We’re having a hell of a good time with Back 4 Blood

We were covered in blood less than a minute after leaving the safe house; It turned out that a lot of Ridden were waiting for us right outside the door. Then, after a shot of gunfire and laughter, we turned and looked at each other to see how completely covered in filth were as the lifeless bodies of Ridden were scattered across the place.

This brief firefight was just a selection of Back 4 blood‘s multiplayer chaos that was waiting for us, a session with numerous frantic firefights, tons of loot, a huge undead ogre, kitten-filled sacks that had to be popped, pesky crows and many, many zombies. It was everything we (and more) were looking for, from a spiritual successor to one of the greatest co-op multiplayer shooters of all time.

Suffice it to say that blood In Back 4 blood is well deserved, as are the comparisons too left 4 Dead and its excellent continuation left 4 Dead 2, which makes sense given that Turtle Rock Studios is made up of developers of these games – and they haven’t shied away from that fact in their promotional materials. Everything we’ve played so far feels like a natural evolution of these games, from the loot drops to the variety of weapons to the sprawling level design, which makes the game feel both familiar and new. Kind of like riding a bike … through a zombie apocalypse.

Take a card

One of the unique mechanics that will add a lot of replayability is Back 4 blood‘s Card System in which gameplay lets you compose a deck from a variety of unlockable cards that you can equip your character to provide a variety of boosts or stat modifiers.

It felt a little daunting to understand at first – we just wanted to get in and start shooting zombies – but after a couple of breaks in the middle of the mission at Safe Houses it gave us the chance to get the hands on it to better understand and how it was best to apply them in our team.

For example, cards like Sunder cause targets to take 20% more damage for five seconds, Durable gives a slight bonus to trauma resistance, and Combat Knife turns your strike ability into a knife that counts as a melee weapon. There are a tonne of cards that you can unlock and shuffle through to create your optimal deck (15 cards each).

In the game you will then be given a set of random cards from your deck to play with. It’s a very deep system, one that we barely had time to scratch the surface of during our gaming session, but it’s easy to see the potential this card system can have for the replay factor of the game.

A bloody world

During our co-op campaign session, we played through much of Act 1 across a variety of levels, two of which really caught my eye: The Crossing and Hell’s Bells. That’s not to say that the other levels didn’t have a great mix of frantic shooting and challenging aiming – they really did – but The Crossing featured such an epic end-level scenario where we had an almost impossible target, a container ship which resulted in the defending of a checkpoint from an onslaught of Ridden on a bridge being spectacular.

Then at Hell’s Bells, after moving through thick fog – which made us all nervous throughout the level – it all culminated in defending an old church where we had to work on boarding the windows while we were in the Ridden We held chess just long enough for us to clear out the church and survive to see another day. And all of that was only in act 1! I can’t wait to see and play what’s left in stock at launch.

Get rid of them

The Ridden we’ve encountered so far each bring a unique trait to the shootout that keeps everyone busy, like the lumbering tallboy wielding a massive club-like arm, the massive reeker who can explode upon death, and everyone around them pus covered around in sticky or the stinger that can ping you with slime all help to keep the gameplay at a brisk pace.

Then there are your masses of simple grunts that swarm around you at every opportunity, especially when you accomplish some medium-sized goals that make a lot of noise, such as turning on a tow truck to clear the path, which leads to that They come to pounce on you – or if you happen to disturb a flock of crows feasting on the undead (don’t do it).

We even met a giant ridden ogre – I didn’t get its name – who jumped out of the ground, but imagine the cave troll from Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and you have the idea. Besides this, it could generate massive chunks of blood and throw them at you, causing massive AOE damage to you and your group.

Cleaning crew

It’s not just The Ridden or the card system that can bring tremendous replayability Back 4 blood

. The cleaners – the characters you can play as – each have their own unique perks to help the group out. Like Mom, who can Instant Revive, or Hoffman (more serious Walter Sobchak Vibes), who can spawn ammo with kills, or Doc, who can heal low-health teammates with no items. There are eight cleaners in total to learn, and that helps add tremendous depth to an already profound multiplayer zombie shooter.

Additionally, there are over 20 weapons in the game which are a mix of assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, pistols, and some fun melee weapons like a fire ax, spiked bat, and machete. There are also a variety of attachments for the weapons, the rarity of which varies from common to legendary, that you equip to improve stats like handling, accuracy, range, firepower and mobility. Searching through some loot boxes in the middle of the mission is reminiscent of Diablo When choosing which essays to use with the MP5, I became quite partisan during my session.

Take part in the open beta

And best of all: Starting today, Early Access to the Back 4 blood The Open Beta has started and features both the co-op experience we played through during our session and player versus player (PvP) mode that we couldn’t try. The Open Beta also features the brand new PvP mode Swarm, in which two squads of four compete against each other in a best-of-three series of rounds, switching between the Cleaners and the Ridden. You can choose from five cleaners to fend off the Ridden with your friends, or play as six different Ridden variants while looking at different weapons on the go.

The Open Beta begins with an Early Access part from today, August 5th, and runs until August 9th for pre-orderers Back 4 blood in the Xbox store. Players can also register at Back4Blood.com/Beta for a chance to get into the early access part. The Open Beta will continue for all players next week from August 12th to 16th. Both parts of the Open Beta will be playable on Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S with cross-play and cross-gen support.

Everything we’ve played so far has looked very much towards the full release of Back 4 blood on October 12th with Xbox Game Pass. We’ll have more to say about this awesome zombie multiplayer shooter in the coming weeks, so keep it updated here on Xbox Wire.