Pop those pills and load that shotgun
Amid a sea of seemingly endless looter-shooters, Back 4 Blood bucks a lot of trends in favor of something old-fashioned. After spending 25 hours with this four-player cooperative first-person shooter, I came to love its glorious white-knuckle tone, clever card-based progression, and varied, fist-pump-worthy campaign. An awkward difficulty curve and a stale versus mode prevent Back 4 Blood from moving into a full-blown sprint, but it still provides an exciting mix of new and old ideas as you mow down shambling legions of the undead. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where popping zombies (called “Ridden” here) in the head is as ordinary as brushing your teeth, Back 4 Blood follows a community of survivors trying not to get their jugulars torn out before breakfast.
This isn't a plot you'll get deeply invested in, as it's just a series of thinly-veiled excuses to shoot zombies with friends, but that's all the justification the four-act campaign needs. Despite dire circumstances, it's actually a pretty lighthearted romp, with seven playable "Cleaner" characters frequently cracking jokes amid impending doom. My favorite is Karlee, a punk-rocker who's prone to blaming teammates for standing in the way of her bullets should friendly fire ensue. By the time my friends and I were held up in a bar, mowing down hundreds of zombies as Black Betty by Spiderbait blasted over the jukebox, I was fully on-board with Back 4 Blood's silly, upbeat mood.
Deck-building may sound ill-fitting, but it's a great addition
Back 4 Blood's shockingly in-depth card system is the right sort of thing to get lost in, thankfully. Deck-building might sound hilariously ill-fitting for a game about rattling off thousands of rounds at walking corpses, but it’s maybe my favorite addition to this familiar formula. Before missions, you can equip several cards that modify a Cleaner's stats and abilities.
There's a starter deck, and you'll find more scattered throughout environments or by plugging points earned in missions into the light progression treadmill called supply lines. Since Karlee was my main and her unique Cleaner card buffs item-use speed, I wanted to keep up a fast pace on her feet and in her holster as well. So I built a deck with Superior Cardio, which increases stamina regen like nobody's business, and Power Swap, adding a hefty 20% damage boon to weapons after swapping between primary and secondary sidearms right before a clip runs dry. Stopping for anything became a fleeting memory with these cards, as I could bolt to and fro while often one-tapping through the undead hordes. Compared to what others have come up with, my deck was relatively simple. A friend cleverly combined the effects of several cards so that he would gain loads of health back after swinging away at Ridden en masse.
Even ridiculous decks like that don't feel overpowered, though, as corruption cards crop up mid-mission to counterbalance your boons with challenging modifiers. For example, just when we thought our builds were too strong, one corruption card spiced things up by adding an Ogre, a 20-foot tall lumbering mountain of flesh and bone, to the mission. Cards add brilliant RPG-like random elements while not veering off entirely into levels and skill trees.
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