Spiritual successors are a tricky prospect. On one hand, it means developers already have a built-in fanbase. On the other, it’s hard to escape the looming shadow of past success. Meeting fan expectations while trying to do unique things in the process, is a tricky tightrope to walk. The beauty of Left 4 Dead was how streamlined of an experience it was. There was no filler, no extraneous menus, and no downtime. That’s a hard thing to grapple with, emulate, and keep as clear-cut in the modern era of gaming.

With a spiritual successor, you open yourself open to comparison. Maybe that’s why Back 4 Blood can be hard to talk about. The lines can’t help but blur between what you expect it to be, what it is, and what you want it to be. While it’s fun in the moment and can be very fun during set moments, it generally doesn’t rise above surface-level thrills. It’s skin deep, just with the added bonus that the rotten flesh of its zombies (or “ridden” as they’re referred to) is inherently fun to deal with.

Core elements are carried over from the Left 4 Dead franchise. Four-player teams make their way from one safe room to another, zombie locations and frequency are randomized, hordes can be alerted, and there are unique zombies with powers, among other returning elements. Back 4 Blood isn’t afraid to bring some new things to the table. However, past the core conceit, it feels like the new additions can detract from the core experience rather than compliment it. Maybe that’s just the modern lens of needing supply crates to open or an on-screen timer to let you know when the amount of zombies is about to skyrocket. Or maybe it’s having a card system, which is commendably fleshed out and usable, that still feels a little intangible and disconnected from the “get going” feeling that this game really benefits from.

Most of all, perhaps it’s Fort Hope, the hub world to walk around in and interact with between levels. In Fort Hope you can do things that you can otherwise (and maybe more effectively) simply do through the menus. It’s not even fair to say these additions are all barebones. It’s really just a question of “is that more fun than quickly loading into a game and making some headshots?” For all the respect that can be allocated to trying new things, couldn’t time have been better spent evolving the fundamentals? It’s in the gameplay that things really start to rise above, but even that has its limitations. While Back 4 Blood is undeniably, inherently fun, the gameplay can only feel as good as the level it’s taking place in, the people at your side, and the objectives or boss battles the game is hopefully not asking you to complete.

You’ll have two main options of gameplay from this hub, either the campaign mode or swarm mode. The main draw is certainly the first. After you gather your team, which you’ll want to opt for that over the passive, environment-clipping bots, even if it’s randomly done online, you’ll be able to jump into the first of four acts and cooperatively battle the hordes of rambling dead. Swarm mode on the other hand offers competitive, best-of-three, round-based multiplayer that will have you playing as a human or special type of ridden. It’s pretty good fun and can be a nice distraction. There are an impressive amount of special characters to play as on the ridden side. It’s admittedly a chaotic, messy experience with an already steep-feeling learning curve, but that’s part of the charm.

However you play, it’s definitely worth playing with others, and the crossplay worked well enough from the PS4 side. Once you’re actually out in the field it’s all about the gunplay, which is strong but more reliable than revelatory. The guns run the gamut in terms of usefulness: you may find a shotgun that lacks oomph or another that decimates, or an SMG that you don’t want to let go of. The biggest positive addition to the core formula here is weapon modifications. Whether randomly found or purchased through the new store before levels, things like silencers, red dot sights, and more are great incentives to explore and build up your supplies.

New gameplay tasks compared to Left 4 Dead include destroying nests and delivering packages, which feel more like restrictive busywork than anything. Even though there are environmental cues for most of these tasks, wandering around a packed level trying to find something you need doesn’t gel with the fast-paced, forward momentum this game works best with. It’s much preferable when the focus is kept on the most captivating way to go from a to b. What’s even less defendable are the boss battles, which feel uninspired and unnecessary. The Ogre boss battles in particular feel like the bottom barrel of shooting at a big enemy who can barely do anything back. The end boss has some uniqueness at least, though it’s not particularly groundbreaking or more fun than the core grind.

When it comes to the levels themselves, a decent chunk of the environments aren’t particularly noteworthy to trek through. While they’re always accurate to the world and aligned with the tone, is there anything particularly inspiring or fun about going through some expectedly dank, dark sewer? For every set piece that climatically ends up in a bar being overtaken or a ferry set to blow up, there are endless nondescript alleys, hallways, and woodlands. Levels can feel barren except for spots that end up bottlenecked with zombies or excessively littered with crates to open. Even when the areas are changing and the visual treatments can be cool, how they function doesn’t feel all too different.

What feels like the biggest miss though is the overcomplicated, unfriendly system for unlocking new levels and progressing through the campaign. Granted, that issue is more pertaining to a going-in-solo experience. Even now, it’s hard to speak to exactly how levels are unlocked. From my understanding, levels must be completed in order as part of a campaign to unlock them for future play. Additionally, you can only play the next act in the campaign after the last level in the previous act has been completed.

It makes sense enough on paper, but the logistics of it, especially as a solo player matching into random online games, can be incredibly frustrating. If you join a game and it is ahead of the last level you completed, you seemingly won’t retain the campaign progress you make. It’s a needlessly stringent system. Shouldn’t beating a level be enough to continue from there in the future? In addition, random parties get broken up when runs are completed, the progress for runs stops saving when the host leaves and random parties are automatically broken up if you run out of continues.

Outside of the good or negative elements are a few more serviceable components worth mentioning. The visuals look good enough and will probably be pretty consistent with how you remember Left 4 Dead looking, which is no knock on them. The guns and zombies sound how you’d want them to, and the environmental cues and groans of an incoming horde are always fun to hear. The soundtrack isn’t bad either and does its part well in underscoring key moments. For neither good nor bad, cutscenes do pretty little for the experience or story. Some of them (even close to the end) are so short and inconsequential that you wouldn’t be off-base to think you accidentally skipped some.

If this review doesn’t sound positive, it’s because there’s a disconnect between the moment-to-moment caliber of the experience and how many simple joys it can provide. Its “grab some popcorn and turn off your brain” gameplay can really hook you, especially when the right people are involved. So while it can’t stack up to memories, it does amount to being a good time-waster. With how fast and close together the original two installments were released, it feels like a series that’s been missing forever. All qualms aside, with the state of the world and Halloween right around the corner, it couldn’t haven’t picked a better time to stumble through the door, arms raised out for brains.

A PS4 review copy of Back4Blood was provided by Warner Bros. Games for this review.

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Back4Blood

$60.00

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• The core gameplay can be a ton of fun.
• Works great as a cooperative experience.
• Set pieces offer great payoffs and climatic moments.
• Pre-run stores and weapon enhancements fit perfectly.
• Did I mention it's fun, pure and simple fun?

Cons

• Levels can feel samey and uninspired.
• Additions to the core formula feel more like distractions than anything else.
• The campaign progression system feels overcomplicated and unfriendly to players coming in solo.