Yadda yadda Back 4 Blood this, yadda yadda Left 4 Dead that. You know, the worst part of the marketing and overall presentation of Back 4 Blood is that every single time I write about, play, or see it, my brain is comparing it to Left 4 Dead. I’ll explain why shortly, but I think this is doing it the most disservice of all in terms of endearing itself to me. I still play Left 4 Dead semi-regularly with friends, and I just don’t see Back 4 Blood taking the throne. It has its own ideas and spins on the genre, and tries to refresh it a bit with some fancy bells and whistles, but I ended up feeling let down. One last thing — I’m not calling them “Ridden.”
I’m going to levy my biggest criticism of Back 4 Blood right here at the top, and it’s this: The game delivers a tone as irritating and insincere as an Army recruitment video made for middle school boys. From the hammy tutorial videos to the eye-rollingly bland quips of our cardboard cast of literal whos, there wasn’t a single moment during my playtime that I felt invested in the game’s cast or world.
