Back 4 Blood Is Available Now
Turtle Rock Studios has released their spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead with Back 4 Blood. The first-person, co-op shooter is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC. If you have GamePass, it is available there on Xbox and PC with cross-save.
Chris Ashton, Co-Founder and Design Director, Turtle Rock Studios, had this to say on the launch of Back 4 Blood:
“Back 4 Blood encapsulates all of the hard work by the entire Turtle Rock Studios team to deliver a brand-new, best-in-class zombie shooter. This is the game we envisioned for our passionate and dedicated community, and we are proud to finally see it realized for our fans to enjoy.”
Back 4 Blood features 8 playable characters, known as Cleaners, who have access to their perks and secondary-weapon. They will go up against the Ridden and all their variants. I wonder when we will run out of new terms for zombies? Devs are going to have to start allowing a good chunk of dev time just coming up with new names for zombies at this rate.
One of the big selling points of Back 4 Blood is the card system. Each card gives your character a boost, and you can customize your deck with available cards to fit your playstyle. They call this a rogue-lite component. That isn’t important, I just think it is odd to refer to a card system as a rogue-lite.
Back 4 Blood does feature a PvP element for when you get bored of working together and would rather kill each other. Two squads of four can face off against each other in a best-of-three series of rounds as teams swap between playing as the Cleaners and the Ridden. Points are then awarded based on how long the Cleaners can stay alive and endure Ridden attacks, with the team that clocks the most time winning the match. While playing from the Ridden perspective, gamers can choose from nine Ridden types, each with different characteristics that can be upgraded with enhancements called mutations and then used collectively to aid the team and help turn the tide as the match progresses.
I wasn’t sold on the Back 4 Blood beta, it had its issues, but it is on GamePass, so I’m going to give it a go this weekend with my friends.
Source: Press Release