How to play Left 4 Dead (2).

GasBandit

Staff member
So, here's my take on Back 4 Blood, as it stands, in the closed alpha:

1) No flashlight = no buy. Game's too fucking dark to not have a flashlight.
2) Melee is underpowered. Which is especially bad given how much the game tries to force you to melee. Not quite Vermintide, but way more than L4D2.
3) Easiest difficulty is equivalent to "hard" on L4D2. No casuals allowed in the B4B l33t treehouse, I guess.
4) "Ridden" is the stupidest Our Zombies Are Different case of Not Saying the Z Word ever.
5) None of the characters have any endearing personality traits. I miss the L4D survivor banter, these insufferable assholes can all die.
6) Hoffman looks UNCANNILY like Tinwhistler.
7) Smokers, er, excuse me, HOCKERS, are overpowered and game-ending
8) Boomers, er, excuse me, RETCHES, can vomit over 100 yards with perfect accuracy.
9) The card gimmick is unintuitive and unnecessary, and having a 15 card requirement just means half the time you won't start with the cards you want. Need more loadout cards or fewer cards per deck.
10) Giving the characters different starting perks and starting weapons just makes people fight over who gets what character, and quit if they don't get the one they want. Especially since the machete sucks so bad.
11) In-game vendors a-la Killing Floor is an interesting choice, and not really one I'm sure works well.
12) Having to manage 4 different kinds of ammo wrecks the pace and detracts from the experience.
13) I'm worried about the monetization plans. It's going to be a $60 game with microtransactions. Turtle Rock apparently didn't learn the lessons of Evolve (in particular, what killed Evolve).
14) I feel like when I aim down the sights of my pistol, the game starts aim-assisting me. Like, I start getting headshots I'm pretty sure I wasn't lined up for.
15) In-game feedback that you're taking damage is not attention-grabbing enough. It feels like your characters can't feel the pain until they're suddenly dead.

Aside from that, there's a lot of bugs of the variety that I think they'll fix before launch - things like falling through the world, not being able to pick up mission critical items, etc.
 
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Is Back 4 Blood a sequel or is it just putting the setting into an entirely separate universe just for the sake of reusing the same game-play without needing to expand on the narrative?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Is Back 4 Blood a sequel or is it just putting the setting into an entirely separate universe just for the sake of reusing the same game-play without needing to expand on the narrative?
It is an entirely separate universe, mostly I suspect because the left 4 dead IP belongs to Valve.

Kind of a DOTA/league of legends situation.
 
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