BENGALURU: You haven’t read this column for long enough if you aren’t aware of my appreciation of a good zombie game. It feels empowering to crush a horde of snarling monsters in the wake of an Armageddon. Leave aside the genre for a moment. It’s becoming increasingly hard to coordinate and play a decent co-operative game with friends, because everyone operates on a different console. The second thing you should know about me, is my appreciation of a game that allows cross-play.
The forces of the apocalypse genre and cross-platform play combined brings… *drum roll*… Back 4 Blood! 12 years after Left 4 Dead 2, and post a successful open beta, Back 4 Blood is finally available across platforms — the Xboxes, the PSes, and the PC. Back 4 Blood introduces zombies in higher definition than before, in completely new scenarios. To fight them we are now armed with new weapons, and fresh characters.
The main campaign of this game is divided into four acts, each with multiple chapters. As the game progresses, the hordes of zombies get more aggressive, and there are newer infected variants to defeat. Simultaneously, the game introduces us to the different characters or “Cleaners”. Each Cleaner has a superhero film worthy intro. Introducing Mom, with her extra life. Evangelo, who runs a lot. There’s Doc and Karlee, who are villainously dangerous. Eight in total, as of now. They are built to suit all types of combat preferences.
While the right player combinations are important for campaign progression, it’s not sufficient to get ahead. The game introduces a deck-building system with a variety of cards. There are cards that offer health and stamina upgrades, and some that are specific to a combat method. I considered this addition as excessive “nerd” for what was a pure brute-force game of slashing zombies.
But the cards do help! Aggregating card benefits help in reducing the panic-inducing chaos of zombie hordes, and additional equipment slots work wonders in bleak situations. It provides an opportunity to change the experience of a chapter run, making it more fun during a replay.
We’re only halfway through Spooktober, but I doubt we’ll see a better FPS zombie game this generation. I rate Back4Blood a 10/10 for having me reach back for more.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)