Welcome back to the Month of VIRTUA SPEWWWWWKIESandKNEES! The month continues with some titles that are either loved or hated, depending on which side of the spectrum you sit!
The best part about L4D and its sequel, is that you get some very nice weapons with which to do so. You can go guns akimbo with the pistols, use an awesome magnum and some assault rifles that truly shred! The zombies give off plenty of blood and there are hordes of them to get through. Then there are the special zombies, and they can be something of a problem in more ways than one.
Special zombies tend to do a bunch of damage, which normally isn't a problem. When it comes to Jockeys, tiny zombies that jump on you, Hunters, big zombies that jump on you, or Smokers, smoking zombies that use TENTACLES, the problem is that they do a lot of damage because they don't get off. The charger in the second game bashes you against the ground and can't get off of you either! All of these special zombies require a second player or CPU to get them off of you by killing them or breaking their hold.
These annoyances can be a very large problem because sometimes they could actually kill you in a big hurry if you somehow accidentally got away from your partners or something like that. If this is all happening during a zombie raid, the same problem emerges. It would have been nicer if we had an actual chance to fend them off ourselves with a threat of more damage rather than it being a death sentence if we're left alone. There are too many opportunities to be blindsided and the unfair advantage can be very frustrating.
When you put all of that along with random zombies and horde triggers, you get a nice satisfying conclusion with a tiny bit of giant zombies and one-hit kill witches scattered through-out. Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 have been celebrated for many who love the video games based around zombies. The second game came out with new levels, new characters and weapons! People loved it! You could customize it with wonderful mods downloaded from Steam! Yes! Now for Left 4 Dead 3!
Silence followed. Steam came open and the company basically stopped making video games. Valve stopped making Half-life 3 as well and we have a lot to be thankful for as a result, but so many have lamented what could have been. The Left 4 Dead series has been dead for a very long time, but then there came a beacon of hope!
Back 4 Blood was obviously meant to be a spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, but it just wasn't very good at it. On the surface, this new title came out and it was everything we ever wanted. There were team zombie matches, co-op sessions connected together, PvP with zombies and shooters, upgrades! While the upgrades were all free with gameplay, this new game was not without its paid content in the ways of cosmetics.
The game, overall, felt completely off. Left 4 Dead wasn't without its staged sections of combat in the ways of burning fences and opening garage doors, but this felt much more tedious. Back 4 Blood's weapon system and supply purchase felt like it was trying to be different without adding anything new. The problem is that the weapons have turned a lot more into looter shooter rewards.
Left 4 Dead better weapons because they were constantly good quality, rather than straight up having a damage system like Borderlands. Some people liked this mechanic, but it seemed to distract a little from killing the actual zombies with the bullets. There didn't need to be a lot more thought put into each hit. Complicating everything about this game was somewhat offputting, especially with how fast paced it was supposed to be.
Grinding in such a fast paced game is not so good a look. Roleplaying games need to be a little more languid in their pace so that you can concentrate on your armor and weapons. Games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy have a much more constant pace because this is what is presented and it gives you time to put more thought into it. Back 4 Blood gives you time to concentrate on this between killing zombies, but sometimes you need to deal with the items and stats with a horde nipping at your heels.
The card sections were a mistake. Let's call it what it was. All of these things about powering up your character and hyping up all of your numbers for the biggest numbers distracts terribly from what matters. The modern touches on this game were already bad, but I'm going to be absolutely honest, I didn't even touch the cards for the most part. I just put on some of them that sounded good and that could have affected my gameplay somehow. It could have made the game harder or nerfed the zombies, it probably didn't matter.
Losing your weapons and items is a far bigger problem here with such a strict system where keeping it loose and simple with L4D proved far superior. B4B wasn't outwardly bad, it just wasn't worth putting more time into. It skated in with better graphics and bigger zombies but brought nothing actually interesting to the table. Sticking more to the old system of the Valve RNG zombies and adding something new on top of that would have proven more beneficial. As it stands, they added more layers to the cake and now it leans awkwardly and cutting off a piece is more worrying. Left 4 Dead 2 is far simpler, you don't need to worry about stats and items every time you want to play a level and you don't need to worry so much about competing with other players.
They had some good intentions, it was just a poor execution. Killing zombies is a lot of fun, but it also doesn't need to involve a great deal of brain power. When you're trying to replicate an old game, try and pay more attention to the elements that people actually liked. A longer gestation period could have helped a lot with the overall mechanic structure. There were some cool giant zombies and some change could have been very beneficial to a 3rd Left 4 Dead game. Not to mention, an awesome magnum pistol selection wouldn't go amiss, while we're talking style. Break the zombies to pieces, zombie horde pieces!
