For a good chunk of my initial time with Back 4 Blood I had precisely zero opinions about it. It’s a strange game, half of it built on a kind of ultra-nostalgia, especially potent for anyone who spent a single day of the late noughties in the same room as an Xbox 360. The other half – all cards, progression, loot – is quite abruptly modern. The two, at least at first, seem to cancel each other out, turning it into a thing that’s just too familiar, too recognisable. I’m shooting zombies in co-op, while looting weapons and grinding the progression system for cards that might help on my next run. Imagine, in the most emotionless voice: OK.
Back 4 Blood reviewDeveloper: Turtle RockPublisher: Warner Bros.Platform: Played on Xbox Series XAvailability: Out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S
But, actually, thankfully, it’s more than that. Scrabbling around in the game’s oddly enticing dark for long enough has allowed me to admit I was very much wrong. Back 4 Blood is interesting. It is unfamiliar, in places. It is good! Really good.
Much of this comes down to its system of runs. As you may well know by now, Back 4 Blood is a close spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, being developed by original Left 4 Dead studio Turtle Rock – once known as Valve South, during the Left 4 Dead years, before it was re-founded in 2011 again by some key names like Michael Booth, Phil Robb and Chris Ashton – and the history here is important. Left 4 Dead was not really a game you played through just once, but aside from the general morishness of the co-op it wasn’t necessarily built that way. Back 4 Blood is also a game you play through more than once, but this time it built that way.
The concept of multiple runs, then, is pretty important, and you can see how the game, odd as it may be up close, is very much built out from that point. There’s one core campaign to Back 4 Blood, which is PvE and absolutely designed for co-op. You can play it solo, but there’ll always be a group of four going through the campaign, so the other three in your party will be bots – surprisingly competent bots, actually – if you want to be completely alone, or you can roll the dice and matchmake with random strangers online (one of them usually a child, for that authentic 360-era experience). Or, you can of course play with friends – and a combination of bots or randoms too. The good news is the mission progression carries across, so if your mates suddenly abandon you halfway through a run you can start a new solo run from the last mission you reached should you so wish, and vice versa if they want to join halfway through.