Welcome to our first impression of Back 4 Blood, we played the beta and were not overly impressed by its gameplay and we want to explain why!
As this is a beta, it should be noticed that the final gameplay will most likely be more polished and as such, I will not be discussing any bugs I encountered, few as there may have been, but I want to focus on the actual gameplay. This is a 4 player game and this is where its strengths will lie, but also its downsides.
In my gameplay, I was matched up with some guys I had never seen and had no idea who they were. Now I am not your everyday unskilled shooter-game lover, no, I do consider myself a well-seasoned player, more than capable of pulling off numerous consecutive headshots and the ability to play as both a defender as well as a pusher are both very well balanced. Slight preference to defenders, but that is just my play style.
In Back 4 Blood, you really depend on your teammates.
This is where my issues with the game lied, I was teamed up with only 2 guys and the accompanying bot, well, he was useless. I was not the team leader, so I have no idea if the bots have any settings, I was just thrown straight into a game, without any training or information. I disliked this part a lot, as I had no feeling for reload times or my loadout. Heck, those other guys had been in the game for a while and had been playing more than me.
They had a much better loadout than me, no information was given on how they got those guns. I was left to fend for myself. I really had useless teammates as they barely looked at me or provided me with any help, pretty much ruining my experience for the first few levels.
And then, then I got enough of it and went off on my own. I found a better gun in the game, with sadly a limited amount of bullets, but I managed to take out a big ugly enemy. I took out tons of zombies with headshots and then, the worst thing happened. I got killed and one of my so-called teammates ran by me. Did not bother reviving me. Just left me there to die. I kept my cool and decided not to go off on them.
But that is the issue with this game. You are so reliant on your teammates for this game and I am 100% sure that if you play this with a team you know, Back 4 Blood will be amazing, but with random matchmaking, it sucked monkey balls. Actually, those guys sucked monkey balls. They did not communicate with me, but did with each other. Giving no decent help, but I am sure the game will have some sort of tutorial to fix this.
I just hate team sports when certain people forget this is a team game. I play several games of this same genre, I really like it. I am sure that once the game drops on Game pass, I will be inviting them to give it a try with me. I actually look forward to that. Back 4 Blood is very promising, but I think it might suffer from selfish players like most team games, so unless you got your own team, hope for the best!
Now having spoken about the bad sides of my experience, I have to say the game does look promising under the right circumstances. I sincerely wonder what it will be like with a decent team. Graphically, first impressions were amazing. I played it on my Zephyrus and the 4K visuals were simply stunning. I loved the amount of blood and gore. Yes, there was more than a tiny bit of it.
And now, now starts the waiting game, I am probably jumping in when it lands on Game Pass so my friends can join me. I look forward to it.
