I got Left 4 Dead for Christmas in 2008.
A month or two prior, the Mirror’s Edge demo had inflicted upon my Xbox 360 the red ring of death, and after some time of not being able to play anything, I was incredibly eager to dive in. Over the next few months, it was a game that I absolutely dismantled, to the degree that one of my go-to stories, even today, is the sheer amount of effort it took to get through all campaigns on Expert difficulty playing solo. I’ll spare the details, but suffice to say, killing your AI teammates so that they would respawn with more health was, more than once, a legitimate strategy.
At E3 2009, Back 4 Blood 2 was announced, with what I still believe is one of the greatest video game trailers ever.
Despite being a bigger game and arguably better in every way - I thought the introduction of narrative cohesion between the campaigns was a great idea - I didn’t spend quite as much time with the second game, though it certainly has its share of memorable moments.
Both Left 4 Dead games are still just as fantastic to play as they were at release; I played through the first on stream last year to celebrate getting to affiliate status on Twitch, and have made plans to tackle the second in the very near future. The biggest hurdle they faced is something that everything does, that we all do: the passage of time. There were, and always will be, different things to experience; Alan Wake, one of my favourite games, came out about six months after Left 4 Dead 2.
Time Passes
I’m sure many in my generation remember sitting around a small television with three of their friends and playing the multiplayer in Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64. This title is important to gaming as a whole, but we’ve taken such big strides in both technical updates and quality-of-life improvements that someone playing it for the first time today may well find it borderline unplayable. Similarly, fans of Persona 5 would likely be somewhat frustrated to go back to Persona 3, released nine years earlier, and discover they can’t specifically control which attacks their other party members use in combat.
Valve eventually bowed out of software development, instead focusing more on hardware and Steam, and additional games in the Left 4 Dead series seemed unlikely to come to fruition.
However, in early 2019, Warner Bros. Games sent out a press release announcing that they were working with Turtle Rock Studios, developers of the Left 4 Dead games, on a new title in the genre. Back 4 Blood was formally revealed in December 2020 at The Game Awards, over 11 years after Left 4 Dead 2’s release.
Things Change
Earlier this month, Back 4 Blood held two beta weekends. Based on what I had seen, I was very excited to see how it could take a long-established and beloved gameplay loop and make it its own.
I specifically thought that new systems the game introduced - giving weapons stats which could be improved or negatively impacted by attachments, using cards to modify the abilities of you and your team, and collecting currency to be spent on new weapons and items in the safe room - created some really interesting gameplay decisions. Do you smash a car window for a large amount of currency, though it will attract enemies? Do you exchange your weapon for a different one, though you’ll lose all of your attachments? How can you use your available cards to enhance strengths and mitigate weaknesses?
While it wasn’t a perfect experience - fair criticism could be levelled at the friendly AI, or that the second finale event, what is surely intended to be a chaotic and desperate fight to collapse a mine shaft hordes of zombies stream out of, suffered from a bug where enemies would spawn in but never enter the playable area - much of the online discourse seemed to revolve not around what the game did offer, but what it didn’t.
Back 4 Blood’s lack of a Left 4 Dead-style PvP campaign mode - a competition between two teams to see who could progress further in a level, with one team as player characters and the other as special infected - was among the most common criticisms. Despite being a spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood was developed with a different design ethos, with a focus on defending as opposed to trying to quickly sprint through levels.
I think the most visible example of how this design change is in the contrast between The Bridge level in The Parish campaign of Left 4 Dead 2 and The Crossing level of The Devil’s Return in Act One of Back 4 Blood. The former is mostly a series of pathways and chokepoints, using vehicles as obstacles to navigate around and occasionally assist in getting to higher ground. If you’re fast enough or get lucky with your routing, you can outmaneuver or even entirely avoid the special infected.
In comparison, the bridge section in Back 4 Blood is a lot more open and has more uneven terrain. It’s nowhere near as lengthy as Left 4 Dead’s frenzied dash, but there’s also a greater risk of getting swarmed. Back 4 Blood’s special infected are effective at ambushing players, punishing those who over-extend, and while you may be able to dodge a Hunter leap or kill a Smoker before they finish constricting you, odds are you won’t be able to take a Tallboy out by yourself.
Experimenting, trying new and different things, is how art and culture evolve, but rather than being open-minded, many are quick to condemn anything that doesn’t fit their preconceived notion of what something should be. I’ll always applaud a healthy skepticism of marketing, especially after the Cyberpunk 2077 debacle, but it’s easy - and lazy - to approach attempts to do something new or different with outright cynicism.
Our memories are the one thing that we truly have, and there is comfort in nostalgia, but we should be self-aware enough to realize when those memories are getting in our way.
Are there any games you didn't think you would like that surprised you? Let me know! You can always find me on Twitch.