Dojmy z bety Back 4 Blood » Vortex

The developers at Turtle Rock Studios have taken an important step towards the release of Back 4 Blood. Games, through which they want to remind themselves without Valve’s presence, how great both parts of Left 4 Dead were and how the popular formula can work in a modern jacket. After the alphaversion, which was recently available only to selected players, Back 4 Blood advanced to the beta, which everyone will be able to play in two days without any restrictions. However, the first round was only available to players with a pre-order or directly a key, and of course we did not refuse the opportunity to try this promising event. Therefore, with sincere interest and a relatively high level of expectations, I spent the past days in the story and PvP part, and I’m starting to worry that Back 4 Blood won’t be easy at all.

Left 4 Dead and a little Evolve too

Every time the developers from Turtle Rock Studios are mentioned somewhere in connection with their current project, fans will automatically fire the already mentioned Left 4 Dead. Sure, the American studio never hid the fact that it was the spiritual successor of the beloved cooperative action, but we should not forget that Turtle Rock Studios is also behind the asymmetric multiplayer game Evolve, which did not turn out very well. It is necessary to mention this failure, especially with regard to the direction Back 4 Blood turns and what it will face at the time of its release, because as history has shown – if you disgust the player at the start, or do not get enough attention to the title, he will simply die low number of players. At Evolve, it was an aggressive attempt to sell as many DLCs as possible, which discouraged players and did not return to the free to play version of the game. For Back 4 Blood, it could be the monetization of cards that affect the course of the game in all modes. But the developers have made it clear that if microtransactions come, they will only concern cosmetic matters, and so far we have no reason to disbelieve. But there is already talk of a one-year pass with the upcoming DLC, story parts and new heroes, so vigilance on the spot. We must also not forget that Back 4 Blood will arrive just a few days before Battlefield 2042, and although it is not a type-matching game, I probably don’t have to explain to you for too long what all the attention will be paid to in mid-October.

But enough complaints and devils on the wall – Back 4 Blood offers a part of the campaign in the beta version, together with the PvP mode Versus, which works similarly to the Left 4 Dead. The campaign is represented by the first act, which takes approximately two hours to complete, depending on the difficulty chosen. There are three stages, and so far it seems that developers will have to significantly optimize their differences after the beta test. At the moment, the medium difficulty becomes an effective stop for most of the games I have played, which, on the other hand, further reinforces the need for mutual communication and cooperation. Back 4 Blood will depend on this in part, because if you don’t come across conscious teammates, you can, despite all your efforts, end up very quickly and lose some of the fun that lies in the game. This is true regardless of the fact that the individual parts of the campaign are very straightforward and you rarely have to complete a task. So far, I see the biggest weakness of the PvE regime, in which you will probably start to get bored after a very short time.

Do not worry…

To put it in just a few words, I would like to talk about an insufficiently exciting atmosphere, but this is influenced by a lot of aspects that, in my opinion, will not undergo significant modifications. The design of individual locations lacks explicitly haunting places, or any idea, so that we simply do not go through the list of items such as an old wooden house, a dark forest, a ruined harbor and tunnels. I don’t want to say that it makes Back 4 Blood look generic because of that, but compared to Left 4 Dead, the anxious moments disappeared from the game when you only shone a flashlight on your weapon and somewhere in the distance you heard the laughter of a mad witch, which later started in a fit of rage to send hordes of zombies in your direction. Also, the processing of enemies does not look original and, most importantly, you will not find too many differences between them. Regardless of the fact that they are not zombies, but infected, the basic types differ maximally in that someone flees thoughtlessly in front of the barrel of your weapon and someone explodes thoughtlessly in your presence. Larger enemies then play only the role of the infamous bullet mushroom, and the only thing that awakens in you is a fierce effort to send him to the ground, rather than fear and perhaps mild panic attacks. In other words, after a few minutes of the game, nothing will surprise you, and at least I switched to autopilot, which simply proceeds along the set path forward.

It’s also nice that in beta, connecting players across platforms already works, and I didn’t have the slightest problem with the stability of the game.

But the actual shooting is not bad and it is obvious that the developers were inspired by the most professional. So, at least as far as the world of ill-considered but phenomenally popular shooters is concerned. Back 4 Blood acts as a Call of Duty, from the not very pronounced recoil of the weapon, through the overall processing of the weapon’s arsenal, to the red crosses depicting the successful killing of the enemy. The only thing I had a bit of a problem with – but it’s mainly based on the fact that we had the beta available on the console – was the balance of aiming support and not exactly realistic aiming tears towards the enemy. But I understand that such a problem would disappear on a PC, and after running an open beta, I will be curious how the game works on a computer. It’s also nice that in beta, connecting players across platforms works, and I didn’t have the slightest problem with the stability of the game. After all, it seems at the moment that Back 4 Blood is ready for release, thanks to great optimization and only a marginal occurrence of bugs or glitches. Unfortunately, even that does not guarantee that Back 4 Blood will become a fun game that players will enjoy playing even a few years after its release. In the expected comparison with the Left 4 Dead, I lack a certain lightness and straightforwardness, which the developers decided to replace with a complicated system of cards, characteristics of individual characters, a myriad of items and a plethora of parts that can be used to improve individual weapons.

It hurts a lot

Looking at the inventory or menu to purchase at one of the clues of each mission, you need a considerable amount of time to orient yourself. Several items to heal, throwing items, fixed weapons of the selected character, weapons to buy, which do not differ much in each class, the perks of the characters mixed into it, and then the mentioned cards. All this is supposed to affect the course of missions and matches, but at least in beta, the impact is almost zero. The benefits that a suitable combination of all these listed things will give you in the end do not affect the way Back 4 Blood is played and it will probably be possible to take full advantage of it later, or at a higher level of difficulty. For example, gaining a few health points after clearing an enemy manually usually carries the risk of losing more health points from one or two strikes that you take from a zombie. More ammunition for all team members, which one of the characters activates, is also a trifle, when ammunition is relatively abundant all around even at the middle level. And, for example, accelerated recharging can then, in extreme cases, be comical.

However, you get cards for exchanging points gained by playing a campaign in the camp, which serves as the central point of all your expeditions, and it must be admitted that each one is more interesting than the previous one. You can compose them as you wish in your packages, which then apply to other games, or choose one of the pre-prepared ones. It’s a mechanism that will undoubtedly evolve, and I don’t want to damn it just because it didn’t get as much space in the beta, but it still occurs to me that in the end it won’t be as groundbreaking as the developers have described it in previous statements. This brings us back to the simple mowing of everything that appears in front of you, which is also influenced by the AI ​​Director’s artificial intelligence superstructure, known from Left 4 Dead. However, it is expressed only by spawning enemies in specific places according to where your group is located, or by sending one or more tougher enemies more if you had a problem with them in previous battles. An annoying element in the form of crows and locked doors also comes into play, which can literally summon a horde of zombies from nowhere. You must not scare the first ones, or kill them before they take off, which is a good molotov, but not a grenade anymore. You have to quietly unlock the other – locked devers – using the kit, but for a change, this does not guarantee that the zombies will not appear on the site anyway.

More promising PvP part

The second part of the beta, Versus mode, in which groups of live players pit against each other, is very similar to that in Left 4 Dead. However, it has slightly different rules, which I honestly quite like. As humans, you have to resist the onslaught of zombies for as long as possible, and your time then plays a role in the final total, which determines who won. Meanwhile, zombies can repeatedly choose between individual monsters or ordinary infected people and try to stop people. After the change of roles, everything is repeated and whoever managed to survive for a long time in three rounds wins. Following the example of battle royal action, the space in which you can move effectively shrinks, which adds to the hectic and finally the game really drives you into a corner forcing you to panic or improvise great, depending on how good you are and how lucky you are. In the end, I see more potential in this mode than in the story part, it’s just a pity that Versus, at least in my case, suffered from spawning errors, so I just sat in a lot of matches as a spectator without the opportunity to get involved or correct this situation. But when it did, communication between the players and mutual cooperation led to great moments that could push Back 4 Blood forward.

But there are still a lot of question marks hanging over the game and I am honestly curious what the players who did not participate in the closed part will say about the game. Will they miss the atmosphere? Or maybe a more distinctive music accompaniment that worked so great in Left 4 Dead? Or will the hunger for the sequel to this famous series win or the “free” opportunity to play the full version thanks to its inclusion in the Game Pass? I really don’t know and even after a few hours I’m not able to estimate what will turn out in the end. I would like to wish the developers all the best, because they have a good foundation, to make it clearer, but some systems would not hurt, as well as to remove the annoying and would-be cool messages of available characters and thicken the atmosphere.