Analysis of Back 4 Blood (Xbox Series X | S) – 4 against the world (zombie)

Get ready to clean the streets full of zombie hordes in Back 4 Blood.

Year 2008: A title called Left 4 Dead is released in Xbox 360, rapidly becoming the most popular game around the world. 2 years before the same had happened on PC, since the title was first released in compatible by the studio Turtle Rock Studios. The premise of this title was simple: face hordes of zombies of all kinds and drawn together with 4 characters, which could be controlled by the CPU or by other friends.

If you want to know more about the original Left 4 Dead installment, don’t miss our retro-analysis by clicking here.

13 years, a sequel and a failure later, Turtle Rock Studios repeats his formula for success with this new Back 4 Blood. Taking the formula you made of Left 4 Dead a great success and raising it to maximum power thanks to new generation consoles, the Californian study has achieved a game that has not left anyone indifferent. So prepare your Cleaner to face hordes of Stinking, Stinging, Tell-Tale and more blood, guts, gore, and weapons than you can imagine.

The Infected are here and your job is to get rid of them.

The plot of the game It is a mere excuse to take down hordes of zombies, but there it is. Basically we find that oh surprise there has been a (other) zombie apocalypse. I hope I did not spoil you with this the beginning. These zombies are known as the Infected and there are already many more of them than there are living human beings. We play as one of the eight cleaners, a group of people whose job it is to get out into the real world, away from the safety of the fortified camps where most sensible people spend their time, while doing certain tasks, such as rescue survivors, search for supplies, clear areas etc.

Basically this translates to a cooperative experience for four players, where watching each other’s backs becomes the norm, and to be honest I find this much more refreshing than the endless grind of something like player vs player modes that floods today’s video game landscape. That said, if PvP is your thing, there is a way Swarm in which the Infected face the Cleaners, where we can embody characters from either side.

The card system brings a very interesting roleplaying touch.

When you start the game, you only have the possibility to choose between four cleaners, but by completing the first four missions in Act 1, you can unlock another four. In every act there are about ten missions to face, except in Act 4, in which there is only one mission. The choice of Cleaner you choose influences the team’s survival chances, as everyone has a unique ability that can empower the team. As you progress through the game, you can earn new cards that can also boost you or the team. Undoubtedly, build a deck Using them to have more options for success is a lot of fun and brings a very interesting role-playing touch.

Cards can be purchased at Supply Routes, in the social center of the game, and are bought with supply points that accumulate at the end of a mission. These cards are not the only ones in the game. The Infected also have a deck of cards that can come out randomly at the beginning of each mission. These letters, Corruption calls, bring a new twist to the gameplay, such as have a thick fog on stage, which makes it very difficult to see where you are going or where enemies are coming from. Or you can be even luckier and have a horde of zombies hot on your heels throughout the level.

The difficulty, one more issue that the community commented on.

So once you’ve chosen your Cleaner and are ready to dive into the game, how do the games play out? Well, in four words: fast and very difficult. If we play with friends to communicate with, there will be no problems, but when we enter a random game through the quick games menu usually results in joining a group of people who do not they talk, they don’t help and they seem to believe that they are playing to be the greatest zombie hunter in history, where the idea is to get as many kills as possible. I highly recommend playing with friends if you can, since although these are maimed, the fact of being able to talk and coordinate it can make the difference between success and failure. A positive aspect also to highlight is the possibility of playing with users who are playing the title on consoles. PlayStation and PC, thanks to CrossPlay.

The action is relentless, fast, furious and brilliant. Cross a bridge on foot with a horde of zombies on your heels, or defend a jukebox in a bar to distract the zombies long enough for people to escape leads to memorable battles. And all this without mentioning the special infected, which provide a touch of difficulty and challenge that make all the difference. It is true that the difficulty of the title Even at the most basic levels it has been a hot topic in the community, but it seems that Turtle Rock Studios has decided to listen to its users and lower this level of difficulty a bit, which sometimes made us want to stop playing after having failed 5 times a mission.

Technical and artistic level section.

Graphically, Back 4 Blood looks very good, no slowdowns anymore Solid 60 FPS on Xbox Series (optimized for Xbox Series X | S), still having a few million zombies on screen at a time. The way the game maintains speed is fantastic and helps keep the pace of the action always frenetic. The artistic section It is also close to the top, with lots of zombie models, special enemies, and scenarios. The soundtrack it’s also very good, with each different type of zombie recognizable by the noises it makes. As if that were not enough, the title it is completely dubbed into Spanish, also presenting spectacular dubbing quality.

A game made and thought to be played with others.

Back 4 Blood It is a video game that shows that it is designed to play cooperatively and not alone. We have a single player mode, but the main problem with this mode is that complete missions with bots, although technically possible, does not give you any progression, or extra cards, And worst of all, does not give you achievements. Yes, you read that right, if you play alone, all achievements are locked. In my opinion, this is quite a controversial measure, as not everyone wants to play with other players and the developers have basically made you have to. Other minor drawbacks are a rather messy menu system at first, minor bugs in the game, and the odd matchmaking issue. This however is something that can be fixed by Turtle Rock Studios through patches.

Conclusions.

In short, with the arrival of Back 4 Blood to Xbox Game Pass from launch day, I think there is no excuse for not playing it. It’s fast, brutal, fun, and a bad catch. Do not hesitate to call your colleagues and take to the streets to end the zombie threat.