Death of a Game: Back 4 Blood
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2024
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#DOAG . Death of a Game is a series dedicated to uncovering the mysteries surrounding the death of a game or company. nerdSlayer defines the term "death" in the context of the show as either... 1. Literally dead. 2. Had a mass exodus of players and never recovered (expectations etc). 3. The company ceased to exist. We follow a timeline of events, to uncover clues concerning why a game or company doesn't do well, and attempt to put it all together at the end for a deduction explaining how or why the game failed based on the evidence gathered.
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back4blood.fan...
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www.mobygames....
• Back 4 Blood proves Va...
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oh yeah, they added a single-player offline mode with the bots...but before people jump to conclusions...listen to this "just note that you need an internet connection to download and patch the game first". You still need the internet...you can just play after you access it one time. So it's still VERY much at risk for being shutdown, don't be fooled by delusional defenders.
www.videogameschronicle.com/news/back-4-bloods-latest-update-adds-a-single-player-campaign-mode/
(also too bad the bots suck and are useless)
There was something about progression as well. I don't think your progress on offline singleplayer counts.
That was changed reportedly with a newer DLC, unless I am mistaken
@@nerdSlayerstudioss was it part of the update or you need to buy the dlc for it to count?
Also I wouldn't mind this being a pc only thing (trainers?) but no reason for it to be like that on console
Oh, they didn't add singleplayer campain, if we talking about technical details. They just changed "training mode", that didn't allow progress, to " campaign", that allowed it. And they did it REALLY quickly. Why? Because first major gameplay problem - FARMING!!!
Main point of gameplay on high difficulty is good cards. And you need a shit ton of money to buy all of them. So, you MUST farm for about 6 to 8 hours in single, speedrunning 1 juicy map over and over, or 16 to 20 in coop, going through campaign that is too easy for you. And game is ALL about higher difficulty modes. All long-term fans were playing it, all balancing were for it, and they even added 4th difficulty in DLCs for it.
Also, who thought that hiding the info about card locations in the shop would be good? Shop just have 3 "supply lines", basically battle passes, where you buy everything, and they are NOT random - it's 3 paths of progression, set up by devs. But, some smart cookie decided that players will see only tiny parts of this lines, about 8 items at a time, and name this parts with random cool words, so players would THINK that shop is an RNG fest. WHY?!
And second major gameplay problem, that twarted a lot of potential fans - their build progression. Basically, in original game you pick 15 cards, and then you grab 1 of them on each map, so you kinda progressing through your build... except you pick only from first 5 cards on the list... and you need to pick accordingly after you see next map's danger modifiers... and some builds don't work until you put about 7 cards together...
It was a unnecessarily overcomplicated mess, and most of players hated it. In the very end, they got rid of it, and now all your cards are with you from the start, but it was too late.
Something l4d already did and their bot much better
Funniest part of it all is that after months of pushing “FROM THE CREATORS OF…” they immediately fall back to “sorry we’re so small and can’t dev anymore 😢”
No no, not months it was years. I remember leaks or like a rumor that confirmed the name back in like 2017 or something ridiculous like that just to get the game we got.
@@alotofhoopla7624yeah they have been using "from the creator of l4d..." card since evolve
So glad I didn't spend $100 for the ultimate edition.... ill stick to l4d...
So glad I didn't fall for this crap and spent 0 money and time on it
I think a part of why it feels so bland and boring is because of how generic it is. Watching the trailer and the beta for b4b felt like I was rewatching all the cinematic intros for black ops 3 zombies, I was so disappointed.
Its really troubling that the Death of a Game series is touching REALLY recent games. Just goes to show that devs need to put more effort or at least given proper time instead of getting pressured by people who only care about money.
@@Ralathar44 Gee I wonder why two primarily single player games with definitive end points are losing player numbers. Almost like most people only ever beat a game once or twice and then move on to other games. Plus both of those games will have their player numbers spike when their respectice DLC's come out. Elden Ring's player count dropping is only really relevant for the niche PVP community in that game. A better example would be something like Overwatch 2 or the currrent COD hemorraghing players. Neither game is close to being dead but they're both free to play live service games from big studios with huge marketing budgets. Gaming doesn't have an oversaturation issue, games as a service does and people are finally getting fed up with it.
@@Ralathar44 Gaming is not over saturated. It is over saturated with bullshit that kinda works but still makes money which has nothing to do with the game itself. Kinda like your comment which is kinda about gaming but devolves into statistics that have less and less to do with what people want. Yeah let me calculate the probability that the game I will buy will give me some fun instead of, you know, having fun with a game I bought.
It's not a development issue. It's a leadership/management issue, especially in triple A
@@Ralathar44
I mean, than what's wrong with the majority of L4D player base didn't migrate to B4B?
I can't speak for others, but given that B4B didn't offer what I wanted I simply don't buy it.
@@Ralathar44
The length isn't that bad, but teamwork yeah, especially with spotty internet. The card system didn't help boost confidence either.
For me, the actual spiritual successor to L4D 2 was the Vermintide games. They took the idea and went with a different direction with it, more melee focus and drastically different setting, but it still felt thematically as though I was playing L4D.
PREACH
Unfortunately, Darktide seems to have gone down the B4B route, more concerned with making bank than polishing the rough edges. That said, Darktide definitely scores a 10/10 on the immersion / character design scale.
@@LizardSpork Oh I was _so_ disappointed with Darktide. I was hoping that they learned their lessons with the launches of the Vermintide games and not take over a year to reach a point where it should've been at launch, but it looks like there was so many lessons not learned.
@@camolot2102 I haven't played for a few months so it's good to hear they've making an effort to correct their initial F2P model monetization scheme.
I guess I've been grading every game against DRG and was disappointed at the initial state of Darktide's release.
@@camolot2102 Initially on release, it was absolutely about making money. There were so many things wrong from a customer standpoint that it even had the normally forgiving online reviewers pointing out how scummy it was.
If it wasn't for the _massive_ backlash and playercount dive, I'm convinced that none of the changes around itemization would've filtered through, and the cash shop would've not been scaled back at all. All you need to look at is the various ways that they've tried to 'fix' the cash shop,
Last I checked they still stood by the idea that being able to buy anything in the cash shop whenever you wanted was a problem with how many options that a customer has, instead of a UI problem, despite not rotating the shop yet.
Saddest thing about Zoey's story, she has to kill her father to prevent him from turning
But turns out her father is also immune from the flu because immunity is inherited through genetics
Man thats fucked up, like that ending scene of "The mist"
Yikes thats very sad
Guess they forgot about one more step: quarantine.
Inherited through the father's genetics
wait, aren't the ones immune from the flu are called "carriers" and even though they're not infected, they can still infect others near the carrier?
You can 100% have a story about a kill team that ventures out into an apocalyptic world and still have it feel like a cinematic and tense uphill battle. Because Vermintide 2 absolutely nailed it haha
Yeah I was not convinced by this argument. The concept wasn't bad but the writing and storytelling was inexistent
"BuT GaMeS aRe MoRe ExPeNsIvE sO We HaVe To MoNeTiZe EvErYtHiNg, AnD We CaNt Do ThAt WiTh CaMpaIgNs" -🤡, head of game development (probably)
I really enjoyed Vermintide 2 but i dont really remember anything about the story
the voice acting in Verm2 is outstanding. the characters actually feel like real people with their own struggles and dark pasts. not much to the writing itself but the VAs knock it out of the park
The don't even need to have a ton of personality either. GTFO is probably one of the most tense co-op shooters I've played, despite having very muted characters with only hinted at backstories (that they themselves don't even remember).
What's disgusting is Evolve will be shut down again. Fully removing peer to peer, and slapping the community that keep the game on life support.
What's disgusting is people bought evolve. WE'RE MAKING THEM WORSE!!!!
@@krisv1038 stop defending them dude. We got let down.
@@Dizzula It's not about defending bad behavior, it's about directing blame.
If the decision is with 2k they are the ones to blame.
That was a stupid community lmao
Few years from now when you bought a game that let you down you can always be im gonna play some evolve cuz god damn that game is still good
28. september 2023
Left 4 Dead 2 - 18.000 players (PC / Steam)
Back 4 Blood - 500 players (PC / Steam)
June 2024 - Back 4 Blood peaks over 20.000 players on Steam.. also Left 4 Dead is played only on Steam while Back 4 Blood is played primary on X-box (even on PC) Show the numbers for all platforms, not just for Steam
@@HTJ733 game gets hated for nothing, i love back4blood
You failed to mention Xbox gamepass basically killing steam player numbers and console numbers, and price differences.
@@zorgivanov8685whats keeping you going after the first run through?
@@trashking1867 the pure gameplay is fun, card system makes it so that its unique erry time
The fact that they saw speedrunners having fun and absolutely _neutered_ every glitch & loadout they were using is the most pants on head stupid thing I've seen a game dev do
Could speedrunners downpatch game to overcome it?
No one cares about sweaty speedrunners so who cares
@@DocSpengler they where the only people who cared about B4B, so it was a mistake to ignore them
@@DocSpengler my dude have you heard of games done quick
@@DocSpenglerWhy does everyone has the feel to be the voice of the masses when you're not?
The rag doll effects were huge for me; loved the physics and damage details of Left4Dead.
really though. its one ofthose details that i appreciated but didnt even notice. when the devs pointed it out in dev commentary i was like "holy shit yeah no wonder the deaths look so good"
It's half the fun of Source
Same. Imo that video comparison was awful for the discussion. @@sillylilstella
The director AI was also broken for months and would spawn double or even triple of the same special infected which could result in you being just slaughtered at the very beginning of the level. TRS devs also stream sniped speedrunners and reached out to them to learn what cards were the meta and what skips were being used so they could nerf them all while lying that they would only patch things that affected the casual experience. They are a spiteful group of people that hated anyone making their game look easy.
"TRS devs also stream sniped speedrunners" can you explain this a bit more? I tried looking this up but couldn't find any information about it.
@@ott_otter While i myself cannot provide the evidence for it in this specific case.
It seems to be a newer thing dev teams. Or senior devs will do post launch.
as i've heard this also happened with hollow knight.
They'll watch speedrunners play the game and either take notes to fix bugs, or reach out to the speedrunner under false pretenses. so they can find out whats causing bugs so they can fix them later.
It doesn't really seem to cause big enough backlash though to catalog the
evidence of it happening.
But generally speaking its not viewed in a positive light in regards to the speedrunning community as its viewed in the lens of "Devs acting petty".
@@RancidRevenant Ah, gotcha. Yeah, I knew about that stuff, I thought by "stream sniping" you meant in the sense that they were joining lobbies of streamers in order to ruin their games.
@@ott_otter They reached out to multiple speedrunners most notably HazeBlade as he was one of the most viewed people speedrunning it at the time from what I recall.
After talking about the cards and strats that they used the game received an update not long after that targeted every single thing the devs had seen and talked about with the runners during their stream.
The Dead Space remake devs did the same thing. One of them joined the speedrun discord and upon learning about a glitch called "divider piñata" which was key to the all achievement speedrun they shadow patched it after saying they wouldn't touch anything that didn't affect the casual playthrough.
Thats what made me drop the game entirely with friends because we thought that was just how the game played lol, spawning special infected literally every 4 seconds
Turtle Rock is like serial Entrepreneur, they love to make New game, when everything fell apart quickly move to New product instead of figuring out what went wrong.
That kind of behavior won't get them far
@@CBRN-115 Yeah especially they love to create GAAS.
@@Ralathar44 totally understand. Negative voise always louder on any community. I finished Redfall, and got 60% of the achievements, the rest is just too taxing. The game is not bad as the reviewer said, most of reviewer didnot even go to the 2nd map, they quit after several levels and play on easy or normal mode. Those reviewer also take part on killing the future of a game. Only persistant develeloper can thrive, eg: Hello Games, Bungie, Digital Extreme.
What I was trying to say is, to have a successful GASS, in form of Battle Pass or DLC, it will need more than two years of develeopments and community building. And this where publisher do not understand.
@@Ralathar44
I mean are we going to ignore the rather poor state Cyberpunk was launched in?
@@49mozzer nms didn't say they weren't updating the game anymore when they did that
The thing that killed it the most for me was the lack of modding support. They truly shot on the foot themselves with that
well look at their pov, if they let players modding, no one will buy their (boring)cosmetic skins -> no profit.
@@counterman-namreview516 and they forgot to see no one will buy their game, so no one buys their cosmetics lol
They gut the golden goose for small eggs
@@TheNightman. wdym the game has a lot of replayability
@@Daveyjonesvi If you have alzheimer, yeah the game has a lot of replayability.
@@counterman-namreview516 It's funny how Street Fighter 6 has already been modded to hell but people are still supporting the game by buying the legacy skins. Who knew that listening to your audience/fanbase will actually garner love and support from them?
One thing I remember vividly from left 4 dead was when the tank shows up, no matter how many times you play the game when that music plays and you hear the thing roar at you it's tense. You are actually concerned about the damn thing even scared depending on how well you did up to that point. Back 4 blood has nothing like this... it's dull and outside of the easy mode it's just annoying to play not at all genuinely a challenge like left 4 dead was on the hard difficulties.
@@Ralathar44 skill diff 🤷
I have seen videos that the players have a hard time killing the tank and even the other way around sometimes
@@The_whales difficulty difference. Easy to Advanced can easily kill a tank with molotov. On expert, it makes more sense to just leave it behind, that's if you're as good as me of course. Tanks actually die automatically if they are ignored long enough, it takes skill to 'ignore' a tank of course. One time me and my buddy Keith ignored a tank so well that it lost sight of us, proceeded to give up and die. haha I'm gonna miss that guy.
@@BigOlRub damn, here i was thinking i was one of the few people who knew that AI tanks are subject to the rage mechanic in the campaign
Quite literally never had issues with difficulty. What I did was stop playing the hardest difficulty like it was the easiest and used the Info Card that tells how DPS is on each zombie special infected and bosses stacked on damage each tier and learned to balance healing efficiency with healing while having copper cards as apart of the build. If by map 3 I didn't have 3k After buying everything in saferoom Solely for buying cards throughout the map or for First Aid Cabinet to heal trauma, I restarted if by myself, or left if with others. Like honestly the hard part is finding people who know to work together, as well as to change my solo I can do it myself outlook and Learn To Work With A Team In Order To Survive. In the same way people feel sorry for those who like this game still, and play it....i personally feel sorry for the people who never learned to play it, because they either played for 5 minutes said "this aint left 4 dead" and shut it off...or played and played and played, never LEARNED to not Speedrun, seperate from the team, stack copper, and buy cards, with 3 people they call friends, or met on the game. I do. It sucks, and you can say whatever to gaslight or discredit or cancel or whatever to negate the effect, but you really missed out on a hidden gem of a Co-Op FOCUSED game. Take care.
Glad you commented on the Cleaners being so...off. I noticed early on that they're basically sociopathic murderhobo types, as compared to the survivors from both of the L4D games who have a wide variety of personalities.
Omfg 😳 it reminds me of BF2042 climate change in the midst of WW3 and the character end of the round quips
This is the same reason I can't get into Starfield. It's amazing how un-memorable all of the NPCs are. Bethesda should've taken a note from Gearbox about making wild and wacky characters or something to spice it up a little.
@@27Flopps I mean that's fair. You're entitled to day 'too much' as well. But surely you'd have to agree that there's a happy medium here? How about Mass Effect? Most of the characters there were memorable. Even Fallout 4 isn't a bad example so it's not like Bethesda is incapable of putting effort into emotion and VO acting and unique character models.
They're supposed to be a AAA brand leader so it's off-putting when their own game feels like the generic knockoff more than the generic knockoff (Outer Worlds) felt.
If you played the game you'd understand that back 4 blood differs from left 4 dead in the sense that back 4 blood is a community of survivors coming together after a significant amount of time has past during the apocalypse, Left 4 dead is still in the panic stage of "how do we survive what do we do?" The first l4d takes place literally 1 week after the outbreak.
@@bananaskunk7020 2 weeks.
at around 20:18 when you mention how recognizable the special infected sounds are it also makes me think of the piano jingles that accompany each one when they spawn. Each one of those jingles fits the infected perfectly and gives you a sound queue of what's lurking in the shadows
And the mutations made sense. None of the L4D special infected look like aliens, they look like zombies
The familiar sounds of the Infected from L4D/L4D2 were not only iconic, but also had very important gameplay impact. When you hear the familiar crying of the Witch, your whole team now needs to turn off flashlights and tread carefully to avoid angering her, or prepare to face her if she gets triggered. It was a very important part of the gameplay.
I stayed away from Back 4 Blood because I watched a review that talked about how the game didn't incorporate audio into the gameplay and that immediately made it a much worse game.
Shotgun users: No, I don't think I will
Exactly, when I heard the "Dun~~~ DUN DUN" music I know that I need to have my weapon fully loaded and Molotov at the ready, cause the Tank is coming
God yes thank you, that was one of my main complaints after the open beta, the sound design was just horrendous in that regard especially coming from games like Vermintide which in my opinion are the golden standard of giving the players information with noises alone
God yes.
Half the time I played on launched I wasn't able to tell apart the infected from each other when I could *hear* some of them, they all sounded so damn similiar that even if I wanted to learn to differentiate them via sound like in L4D, I couldn't.
Bro you just reminded me the first time we encountered a with - 'is someone crying?' 'wait theres a girl here!' - "oh shit I accidentally hit her with my red gutiar" - 'SHES CHASING ME!!!"
Glad you covered the Left 4 Dead comparison in depth. I've said that it was a dangerous card to play from the start as they set themselves a bar there was almost no chance of reaching. People would have brought up comparisons regardless, but by stating it so directly, you put over a decade of experience, memories, mods, and nostalgia right in the minds of those buying it and set a level of expectation that's near impossible to meet (hell, when you look at it, it would almost be understandable if Valve didn't/doesn't want to make L4D3).
Why dont you think Valve is working on HL3? Same reasons.
@@dokdirge I have, however, been curious to how much of a hinderance the development of Source 2 was to overall development. We've had some leaks in the past hit toward Source 2 development issues hindering the development of other games. I know leaks and datamines over the last few years have hinted a fair bit towards that, so I wonder what the future holds now that they seem to be down to working out smaller issues Source 2 for the most part.
Given how Half Life Alyx ends, I've wondered if the next decade or two may see the continuation of Valves other big IP's. I could be wrong, but one can hope.
@@Ralathar44 come on, they knew exactly what they were doing with "from the creator's of left 4 dead". The same thing the people behind the Callisto protocol made with "from the creator's of Dead Space"
@@Ralathar44 mate you are not playing devil's advocate, you're choosing to not see reality. If we're talking about Evolve then you would have ground, but come on, it's 4 person coop shooter against enemies like zombies and with special enemies that clearly resemble the one's in left 4 dead, the games some differences, the major being the card system, but without the "similarities" and they invoking the "from the creator's of" they were clearly advertising to the Left 4 Dead crowd.
And to your point of going to something with a blank slate and no expectations, you know it's bullshit, we all have our life experiences that dictate how we enjoy something. And to not going with expectations? They were the ones that invited those expectations.
You know marketing it's part of the budget right? They, like everyone else, who use the "from the creator's of" are trying to get more people to buy their product, it wasn't a mistake. And the marketing department it's part of the same company, do you really judge product by the department of any company? Come mate.
This game is like if you took left 4 dead and then stole its soul. This game is a husk. I remember in left 4 dead how memorable every location was to me. Then I go through this fucking game and everything looks the same
Back 4 Blood is an amazing example of what happens when you make a game without soul
Or when your writer watched guardians of the galaxy once and said "Let's do that but with zombies!!!!!"
Yes.
A spiritual successor without the spirit...
“Without a soul” is an amazing example of what people say when they don’t actually know what they don’t like about something and don’t feel like thinking about it 😂
Redfall?
Regarding Molly and Zoey's parents, it doesn't actually matter that Molly lost her parents. It doesn't contribute anything to the character. It doesn't inform her decisions or dialogue, but it does for Zoey.
In one of the comics it's revealed that during the zombie outbreak when she and her parents were barricading their home her mother ended up turning, and her dad quick to protect zoey was bitten and had to put her mother down. On top of that, her dad did it with a pistol, a pistol Zoey kept which you always see her using in all the campaign posters.
Anyway, since the poor fellow was bitten she had to use the pistol to then kill her father before he turned, and that's not even the tragic part. No, the part that breaks my heart is that later in the comics you find out that the immunity to the infection is passed down from the father's side, meaning her dad would have never turned and she killed him for nothing.
Now that in itself may not be the most original or interesting story, but it is a sufficient backstory for the character, and it informs how the character thinks and behaves, and you can see it in how she speaks to the other cast members while playing the game or reading further into the comics.
So yeah, Back For Blood definitely lacks soul. I get it might be difficult to pack as much personality and story into the characters when they're not always going to be the ones used since there's a bigger roster, but it just feels weird to only have cardboard cutouts for this sort of game.
Zoey's dad couldve survive the zombie bite because Zoey herself is immune to the virus. Her mother was infected so her dad was likely immune. Its sad that she have to kill her dad thinking he will turn into zombie
Her name is Holly... the point about lack of memorability/uniqueness proven by this one single comment LOL
they branded themselves as the "creators of left 4 dead" when in reality valve carried the L4D franchise and turtle rock was pretty much there for emotional support
From the creators of left 4 dead.
Starring...
THE GUY THAT HANDED THE COFFE.
THE JANITOR THAT CLEANED THE FIRST FLOOR.
THE GUY THAT ACTUALLY NEVER SHOWED UP TO THE OFFICE.
AND THE DAUGHTER OF ONE OF THE DEVS
I'm probably never going to buy another Turtle Rock game if I'm honest. Their track record at this point speaks for itself.
2 games and all marketed as "from the creator.." tbh l4d might be turtle rock idea but Valve has their hand into the production and hone the game...plus it also different between Source engine and Unreal engine. Source focus on interaction to the world they build while UE is focus on beautiful graphic.
Honestly I almost got this game...guess I dodged a bullet, but yes I'll be skipping their future games as well.
@@ZzVinniezZ
"Turtle rock" my ass
4 wastes of space that's did fuck all on left 4 dead
like so many other once awesome studios, a shell of their former self riding off the glory of decades past.
Left 4 dead was all value turtle rock just makes really boring games
The trailer introducing the Cleaners that’s done in a sitcom-like style is probably the best example of why it didn’t work: the world and the characters feel lifeless, with everything in game trying to be that spiritual successor and nothing more. L4D had a lot of great characters and their personalities were shown mainly via interactions with one another, plus a lot of the world building came from safe room graffiti and heck even the way the Infected moved and acted helped with establishing their own personality. Meanwhile in B4B we’re told what the characters are like and what the world is like as opposed to being shown, and everything that is shown is mirroring L4D or is something we’ve seen in countless other zombie games. Even if B4B ended up having much better gameplay or whatever, it’s too focused on trying to be another L4D without understanding that part of what made it so good was all the little things. There’s nothing to go back to.
L4d Felt realistically optimistic, like they're in a shitty situation but joking around to keep spirits high. B4B was YEAH DUDE WE'RE OUT HERE KILLING ZOMBIES BROTHER SO RADICAL WATCH ME CUT OFF THIS ZOMBIES DICK AND BEAT HIM TO DEATH WITH IT
Or it could also just be the fact that characters these day have shit personalities if they try to mimic influencers or people that appeal to today's teenagers that are defined by being noisy and nobody ever heard of them. The characters in L4D were just average joes, unlike all these new games that keep trying to shove this idea that in a post-apocalyptic world, they're somehow badasses... nobody can relate to that.
@@mccormicka80 are you having a stroke?
It would have been better if the game had the same four characters as L4D. B4B got way too many characters and less interactions to care about!
Marvel humor killed the whole generation of entertainment.
20:20 absolutely top tier voice acting
Lul
quote unquote :P
It's brimming with SOUL baybeee!
hey man, i for real didnt expect to hear that u sadly lost both of ur parents. i dont know how u mustve felt and still feel, i dont know how badly it hit u, i dont know how hard it was for u to be where u at right now. i hope u are doing well in life. ur content is fucking good that i know
Tbh the L4D & L4D2 characters are SO well done, I just love everyone and they are all relateable.
Except for community hated characters like Bill, Ellis, Rochelle, and Zoey.
Thats why those games are masterpiece.. B4b should stay dead as it should be!
@@BungieStudiosWho tf hates Bill out of all the cast?
Playing Nick makes me want to kill my teammates every time they startle the Witch
smutty stuff on Ellis and Francis are GREAT
Hey my condolences to you man. I didn’t know that about your parents. Thanks for making great content. Just wanted to send some love.
The saddest thing is that this game had genuine hype around it, and it was in a relatively unexplored market that was experiencing a renaissance via stuff like Deep Rock Galactic. They had the perfect opportunity to make this truly great and hugely successful, and they completely missed the boat.
@@Ralathar44 well maybe Turtle rock should have a made a good game and then maybe people wouldn't be shitting on it so much and people like you wouldn't have to come and defend these shitty practices in every comment on the video :)
I love that point you made about L4D being a cinematic horror expierience because that is the thing that bothered me about B4B the most! It never felt scary. I also thought the shooting felt lackluster overall and wasnt very well balanced.
Ah yes, the cinematic horror experience where you go to a concert venue and blast music loud enough until the extraction chopper arrives, truly Zombieland
@@CZOM027 😂😂😂😂 still trying to defend your shitty game
@@CZOM027 more so the audio and music enabling the witch to actually feel scary. they get goofy like you mentioned but they actually do try to make the infected feel threatening compared to whatever the fuck b4b did.
@@lunar27794 disagree, just another lumpy giant with relatively random noises it's at best unsettling in my opinion. Making the character a huge lumpy idiot just ruins any fear factor since it can be spotted quite easily.
@@blobmarley1064you don’t feel fear because you’re an adult dude or because the witch was a bullet sponge
What are you talking about? The zombies in B4B had very memorable screams. Don't you remember the one shouting "NIGGAAAAAAAA"?
I remember firing up back for blood for the first time listening to the game... And the lack of music and sound queues alone was enough for me to be like... "Well this game isn't gonna last."
For me it was both the card system and AI teammates that would stand in front of my turrets during hoard sections.
I gotta thank B4B cause when it launched the player count on L4D/2 went up & that gave me some hella fun in VS mode.
500 IQ move from TRS. They were so proud of left 4 dead that they made B4B to deliberately boost its player count. Outstanding.
15:12 Speaking of multiplayer games that die due to being always online, Evolve, Turtle Rock's former game will -finally- go offline for good this year due to 2K pulling their servers needed for auth.
Is it possible to have a server spoof authorization?
I have a legacy disc of it. So we won't be able to play it even with that?
@@ExtraQuestionableContent Nope the multiplayer "Has" to go through their servers to work. No one player hosts and other join onto host.
@Kraigisboss But I mean is the actual base game (like with bots) gonna stay active?
My condolences man, wasn't expecting that about your parents, I absolutely love your videos and I hope your happy and well in life.
I feel like you forgot one incredibly annoying issue - the freaking menu. When I want to play a game I wan't to navigate a simple menu and then go, I don't want a 3d representation of a menu loaded up and then have to find the f'ing go area
all of my friends i tried to get to play this game were put off by the card system they said" they dont want to deal with cards, they wanna shoot zombies "
It's funny how L4D Survivors, despite being average Joes, are memorable and remembered fondly by the gaming community. Cleaners are fine for the most part, but I just can't shake the generic, "badass" zombie killer feeling from those guys
Its because they are caricatures of "The veteran" "The slick dude" "the hillbilly" not really breaking ground just using what people know to be around
@@CZOM027 no it's not just that. they had personality and you were playing with the same four characters the whole campaign.
@@machetas who has Michelle as their favorite? Hands up people! Can't remember any stand out moment or comment from that character
imo Coah, Ellis and Nick are really pretty memorable and fun characters
I do agree with what you guys said about Rochelle tho
Its the most forgetable survivor of the games
@@Chadnvaldr Agree that Nick, Coach and Ellis are fun characters
Rochelle though. How can I say this? TLS update brought back a bunch of her cut lines, which is good, but she is still somehow unmemorable compared to the other 7
My experience with this game was “oh hey it’s on gamepass. Oh hey it looks pretty good. Uh oh it crashed. Oh… it uses a crap card perk system… oh I got disconnected from my party. Oh that boss balance is a little off. Oops I “accidentally” uninstalled the game”
TRS: We are a small studio we can't possibly keep updating the game while we make a new game :(
Concerned Ape: here you go stardew 1.6 ok back to work
@@loner1520 later this year!
Yeah that guy crunched 10-15 hour work days, 7 days a week, making that game. You really shouldn't idolise that, it's a self-destructive and awful way of doing game development.
@@0lionheart I mean of course, but that's not the point he was making. The point was that if even one single guy is capable of keeping a game updated on a decent basis, then a studio with thousands of employees like TRS has no excuse to say they can't keep a game updated
@@0lionheart That guy had passion for his own work and worked hard to achieve his success, yea dont do that
@@phutureproof They're talking about crunch bro. Even Eric Barone himself said it was a terrible idea
For me is the background music. In L4D2, each infectors have their OWN themes, one when they appear one when you were attacked by them, and each of those theme were unique and special. Even hordes got their own theme!! And that's why they are so memorable than those meat chunk in B4B imo, when you get attacked by infectors in B4B all you got were some weird siren sound, no dramatic music, no monsters screamming. In summarize, lack of souls.
Hearing your comments on the lack of soul in B4B was inspiring. I cherish my memories of playing L4D and L4D2 with friends, but will always remember how awesome the maps were and how enjoyable they were to play on singleplayer. The maps in both L4D's told a story without words. Wall scribblings in the saferooms aside, there were set pieces and locations that explained the outbreak and the struggle to survive prior to you encountering that scenario yourself. The Mercy campaign is the best example of this. I'm probably not doing a great job of explaining but just know that L4D story telling was what set it apart. Back4Blood campaign acts felt like a blob of nonsense with narrow chokepoints that forced you to interact with the game in very limited ways. I dont care enough to recall the mission names but there is one mission that comes to mind that I felt is the most memorable of the unmemorable maps... the one with all the boats smashed together for no explainable reason. I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing yet the characters in game talked nonchalantly like it was no big deal. I got a headache just looking at the mess of vehicles piled on top of each other. Practically all of the missions follow the same design pattern. They make no sense for pathing the route your characters take, have no story behind them, and maybe have one or two props or set pieces to distinguish the importance of the location... it's lazy. Not even going to talk about the dark tunnels or whatever that DLC was called. So uninspired.
I paid for the preorder of the most expensive version of this game on Steam, purely on the fact that I loved L4D so much and had high hopes.... only to find that I couldve gotten it free using my Gamepass subscription. Paying for the game didnt seem to show fruit until almost a whole year after launch, and even then it's still a rip off. To think I paid ~$100 for a game that doesnt let me play without an internet connection and could eventually go away... modern gaming at it's finest. The graphics of B4B are the ONLY redeeming quality but it is overshadowed by the uninspired characters, campaign, lack of singleplayer offline, pathetic pvp, over monetization, and long time spans between updates. Honestly yeah, the fact that they labeled this game as being developed by the team that brought us L4D is the main reason I bought it without second thought... wont make that mistake again. Anyone wanna bet $5 that they do that same cheap trick with their next game?
I feel like this game could have recovered if they implemented changes sooner and werent so money hungry, but here we are. I think the thing that made this game's failure hurt so much more is that The Last of Us 2 was terrible as well. Games in recent years just havent measured up to their legacies and I find myself replaying classic games or remakes more than I do newer titles. It's sad that this is where we are and it's only getting worse. I do not envy future generations of gamers.
Too long, didn’t read
@@mrheadcrab1233 That's fine, reading isn't for everyone. I don't think it's even taught in schools anymore. You're condescending comment summed it up, nothing more needs to be said.
Hey nerdslayer I noticed that you’re having a hard time with sponsors. Just wanted to let you know that we really appreciate your content and I hope you can continue making these videos for everyone!
I wholeheartedly agree! I think you make fantastic videos, and I enjoy them immensely.
I remember when I first played it that I hoped they would lean in more on the whole Cleaner idea and build from there because that was interesting to me, but it wore me out quick before I got far into the second Act.
Left 4 dead 2 was a masterpiece ! 800h of play and sometimei go back... still 10 000 ppl online...after 15 years
i remember counting down to B4B's launch because i grew up playing L4D and L4D2 with my dad. he moved away back in 2020 and it was really hard on me so the idea of us being able to kill zombies together 10+ years later with B4B online was like a dream come true. i legitimately told him it was an L4D2 sequel because that's what i had assumed with the marketing material and the similar title... but when we played through the first mission and stood still, shooting a giant zombie with regular guns for like 2 minutes straight, i knew it wasn't gonna be the same. honestly, i don't think i ever picked it up again after that mission.
It’s so disappointing because the one thing a game like this should do well is making the whole feel of killing the zombies good but it didn’t even have that it was so lacklustre, I hope you and your dad managed to find something else to fill that gap
I absolutely loved this game. I had hundreds of hours with a group of friends and it was super enjoyable for us. As soon as they announced maintenance mode I think we all bailed. So sad
Same I love this game. I played hundreds of hours with randos online. It has its issues but overall it’s a challenging but fun game that has a lot of replayability
The only game that lives up to Left 4 dead when it comes to the characters' interactions is Vermintide, the banter is beautifully written and unmatched in the genre. I can't even remember b4b's characters' names.
It’s time for everyone to place their bets for how long it will take for Redfall to be reported on this channel. My bet is within atleast 4 months.
I would argue that soul in a game is a thing you only notice on a sub-conscious level. When I played the Back 4 Blood open beta, I felt something was off and missing, except I couldn't place my finger on what. I couldn't even explain it properly until I saw the Crowbcat video. However it is a very important component regardless.
For me was that husk and shallow feeling of playing an FPS game. it's silent when I stayed still for a while, oh and lack of banters
Specials having similar silhouettes is a catastrophic mistake in a horde shooter, if you can't immediately tell if something is goin to attack from range, pounce or charge getting got by it will always feel cheap.
I guess you could say back 4 blood was left 4 dead
Fully expecting your zombie voice acting to be modded into l4d now.
I can see the workshop description now: "From the creator of DOAG!..."
I did not even know it was only 6 of the OG devs until now. Kind of amazing they floated on that so fervently.
As always, phenomenal deep dive into another dearly departed from a stellar researcher and presenter.
You would think it would be lead devs
@@Ralathar44 it's important to remember that crowbcat's audience also consists of miserable people who are reactionary towards changes in society ergo changes in video games. That's why crowbcat decided to structure the RE video the way he did. It's highly ironic how the one person that began to criticize games within a changing industry (both good and bad) has now been targeted for doing the exact same thing.
@@BleedForTheWorld Thanks for puttin all of crowbcat audience in one bag.
@@Gonzalo_105 I didn't. That's why I deliberately chose to say, "also consists" aka "also includes".
@@Gonzalo_105 lmao put your tampon in buddy 😂
I was one of those pricks that had loads of faith in this project. I was so stoked... then it came out with it's poorly executed (and needless) card system, and it sadly turned in to a game I played for a single weekend, and forgot all about it until seeing it here now
L4D robbed me from my sleep many nights. I would stay up until 2 or 3 am playing with friends in PVP. It was such an amazing game.
I watched a video about B4B recently that pointed out how there’s no music for specific special infected ala L4D, and that was an amazing point I’d never noticed.
Like, when you made those L4D special infected noises, my brain filled in the specific music for each one and it’s those tiny details that make L4D special and sadly left B4B lacking.
I like that you explained what exactly you meant by soul. As I usually hate when people use that term in critique as it usually comes off as that they can't actually articulate why they disliked something but don't want to seem uninformed or subjective so they make a vague statement that can mean almost anything. So I really appreciate you made it clear you were talking about effort and attention to detail put into little aspects and moments of a game.
"Evolve was a blast to play, but yeah, the burnout of the game rose up way to quickly for the game to have longevity. Great video, can't wait to see Back4Blood in a year on this channel."
My comment a year ago on the DoaG: Evolve video. Saw it coming a mile away, sadly.
That is hilarious and sad at the same time
The thing about the survivors being absolutely equal in terms of performance also shows how unprepared everyone is when the apocalypse started.
Bill = Despite being arguably the strongest survivor lorewise is not any stronger than Zoey because of his age.
Louis = IT guy without much in terms of physique.
Coach = High school coach who lacks cardio.
The only characters who can arguably be "stronger" are Ellis and Francis.
But their individual strength advantage (if they have any) aren't really useful when pinned by the specials, making each and every member of the group just as important.
Here's my lengthy take on this game, focusing on its many design issues throughout its release. I wrote so much because I liked this game but my biggest issues with it aren't with most of the issues Crowbcat's video deals with.
First, an out-of-place critique: The Acts were super long at 3+ hours for 1 and 2, and loading into a saved run-in-progress was always buggy and often times undid your friend's builds, or forced you to use whatever the previous player's cards were.
On launch, TRS talked about wanting a somewhat roguelike action game, taking notes from battle royale with weapon rarity, where you steadily unlock abilities (cards) and build your character along with finding higher quality builds. This created a major issue with balance: Your character is weak on level 1-1, and super powerful on 1-8 - meaning, the beginning levels are super tough because you don't have any of the abilities you need. You can see this trend in how they released levels afterwards: all later acts were shorter and gave you more starter cards. It became commonplace to die on act 1 and burn Extra Life cards to get all your build cards just to beat those levels. Remember, new players didn't have any cards unlocked, so they couldn't just pick better cards until they beat the Ogre on the second level with nothing but white gear.
In later builds, they had to undo that to reverse the difficulty curve by giving you all your character cards at the start. This meant that the card system, which they centered their entire gameplay progression over, was essentially scrapped and not rebalanced nor redesigned for this new power burst (an issue which I'll get back to in the last paragraph). Now, instead of a roguelike, you were playing a class-based shooter: Support / Healing, Single-Target, Horde-Clear... Characters became "Heroes" - as an example, if you saw an Evangelo, you know they'd either be melee or speedrun SMG. I liked that the intrinsic character abilities were vague enough to allow the player to make different and uniquely fun builds, but it bred a whole new class of issues.
Because they were moving into a class-based system, they extremely discouraged teamplay. Example: If you had pills, you wouldn't want to use them or give them to your friend - you had to give it to the dedicated Support - if they didn't have 7 of them already, in which case players may get on you about your build. Dedicated support players were the only ones who could heal trauma or had all the healing buffs. It was an extremely huge waste for a non-medic to use a medkit on another player even if the situation was dire. The same with Melee - their damage boosts were extremely high, and those values translated directly to Team Damage - A melee character could not hang out anywhere near a player, lest they instantly down them by accident. Again, this was remedied by the card Down In Front, which the team would deride the melee player if they didn't take it.
On a different note of discouraging teamplay, in harder difficulties, if you didn't plan out your build BEFORE playing, you'd end up at a severe disadvantage, because there was no in-game way to tell other players what you wanted to run. As an example, if two or more players pick assault rifles, there's only so much of that ammo type on the map - forcing you to share, be greedy, or not use the weapon and lose all your pre-built buffs. This meant each cleaner was built to be self sufficient - use your own ammo, kill your own enemies, escape your own grapples.
While this card/class change was welcome for making the beginning levels less brutally hard, it flattened the difficulty curve, instead of starting low and letting it ramp up. Instead of slowly losing resources and being forced to improvise like a Survivor, each level became homogenous - if you can beat one level, you can definitely beat the next - resetting your health and ammo by having a well-built doctor and money cards. There was no need for continuity between levels in an Act - a game that build its "Run" system on this need for continuity.
The DLC was extremely problematic every time in how you interacted with it. Finding a Hive in your level ends the level, often times letting players skip entire challenging sections. It essentially forced players to play about half of a level, then adds on an entirely new level in the middle of that already lengthy act. There's only a few Hive level variations, so you'd repeat them constantly in an already content-starved game. However, you were incentivized to always go into a Hive, because it was the only way to earn a pittance of Premium Currency to unlock Cards and outfits (in random unlocks, of course). Hives also were the only instances of legendary chests, which always guaranteed you higher quality gear. This often guaranteed your party to be beyond OP, completely nuking threatening bosses like the hulking Ogre by stun-locking him and downing him in less than two seconds. Imagine if you could two-shot multiple Tank spawns in L4D back to back. Each DLC followed this trend, forcing you to grind that set of levels over and over again for a chance to unlock new cards and power abilities.
By the end, characters and abilities were redone with insane new builds. Heng, for example, could very easily get literally no stamina loss and ultra fast melee strikes less than halfway through a single level. Movespeed solo speedrunners were common in multiplayer matches because you could move almost as fast as the sprinters. Pinata players could have almost infinite grenades, turning a challenging infinite swarm escape into a cakewalk. My fav, building for Shotguns + Fire and getting the dragon's breath shotgun could build you for insane damage and insane healing. Instead of getting small buffs or building a class of character, now the game became which builds can break the game. They weren't Survivors, nor were they Cleaners - they became min-maxers.
The game became optimizable before you even loaded into the level.
"Feels bad." -Karlee
Basically back for blood was gotham knights trying to be arkham knights successor.
I'm sad now :(
I put in ALLOT of time in B4B, it really turned into a fine zombie-co-op game as time went on, but people just never came back. Understandable though, just really loved killing and synergizing new builds together to try on runs. And killing the A.I. felt pretty satisfying. It's launch and missed marketing really killed it. I do want to thank the devs for sticking through the game and making some really meaty and big changes to the game, regardless of whether or not the game would succeed. The weapons, new lvls, cards, and balance changes really made the game better but... It was too late. Those who stayed playing enjoyed it, the community was pretty nice, but we all knew it was in it's dying legs. I hope Turtle Rocks next game goes well for them. Liked this WAY more than Evolved, I'll tell you that much.
(I'll keep playing B4B as a pass time but not much to do, already got all the cards and special skins.)
lol
Over 2000 hours in L4D 1 and 2 on Xbox 360 and PC, and this game didn't click with me a single time, I played it on Gamepass and felt no soul, no charm within the final product..
some of the characters they wrote were really interesting, it's a wonder how they managed to make them all so soulless with such fun concepts. ma in particular struck me as a super cool character with lots of potential and then i played the beta and she was devoid of any semblance of personality. truly wondrous.
It's the Marvel Writing. Endless sarcastic quips without much substance to them and with little to no considering the weight of the situation.
While Left4Dead had their funny voicelines, it also was more subdued in this regard - the characters were four strangers in a horrific situation trying to make best of it, not the visitors of all-you-can-shoot zombie buffet.
@@Feuerhamster 100% ! After watching the video I was still struggling to explain why I found this game soulless but you hit it on the nose: marvel writing
i think the best example is ellis' stories about keith, which even one of them is infinitely better than anything in b4b's writing. they try too hard to be funny and fail miserably
Millennial writing
@@Leaf4825 okay leafy
I agree with your points, but I still had fun with back 4 blood. Its a pity that it fell short and was cancelled as I think it had a lot of things that I kinda wanted in a l4d3 (and we know that valve will basically never release such a game since it had the forbidden number within it).
I'll just say this: Turtle Rock Studios is a company with great ideas, but the ideas are too ambitious for their lack of manpower. Like, it's almost a necessity for them to stay with Valve with how crazy they are. Imagine Valve helping with Evolve. Probably could've been a contender for best on-going game category.
Already hit Humble Bundle monthly goddamn this died fast
Lol, it's now the right price 10 bucks
@@bubblegumgun3292 It's never the right price. Wasting time on a bad game is never worth it, unless you just have no respect for your own time.
they made a single-player co-op game how someone would make an e-sports game designed to sell skins
Except you can earn all but 1 skin for a couple of characters in game? So it's not at all like you said
@@GusbusGaming still a shit game.
Looking forward to this video for a while. This game looked so promising at first.
Me and my friend absolutely loved this game but once we beat it in and tried to replay the whole story as many times as fast as possible. After about 2 weeks of fun, there was nothing else to do. I think we beat it on what was considered “normal” difficulty and the step up to the next difficulty was such a huge spike we couldn’t even get past the first level no matter how we stacked our cards.
The lack of soul part is really jarring because Evolve 2 had lots of it, at least in its characters. All characters interactions (done so while the monster player was preparing themself) were always delightful to watch. Sometimes I'll load up a video and get a kick out of them. Good times!
I would love if you could make a spin off series of death of a game featuring games that "died"
Like forspoken which released and got DLC and its not a live service so it cant actually die
But flopped so hard it killed the Studio behind it
So yeah would be interesting seeing you cover those as well
I hate to be "that" guy but I'm very glad that a shitty 80€ "Hollywood" game died on arrival. It sends a good message.
"I DESTROYED A STUDIO WITH MY FRICKIN' GAME"
Would that be titled Death of a Game: Forspoken or Death of a Game: Luminous Productions?
Death of a Studio?
Omfg please Forspoken
Back 4 Blood is a guilty pleasure for me. I understand all of it's failings and wrongdoings and i'd be happier if it didn't have those, but i like it alot.
Also i may be the only person on earth, but i really like the card system. You have powerups that you can choose the order to and since you pick from 3 it has adaptability. So for example if i made a support build i could choose the powerups my team needs at the moment. I had a build that could heal my allies and provide them with ammo. When i had a team that didn't take much damage but was very spray'n'pray i would choose the ammo supplying cards first.
In a sufficiently long run you will get them all eventualy but being able to choose which ones you get first was fun.
The card system however is the only thing about this game that i will defend, the rest isn't great and i understand why the game died.
The card system may have been the biggest reason why i put 60-70 hours into it. One of my favorite builds involved a strong melee build, but i had 2 cards involving buffs when i take pain meds, with a fanny pack card for extra pills. Shouldve called it the Louis build lol
It was often more frustrating than fun... with friends.
It's no coincidence that Turtle Rock Studios haven't released anything worthwhile since splitting from Valve and, at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they're considered radioactive by a large number of publishers because of it.
Summed up how I felt. It didn’t feel like a thrill ride of survival like L4D did. Instead it was just a shoot ‘em up.
Also 90% of my obsession with L4D was mods and pvp
really sad to see what's happened to a once legendary studio, and as someone who lost my mom sorry about the loss of your parents.
I know it just came out, but Im really looking forward to you covering Redfall.
Knew this was gonna come eventually, feelsbad for this game man. I did enjoy a little bit of it when I played with friends, too bad it just didn't deliver.
Its so refreshing hearing a healthy criticism of a game. Do you have a channel where you review games pre-launch? Id love to hear your thoughts on upcoming titles too!
I have thought about doing more impressions, but at this point it's more so reserved for the bigger MMOs I would say.
with so many layoffs studio closures im amazed turtle rock is still around
Something else that certainly caused issue for me was the card system. It seemed interesting at first but then i got to the end of a chapter, or whatever they called their groupings of levels. When you start the next chapter all your gear is wiped and you start with basic gear again. Not a hugely big deal but with the cards system you pretty much choose what gun/playstyle your build is going to be based around. Maybe you go with a shotgunner build or a sniper build. But once you get into the levels you just gotta hope RNG gifts a weapon that fits your deck. And even that wasnt to much of an issue... until we reached the final boss.
The final boss is its own chapter. So that means you start that off completely gearless. But no worries they spawn some random gear on the ground for you to pick up and make use of. And then the deck issue comes up again. Not a single shotgun in the pile? Gonna have to restart because that leaves one of our team without their primary specced gun. 2 snipers and 2 shotguns this time? Gotta restart because two of the party are built for assault rifles. Building a deck around a weapon ended up being more of a hinderance than anything else.
Imagine playing something like skyrim but you start at level 20. You get a bunch of perk points you can invest into skills so you choose heavy armor and greatswords as well as smithing. The game starts you with robes, a spellbook and some alchemy supplies. Good luck nerd, hope you find that suit of heavy armor you wanted. Sure would be a shame if the rng spawns nothing but light armor everywhere.
Any amount of fun me and my group were having was lost there at the boss. We didnt even beat the thing, or if we did i dont remember it. The only thing i do remember is its instakill hitbox that stretched way beyond its actual model. The few times we did get the guns we wanted we would die to some random bullshit. So we just quit. We got our fun, uninstalled the game off our game pass accounts and moved back to Left 4 Dead, a game we had been talking about playing again the entire time we were playing Back 4 Blood.
I will be honest, I loved Back 4 Blood. Yes it lacks many of the "way ahead of its time" features of Left 4 Dead like the amazing ragdoll physics, but the perk card system and resulting ability to build your own class or playstyle was an amazing development that kept me playing and excited for new card updates. It made for a very interesting skill ceiling on the harder difficulties, where a full team of people who knew the game and had strategically chosen class builds could really make the game shine. Its a shame that turtlerock was so quick to give up on the game, when it had so much going for it. But I guess a mixed launch and a lot of people comparing it to Left 4 Dead gave the studio the impression they had another "Evolve" dud. This game was not a dud, it was not Evolve, it had great bones and needed some additional TLC to make it one of the great co-op horror games of the age. It absolutely could have been that.
Okay someone has to explain to me why making games about vampires cause VtM: Bloodline 2, Back 4 blood and Redfall all had issues.
I've always been conflicted about my feelings for this game. I didn't enjoy this game at all during launch. As they added more content into the game via updates and expansions, the game improved and I actually enjoyed playing its campaigns. However, it all felt like content that should have been in the game in the first place. For the record, I played this game via Game Pass and didn't pay for the DLC as I played with a friend that bought them. After the last expansion, I was actually looking forward to a possible Year 2 pass that could help steer B4B into potentially a better place. Sucks they dropped support for it. I'll look back fondly on the time I spent with it and if a friend wants to play, I'll play as long as its still on Game Pass. However, I still think L4D (even on Xbox) is still a more enjoyable experience.
*looks at Vermintide and Deep Rock Galactic*
The spirit of Left4Dead is alive and well. Elsewhere.
*looks at Darktide*
...Well we will always have Deep Rock Galactic.
Left 4 Dead 2 is not going anywhere any time soon either. You can even still buy and play it on Xbox One/Series, even though it has never been released there - servers are still up and people are playing. Which makes me wonder what would've happened if Valve decided to release an enhanced version on a current generation with a mod support (like Skyrim has).
Id add WWZ if only it's still putting updates
Vermintide is the true L4D like game, the fire fights in Darktide make it more like Payday except you have to occasionally whip out a chainsaw to mow down a zombie horde.
Also the game is way more fun since the class update, honestly I think horde shooters since L4D2 are just cursed to have bad releases, Payday 3 being the most recent example. I'd hesitate to call this a symptom of recent gaming trends since its been going on for over 10 years iirc, the genre is just cursed.
@@randomguyblank1616 I wish you weren't right, my friend. I wish you weren't right...
My favourite reason why Left4Dead is clearly a labour of love, and the weakest comparison Back4Blood holds against it is definitely the zombie animations. The animation team in L4D were absolute animals in the industry. The zombies, when shot, react differently depending on where they were shot in magnificent magnitude. There is something like over 200 different zombie injury reactions in L4D, all of which were acted out by motion capture actors that the animators used for reference. In hindsight it's such a small detail, but it makes the zombies feel real and makes the impact of your weapons feel meaningful. It's a deceptively powerful aspect of the game and absolutely defines how a player feels when playing it.
The zombies in Back4Blood just ragdoll when you kill them.
There's a video on UA-cam comparing the two and it really showcases why these two games are not on the same level of quality, of developer skill, or of love and care.
tripwire interactive did everything right with Killing floor 2. If a developer with more resources put that kind of effort into a game it would be the best ever.
I had a great time playing this with my buddies. I really enjoyed the deck system. I basically turned mom into Doom guy.
Me and my buddies.. Who where really into L4D(2) back in the days, played B4B, more then we are willing to commit... And we saw the increase of qaulity over the course of the x-pacs. Yeah, it started out rough, but slowly..but steady it improved... As you said..The 3rd x-pac, was good. With a new randomizer game mode.. a good story and decent ballance.. We where curious for 2023-2024..We fantasized, talked, discussed about a new season pass.. With new content...I mean, the story had enough room for it.
But sadly. February happenend, and truth be told..After that, we havent touched the game again... And looking back on it, with this video..im sad to say..ya're right
It had a lot of potential... But in the end..It just wasn't it
I loved the game in open beta, it was way more difficult and it gave you tension.
The release rebalance was terrible, the mid difficulties were too easy and the most difficult was crazy difficult almost random
A class act with giving the nod to crowbcat's take-apart of this game. The bit where the "from the creators of" bit was busted was top tier and I was just thinking about it as I saw this upload from you, and was pleased you both thought the same and noted it in your own discussion.
If I remember right, crowbcat also brought up the music angle of the games in question as part of sound design - and here, too, I was never an avid L4D player but I know its sound by heart, whereas watching someone play B4B, it seemed like it was just a generic action movie soundtrack slotted in to save time.
There are so many points i agree on you with that i cant even be arsed listing them all. Great video
You forgot Trial of the worm.
Sounds like you didn't played the higher difficulty of the game.
I was one of the few that got to do testing for this game because i was lucky and got an activation key for closed testing via raffle on their discord and my friend too and we activated it on steam and played together in some early builds, from the beginning it was very unbalanced and hard to play, enemies were bullet sponges and overall the game had a soulless feel to it, we never bought the game or really ever touched it after testing it and reporting some gameplay breaking bugs like ladders randomly killing you.
We both knew it was going to flop hard if they didnt decide to drastically change basically the entire game, seems our judgement was right looking back, glad i never coughed up actual money for these souless suits in the gaming industry piggybacking off other franchises or ruining their workplaces past ones for short sighted profits.
B4B explored many nooks and crannys mechanically in the l4d genre.
Conceptually had much potential, not many deck building - shooters to be had.
Likely not many people can relate with me but it makes me upset seeing the game die like this, especially with how good the last two DLC were.
Adding the cultists really spiced up the game (Probably cuz I have a huge knack for death cults) and the quality of Act 6 was really nice, it was super badass blowing up cult bases, fighting them while ascending up a TV station, in a museum along with the finale with fighting their giant kaiju monster in the stadium; imagine if the entire game was like that.
well the game never managed to be better than lefft 4 dead so for me its ok for it to die, i rather play left 4 dead 2 all day than this.
If they don't change this I will never buy anything from them ever again.
Yeah the lack of offline play was a huge let down for me. Spent 10 mknutes trying to find the option. When i couldnt find it i gave up and hopped into a queue and spent like 20 minutes waiting for a game. Got dropped in halfway through a mission. No clue what was going on, where to go etc. The hell are new players even supposed to do?
Always online + no mods = immediate pass for me.
@@neonightshade1 Progress doesn't transfer in terms of cards and stuff.