We got our first look at Back 4 Blood gameplay during Turtle Rock Studios' Twitch stream, and it certainly looks like a Left 4 Dead game.
In the first extended look at gameplay, four survivors (Walker, Holly, Evangelo, and Hoffman) try to make their way out of a hotel that's being overrun by zombies. It's the same four-person co-op you'd expect from a Left 4 Dead game, with characters firing off pithy one-liners left and right, or shouting out special enemies to warn each other. As the team makes their way onto the rooftop and zombies swarm them, it's hard not to get a pang of nostalgia for the original Left 4 Dead title.
There are key differences here, of course. It's not called Left 4 Dead 3, the zombies are called Ridden, and the graphics look a helluva lot better than Left 4 Dead 2. The gameplay trailer shows off what looks to be a lovely arsenal of weapons, including a mean revolver, an assault rifle, a baseball bat, and grenades. The damage you can do to zombies is more in-depth, with baseball bat swings lobbing off heads or sloughing off chunks of torso skin. It's gory and ridiculous, and exactly how it should be.
The team gets to the safehouse in the gameplay trailer before heading into a new area full of undead dangers, and it's there we're reminded that this isn't simply a Left 4 Dead sequel. Instead of an 8-foot-tall Tank attacking the survivors, there's an Ogre, and this absolute unit has got to be closer to 20-feet. "Is it just me or are these things getting bigger?" a survivor asks. Same, dude, same.
A Back 4 Blood closed alpha began as soon as the Twitch stream ended, and will run until December 21, 2020. You can register for the alpha here, but it's unclear if you can still get access. Back 4 Blood will release on Xbox Series X, PS5, Xbox One, PS4, and PC on June 22, 2021.
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