  • Most of the levels are the same, monotonous, its design does not propose interesting gameplay situations.

  • The enemies are extremely generic zombies. They are not particularly fun to fight. The ones that are most different from the rest, instead of being fun, are just unfair.

  • Speaking of unfair, the game's difficulty modes are wildly unbalanced. The lowest difficulty mode is too easy and the intermediate difficulty mode is too hard. But it's not difficult in a way that encourages you to get better at overcoming the challenges the game presents; it's a completely artificial difficulty that only emphasises the game's design problems.

  • The last two levels attempt to achieve a great climactic experience, but they do it so poorly that the penultimate level is one of the most boring ones in the whole game, and the last one, while entertaining, is frustrating and extremely disappointing.

Still, if you like this kind of games and you have Game Pass, you have nothing to …

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If you play the game with friends it's fun because of the type of game it is and the budget with which it was created, but otherwise I think it's a game with a lot of design flaws:

  • Most of the levels are the same, monotonous, its design does not propose interesting gameplay situations.

  • The enemies are extremely generic zombies. They are not particularly fun to fight. The ones that are most different from the rest, instead of being fun, are just unfair.

  • Speaking of unfair, the game's difficulty modes are wildly unbalanced. The lowest difficulty mode is too easy and the intermediate difficulty mode is too hard. But it's not difficult in a way that encourages you to get better at overcoming the challenges the game presents; it's a completely artificial difficulty that only emphasises the game's design problems.

  • The last two levels attempt to achieve a great climactic experience, but they do it so poorly that the penultimate level is one of the most boring ones in the whole game, and the last one, while entertaining, is frustrating and extremely disappointing.

Still, if you like this kind of games and you have Game Pass, you have nothing to lose for trying it out.

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alex2800
alex2800 gave Oct 15, 2021
alex2800 gave Oct 15, 2021
Super fun coop shooter, really bad as a solo experience

It's a pleasure to play as a squad even though a bit too hard in veteran I believe, the gap between this and recruit is waaay to steep.

If you don't have a full squad though, just don't bother: matchmaking is broken and there's almost no way to progress if you want to play with bots.

While I didn't expect the game to be really enjoyable playing solo (I mean who played L4D alone??) it's 2021 now and there is a lot of options to assemble a squad without having to look on reddit/discord.

MHW and Division 2 did it well for instance.

Girafro
Girafro gave Oct 20, 2021
Girafro gave Oct 20, 2021
Back 2 the bargain bin
This review is for the PC (Microsoft Windows) version

Every once in a while I wonder "whatever happend to B games?"

It seems they're alive and well. And just as junky as ever. Sadly, in my mind, Back 4 Blood brings only these elements of B games and no unique quirk or fun mechanics to salvage it.

It seems obvious but honestly how do you clone Left 4 Dead in 2021 and have worse gunplay? Everything just feels too heavy and clunky, it really detracts from what should feel like a snappy arcade shoot em up, total mistranslation.

I have quite a few gripes but a lot of them are minor. The main point is that I had no real fun playing this game. I hear it's fun with friends, maybe that's true but none of mine were interested so I guess my review is the lone wolf playing with randos and bots perspective.

A joyless mess.

starfleetjames
starfleetjames gave May 27, 2022
starfleetjames gave May 27, 2022
Fairly fun with friends

This was pretty fun to play with my friends. They weren't super into it and neither was I so we never finished. The game does seem high quality though and I can totally see it capturing other people.

Tubbymora
Tubbymora gave Dec 31, 2021
Tubbymora gave Dec 31, 2021
A pretty fun zombie shooter
This review is for the PC (Microsoft Windows) version

Back 4 Blood attempts to go beyond and improve upon the Left 4 Dead formula. It tries to introduce a few new game mechanics such as the card system, corruption cards, weapon modifications, etc. And while the new game mechanics do offer a fresh perspective on the zombie shooter formula… it just seems like it lost many things along the way that made the Left 4 Dead series great - i.e. tighter gameplay, map design, special infected, etc. This game isn’t completely terrible, but it definitely needs more polish. It tries to copy and one up the Left 4 Dead formula, but in doing so, it starts to lose its own identity.

LCSnoogs
LCSnoogs gave Nov 3, 2021
LCSnoogs gave Nov 3, 2021
Back 4 Blood Campaign Review

This is more of the Left 4 Dead experience, but with a much longer campaign and more customization. There's enough customization where I am creating a proper character build like an RPG. I can unlock cards that can be used during the game that will provide character buffs that are much needed when playing. Along with the cards, I can pick up or buy new weapons and weapon attachments and accessories of different types. There's enough here to create a team composition to create a strategy to face off against the zombies, and the game pushes back enough for that to feel necessary. My friends and I got our asses handed to us a few times, and we were playing on the lowest difficulty. It's an engaging, satisfying system.

The campaign has a decent variety of environments: city streets, buildings, sewers, etc., but some of these levels are repeated too often. That got disappointing after a while. I could not follow the story at all, so I can't give much input there. I always find this to be a problem when I'm playing a campaign with multiple people. I had a team of three, so our fourth spot was either …

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This is more of the Left 4 Dead experience, but with a much longer campaign and more customization. There's enough customization where I am creating a proper character build like an RPG. I can unlock cards that can be used during the game that will provide character buffs that are much needed when playing. Along with the cards, I can pick up or buy new weapons and weapon attachments and accessories of different types. There's enough here to create a team composition to create a strategy to face off against the zombies, and the game pushes back enough for that to feel necessary. My friends and I got our asses handed to us a few times, and we were playing on the lowest difficulty. It's an engaging, satisfying system.

The campaign has a decent variety of environments: city streets, buildings, sewers, etc., but some of these levels are repeated too often. That got disappointing after a while. I could not follow the story at all, so I can't give much input there. I always find this to be a problem when I'm playing a campaign with multiple people. I had a team of three, so our fourth spot was either taken by a bot or by a stranger throughout our playthrough. The bot AI is pretty bad. There was one point were all of us were down, and the bot just kept running around in circles and getting stuck on the environment instead of reviving us. The characters banter throughout the game. Most of them are fine, but some of them are really annoying. The comedic relief characters are painfully unfunny, and the same dialogue gets repeated a lot.

I appreciate the sound design in this. The weapons are satisfying to fire, and I can hear the sound of the weapon firing change as I get closer to the end of my clip. The special zombie types sound appropriately creepy. They kept me on edge in situations where I could hear them but couldn't see them.

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Eyepatch
Eyepatch gave Nov 21, 2021
Eyepatch gave Nov 21, 2021
3.5/5 A solid fun Zombie shooter

Not a huge fan of zombie shooting games......left 4 dead 2 was the only zombie game I had some fun playing....so when I heard it was from the same developers I wanted to give it a try.

Its a solid game with super good gameplay.Killing zombies are soo satisfying in this game.I wasn't that attached to card system and all but it does seem like a good concept.For me the game is the best zombie shooter but that doesn't mean its perfect...the story was meh there were few bugs that were soo frustrating and the content for this price is too low....I tried this with gamepass so I didn't have the latter issue...anyways definitely give it a try if u have gamepass its super fun.

Roach
Roach gave Oct 30, 2021
Roach gave Oct 30, 2021
Fun with Friends
This review is for the PC (Microsoft Windows) version

Back 4 Blood definitely gives Left 4 Dead players more content but at the same time I felt there wasn't enough memorable content. There were a few levels that had features that stood out but the overall landscape felt forgettable. I couldn't even tell you what the plot was but it honestly isn't an important aspect to this game, so that's not really a negative here.

For starters, I highly recommend playing this game with friends as I don't believe I would've had much fun without them. The campaign is a decent length but after the first playthrough, I didn't feel the motivation to go back and replay through it again for the unlockables.

The gameplay itself is both fun and frustrating. It is very hard to overcome the urge to kill every zombie. You need to work as a team to complete objectives and maintain survival. If I got distracted with a standoff and focused on killing zombies instead of just running and gunning my way through them, I found myself frustrated by the never-ending hordes and got further separated from my teammates, making it near impossible to recover.

I recommend this game for a good time with friends, …

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Back 4 Blood definitely gives Left 4 Dead players more content but at the same time I felt there wasn't enough memorable content. There were a few levels that had features that stood out but the overall landscape felt forgettable. I couldn't even tell you what the plot was but it honestly isn't an important aspect to this game, so that's not really a negative here.

For starters, I highly recommend playing this game with friends as I don't believe I would've had much fun without them. The campaign is a decent length but after the first playthrough, I didn't feel the motivation to go back and replay through it again for the unlockables.

The gameplay itself is both fun and frustrating. It is very hard to overcome the urge to kill every zombie. You need to work as a team to complete objectives and maintain survival. If I got distracted with a standoff and focused on killing zombies instead of just running and gunning my way through them, I found myself frustrated by the never-ending hordes and got further separated from my teammates, making it near impossible to recover.

I recommend this game for a good time with friends, to anyone who wants a mindless yet somewhat strategic zombie murder fest, and to anyone who wants a non-scary spooky game to play.

I do not recommend this game for a solo experience.

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Ivonnempg88
Ivonnempg88 gave May 1, 2026
Ivonnempg88 gave May 1, 2026
Fun with friends
This review is for the PlayStation 5 version

If you like coop games with friends, this could be a good option for you. It has fast paced action, and plenty of enemies and monsters to kill.

As for gameplay, the game can be very simple and complex at the same time. It is a shooter game, so you point and shoot as usual. You can choose between different characters who have their own perks to help you in the fight. I always like to play as Doc, since it is a good idea to have someone who can focus on healing the team. Besides that, you can go deeper and use the deck building system to make your characters even more powerful and useful, and select the gamestyle that best suits you. As for me, this system is way too complicated. I just googled a good deck combination for the character I was using and went with that. The game is very fun as a beginner, but it can start to get frustrating on harder difficulties. Especially since you only have two tries to finish the whole act. If your whole team dies twice in your run, you have to start all over again. That is way too …

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If you like coop games with friends, this could be a good option for you. It has fast paced action, and plenty of enemies and monsters to kill.

As for gameplay, the game can be very simple and complex at the same time. It is a shooter game, so you point and shoot as usual. You can choose between different characters who have their own perks to help you in the fight. I always like to play as Doc, since it is a good idea to have someone who can focus on healing the team. Besides that, you can go deeper and use the deck building system to make your characters even more powerful and useful, and select the gamestyle that best suits you. As for me, this system is way too complicated. I just googled a good deck combination for the character I was using and went with that. The game is very fun as a beginner, but it can start to get frustrating on harder difficulties. Especially since you only have two tries to finish the whole act. If your whole team dies twice in your run, you have to start all over again. That is way too much for me, so I just played on Recruit, which is the easy difficulty.

As for the story, I wish it was better told. There are a couple of cutscenes and some dialogue in between episodes... but it is not enough. Also, there is plenty of dialogue while you are fighting hordes of zombies, and for me it is impossible to pay attention. All the lore I know about the game is because I went and looked for it in the game's Wiki page. It is very hard to get anything while playing the game. In the expansions, the story is told way better! I actually enjoyed the expansions way more than the main game.

One complaint that I have is that the maps got very repetitive. You revisit the same areas over and over, and they look very similar. Things started to change a bit on the third act. Then the expansions did change everything and those maps were very fun to play. It is sad that they waited for the expansion to make something engaging to play...

In conclusion, B4B is a bit of a below averge game, but it can be worth it if you play with friends. Try to also play the expansions, which are way more interesting than the main game. They are on the short side, though.

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gameOBER
gameOBER gave Jan 16, 2023
gameOBER gave Jan 16, 2023
Major disappointment
This review is for the PC (Microsoft Windows) version

Was way overhyped. Playing with others should be more fun, but the special zombies were just unbalanced and bland.

Duskwind
Duskwind gave Oct 7, 2022
Duskwind gave Oct 7, 2022
General Review - Back 4 Blood

Gameplay: 7.5/10

Presentation: 7.5/10

Story: 6/10

Overall Score: 7/10

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

maeday
maeday updated their status Sep 7, 2024
maeday updated their status Sep 7, 2024

Likewise, if anyone is looking to partner up in Back4Blood on the hardest difficulties for campaign, lemme know. Really wanna whittle these achievements down.

maeday
maeday updated their status Mar 14, 2023
maeday updated their status Mar 14, 2023

Okay so the third expansion finally went on sale for 3 bucks, and holy crap, it might be the single best thing Turtle Rock has ever made. This map is SO cool.

maeday
maeday updated their status Mar 14, 2023
maeday updated their status Mar 14, 2023

Hey, so, Expansion 3 is the only one I don't own, and it's on sale right now. However, when I go to the page on the Xbox store, it simply says "not playable on this device". We own a Xbox One S. Anyone else have any issues with this, or seen anything else about this? Makes no sense that this one wouldn't work considering the other two do and there's achievements for it, but I can't find anyone else saying anything about this. What's the deal?

maeday
maeday updated their status Dec 1, 2022
maeday updated their status Dec 1, 2022

I am 20 achievements away from 100% completion in Back4Blood, and at least half of those are simply "Complete Act (Blank) on (Blank) Difficulty", so, lookin' good so far.

maeday
maeday updated their status Dec 1, 2022
maeday updated their status Dec 1, 2022

Children of the Worm DLC is pretty goshdarn good, man. The setting is really a nice change of pace, and it's cool to have some human enemies for a change, and the plot is fun and goofy. Definitely worth the 7 dollar sale price right now.

maeday
maeday updated their status Oct 4, 2022
maeday updated their status Oct 4, 2022

Finally picked up the first DLC for this. This should be a good afternoon, I haven't played this game in a hot minute.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 30, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 30, 2022

Okay, that's Act 2 on Veteran completed. Really glad I played all that L4D back in the day - and a bunch since - because it's really prepared me for this solo run on harder difficulties. Whatever negative things I may have said about this title really pale in comparison ultimately to just the sheer fun it is overall, which is all I really asked for. Thanks Turtle Rock.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 20, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 20, 2022

Okay so, I know I said some things, compared it to previous iterations of L4D and was disappointed in some decisions, but all in all...I am having a goddamned blast. It really is fun even with its flaws and drawbacks. Happy I took the gamble and really happy they included a single player option so I could take that gamble.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 18, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 18, 2022

Another thing I also noticed that bums me out about the lack of identity to the game is how all the "acts" are literally titled "Act 1" and "Act 2" and etc. In L4D and L4D2 is that each act had a specific theme and title, like "Dark Carnival" or "Dead Air". It just feels so impersonal and bland in this one. The game itself, as I've said, is pretty fun for what it is, but again, it really does lack an identity.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 12, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 12, 2022

I think after completing Act 1 that my overall consensus is that the game is solid enough, but it always feel like it's trying to play dress up. So much about the fun of the previous installments has been lost here. The zip is gone, the tension is gone, the dread is gone, and while, yeah, the ferry and bridge were cool moments, they ultimately just felt like worse versions of stuff already done well in the previous L4D games.

The characters are great, though. I like the characters, but the set pieces leave so much to be desired and there's nothing nearly as memorable, at least thusfar. Sure the game isn't as punchy playwise, and sure it's almost obnoxiously insistent on exploration, and sure the deck building seems to not only be completely unnecessary but also completely useless, but it does play well and the characters are neat. The special infected are also way less iconic, like, by a longshot.

Is the game bad? No. Not by any means. I'm having a lot of fun. But all I can think while playing it is "boy I wish this was L4D2" and that's not really a great sign.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 12, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 12, 2022

If you can get around the unnecessary modernizations - like the cards and deck building, which is neat but totally unnecessary - and the character customization which is actually kinda welcome as it makes it a bit more personal, it's basically L4D3, but even then...

...guys, you didn't have to make these changes. We just wanted to shoot zombies. The game is nowhere near as fast paced, it seems a lot heavier on exploration and overall it just doesn't have the same zip as the previous versions. It isn't as bad as everyone lead me to believe, but it's certainly not the same, and as a result, it's worse off because of it.

But at least I can slay zombies by myself again, so that's nice. Screw playing with other people.

maeday
maeday updated their status Jun 10, 2022
maeday updated their status Jun 10, 2022

My copy of Back 4 Black arrives tomorrow, so now that there's a single player mode, I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed that I'll have at least a halfway decent time with it. Despite it still being Turtle Rock, I am not expecting it to live up to L4D2 by any means, especially with the ridiculous unnecessary modern addons to gameplay like cards and stuff, but perhaps it'll at least be remotely entertaining nonetheless.

Jasyla
Jasyla updated their status Dec 16, 2021
Jasyla updated their status Dec 16, 2021

This is the 3rd co-op zombie shooter I’ve played this year, and it’s the worst one. I had fun playing with my friends, but the levels are repetitive, the difficulty fluctuates randomly and wildly, and special zombies are constantly being thrown at you.

Sheldipez
Sheldipez updated their status Nov 30, 2021
Sheldipez updated their status Nov 30, 2021

How do you make Left 4 Dead unfun? Didn't think it was possible :(

Gangreen
Gangreen updated their status Oct 21, 2021
Gangreen updated their status Oct 21, 2021

So much like Left 4 Dead... with a few modern elements. Overall a great thing.

This is tried and true to the formula, character archetypes, level designs, and gameplay. The colored loot is a cool edition along with risk/reward for searching for more money to buy upgrades next time. But the new card system is obtuse. I get it in concept but the mechanics or the UI or something is confusing.

And of course being a heavy co-op game means the quality of the games can vary greatly based on your teammates. I have only found a few good team play sessions; too many other cases of teammates repeatedly alerting the horde in a single run. Hard to tell if this is just novice play, or deliberate jerky behavior.