Back 4 Blood claims to be the unofficial successor of the legendary Left4Dead Franchise. Obviously it is impossible to verify this by an Open Beta and I am not going to in detail explain the L4D formula and every gameplay aspect. I will just state, that Back4Bloods gameplay is indeed very very similar to L4D, but there are also some changes. I will try to simply express my impressions of the game in contrast to the original and my expectations. What I can already say so far is, that Back 4 Blood will very likely be a fun coop Zombie Shooter and it will almost certainly be inferior to the L4D games.
The first thing that really shocked me was the default controller settings of this game (If you play on PC with mouse and keyboard it isn't an issue, even though default sensitivity on PC is also too low), which are unexplainibly awful. It is imperative to deactivate Motion Blur (which you honestly should do in every game), but even than the default sensitivity feels very floaty and off. I was ably to improve the situation a bit, but It never felt as smooth as other FPS on consoles. What was even worse is the Aim-Assist of the game, which is a complete miss at this point. You can choose between complete Auto-Aim, where the game will do all aiming for the players instead of just assisting them and giving you massive aim resist, if you try to aim yourself, or zero Aim-Assist, which of course makes the game much harder than it should be. Every Console FPS since more than 10 years uses Aim-Assist settings, which smooth the aiming process, but don't completely remove and certainly don't punish players for aiming for themselves. Back 4 Bloods Aim Resist however is so strong, that you will really get punished every time you touch the right analog stick by missing the shot. This is unacceptable and explainable (like the devs have last been playing on console in the early 2000s or something). Tweaking the settings didn't help, since 10% and 50% aim assist felt identically overwhelming. If the game releases like this it will flop hard on consoles.
The majority of the gameplay thankfully still feels like L4D and the maps are decently designed. That being said, Back4Blood still lacks the special charm of the predecessors. L4Ds visual design has such an unique look and in combination with the animations and sound effects created such an amazing atmosphere between Horror and pure Arcade fun. Back 4 Blood visually seems to aim for a more realistic setting (mostly due to the newer graphic engine), but at this point lacks the special charm. Animations and soundeffects are just much more generic and could also be out of any other game. Molotovs and Pipe Bombs for example looked much cooler in the more than 10 year older games. Gunplay also doesn't really do anything wrong in Back 4 Blood, but it doesn't feel as satisfying to kill Zombies as in L4D.
Characters are thankfully not as annoying as I first thought, after watching the trailers, but they still fall of short. Hoffman is probably the one I like the most and even he can't compare to the Bills, Nicks, Coaches or Rochelles of this world. Back 4 Blood characters are just a bit too edgy and fun driven, where L4D also had a certain humor factor, but always mixed with the intense Horror Survival atmosphere. L4D characters feel more like real people being thrown into an apocalypse, while Back 4 Blood characters feel like they have been designed on a drawing board.
The same goes for the special infected. Even though they resemble their L4D Counterparts. They feel far less unique or scary. You just quickly shoot them and forget about them. Even this gigantic new boss creature felt way less impactful than the Tank on L4D, who on Expert used to scare the shit out of me.
Most of the unique and new aspects of Back 4 Blood, like the card system, are okay and don't really hurt the game, but I really wouldn't have needed them in the game either. The same goes for weapon attachments, the ability to buy weapons and items between missions with gathered resources or different ammo types for different weapons. They are okay, but i very personally don't see them as a necessary change either. This however is certainly a matter of personal preference.
I experienced some massive issues in my playtime, like on one mission I wasn't able aim down sights anymore in the middle of the mission and nothing could stop that from happening. Only quitting the game solved the issue. On another mission two of my teammates glitched through a wall and fell to their deaths. The weapon of a teammate of mine always got invisible after he put an attachment on it. And there were also some massive frame drops out of nowhere, which only lasted for a few seconds, but nearly made the game stop. The PC-version of the game had less of the former issues, but on the other hand crashed multiple times in the third mission of the first campaign. Make of that as you will...
Matchmaking is also not working perfectly. If one of the players disconnects for example, we could never find a replacement player during the campaign (even 1-2 missions later). A Bot would take his place, but Bots are also not great in this game. L4D Bots weren't perfect, but still smarter than Back 4 Blood Bots. B4B Bots only really move, if human players move, otherwise they mostly stand around and shoot a little bit. If you want to be revived, you better hope you stand somewhere near them. I did like, that you could take over Bot characters, if the player character has been eliminated before. Interestingly matchmaking issues would also be resolved if you were queuing for a sub-mission from the main menu.
Something to further keep in mind is, that Back 4 Blood will in contrast to L4D not feature free additional campaigns and massive Mod support for thousands of custom maps, but instead focuses on paid additional DLC, very likely no mod support and other monetization aspects. This is frightening me a little, since Back 4 Blood is supposed to have reached Gold status now. It however so far seems to be far away from a polished and ready to release status (I don't even want to imagine how the game might have looked at the initial release date in June). If the game doesn't take the necessary amount of time to be polished (I would say at least 3-4 months more) and focuses to early on additional paid content, than it could lead down a dark hole.
Result:
Back 4 Blood is no Left 4 Dead 3, even though the gameplay is very similar. My impressions might sound pretty negative, since I have to compare this game to nigh perfect predecessors. There are significant technical issues, massive controller issues and a couple of elements feel noticeably worse than in L4D. Nonetheless, Back 4 Blood has some really good potential to be a fun game. The game however desperately needs more work and time to be put in it. The devs need to listen to player feedback, than I could see Back 4 Blood becoming a 7-8/10 game. The 9-10/10 region of the L4D games so far seems impossible to reach, unless a miracle occurs, but the foundation of Back 4 Blood is certainly not terrible or as average as some people make it sound. The fate of the game is now in the hands of the devs/publishers. Let's hope they don't screw it up.
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