Death of a Game: Back 4 Blood
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2023
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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.
Sources:
www.videogameschronicle.com/n...
store.steampowered.com/ageche...
www.metacritic.com/game/plays...
www.gamespot.com/reviews/back...
es.ign.com/back-4-blood/17672...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_4_...
www.engadget.com/2019-03-14-t...
www.pcgamesn.com/back-4-blood...
www.businesswire.com/news/hom...
www.ign.com/videos/back-4-blo...
back4blood.fandom.com/wiki/Ba...
store.steampowered.com/app/18...
store.steampowered.com/app/21...
store.steampowered.com/app/20...
www.ign.com/articles/back-4-b...
www.polygon.com/22419740/back...
www.mobygames.com/game/173640...
• Back 4 Blood proves Va...
www.gamespot.com/articles/bac...
steamcharts.com/app/550#allah
steamcharts.com/app/924970 - เกม
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
Back 4 Blood is a clear example of the "from the creators of..." Syndrome
And that's only true if you stretch the truth as far as it can go. Those people had effectively nothing to do with L4D.
Anything that advertise it self as "From the Creators of" or "A spiritual successor of" Is Doom to fail, you never advertise that you're a Spiritual successor, You just become one and if you need to remind people of your past works to bring hype... You're doomed
@@dkrampage2933 oh fuck does that mean that earthsword is doomed? Oh crap oh no oh no ohnononono
From the creators of Evolved
would be a good description
more like “from the creators with down syndrome”
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.
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
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).
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.
@@LizardSpork I've been playing darktide on/off and idk how you think they are more concerned with making bank, they have only released 2 paid cosmetic drops since launch while the majority of the updates has been targeting various things in the game. Granted they still have a a good while to go but money hungry is not the vibe I get.
@@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.
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
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.
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?
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!!!!
That's on 2k, not the devs.....
@@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.
@Dizzula bud it literally has absolutely nothing to do with turtle Rock devs lmao, 2k publishing did it
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
28. september 2023
Left 4 Dead 2 - 18.000 players (PC / Steam)
Back 4 Blood - 500 players (PC / Steam)
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?
20:20 absolutely top tier voice acting
Lul
quote unquote :P
It's brimming with SOUL baybeee!
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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
I get where you're coming from.
The Tallboy and the Bruiser sound exactly the same making it hard to tell which one was 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.
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?
Oh yeah, that unfitting Marvel humor in the introduction trailer put me off immediately.
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!
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
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.
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
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.
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 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 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.
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
There are so many points i agree on you with that i cant even be arsed listing them all. Great video
What are you talking about? The zombies in B4B had very memorable screams. Don't you remember the one shouting "NIGGAAAAAAAA"?
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 :)
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
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
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.
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.
Really enjoy the mid to long form content! Very interesting knowing what happened with Back4Blood.
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
When does 1.6 release?
@@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
What makes Zoey's story even more tragic is, that she most likely didn't have to kill her father. It's only a community theroy, but with the survivors being made out of 3 men and 1 woman each, it's speculated that men have a better chance to be carriers of the virus and that Zoey inherited her resistence against it from her dad.
And also, thank you for making a stance for singleplayerplayer gamers and for calling out that online only non-sense.
As for Back 4 Blood, I still have a minor interest in it, because I'm a sucker for zombie things. But even to this day, where I could get the Ultimate edition for 18€, I can't bring myself to buy it, because I don't really see the appeal or that it will end up like Earthfall for me. I play it once, say that it was "fine.". Not bad, not satisfiying, just "fine.". And then go back to Payday or DRG to get my solo coop shooter kick.
What also put me off the game was the Marvel style humor. As you said, L4D's characters behaved properly for the situation they were in, although even L4D2 already got a little too light hearted for me. But with Back 4 Blood, they constantly make funny quibs and remarks, even though their entire family and friends are dead, while alien worms try to eat their faces.
a small correction: it isnt a community theory
in the official comics it was stated that the immunity is passed down through the father's genes
Someone didnt read The Sacrifice Comic
Rock and stone brotha
@@Chadnvaldr small correction to your small correction:
Gene that make you immune to zombie virus is a recesive one and located in X chromosome. Meaning, it's much like color blindness - predominantly happens to males, but can happen to females provided that both parents were carriers of the gene. Meaning, Zoes father was 100% immune.
They don't make jokes at all
Love your contact nerdslayer. Excellent as usual
I got caught up in the "from the creators" tag line. Hell I even offered feedback when the studio was asking for feedback. My main issues with the game had more to do with it not being as simplified and the card system. I still go back for L4D and even playing a basic non vs match is still fun. Who doesn't like the rooftop hospital battle or fighting the zombies on stage at a carnival? Or the random banter of the characters. I still can still hear the soundtrack. We didn't need card systems or badassery. It was simple and challenging fun. This kinda forgot that. It did show a lot of promise but I didn't even play the last expansion yet.
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.
20:23 Can’t believe NerdSlayer got the ACTUAL voice actors for all of the special infected to narrate this DOAG. Respect
I really wanted this game to succeed. I played the first part of the first campaign and felt like Left 4 Dead 3, but Turtle Rock seems to not learn from their mistakes, aka Evolve.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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 What matter is the execution.If The Idea is good and the execution is shit you will get B4B
@@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".
Me and my general friend group still love and play Back 4 Blood pretty often. Honestly, the game is quite good after the patches, we only got into it after it was out for a whole year. It's sad to see how half-baked it was at launch.
If they hadn't 1. Launched the game in a barely functional state with a myriad of bugs and 2. Set ridiculous expectations with the constant reminder of Left 4 Dead, I think it could have been a huge success.
I had a great time playing this with my buddies. I really enjoyed the deck system. I basically turned mom into Doom guy.
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 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.
From a game design standpoint, I really appreciate things like the card system, weapon upgrades, and currency scattered around the map does to the L4D formula. Gives you different ways to play and reasons to explore the map after having all your item slots filled. It just the execution was off, the systems weren't meshing well with one another.
Like the shop doesn't have a section for Cards to buff your characters with beyond the team based buff cards. You know, like a Rough-like.
There isn't higher tiers/rarity Cards that you can't put in your deck at the start of the game and have to find out on the map or buy in the store. These could be super impactful ability's like letting you parry a Tank's Punch, or just let's you rocket jump and get yourself in silly places that you shouldn't be in or past obstacles that you would otherwise need to do an event for. These would be balanced by the fact that they're rare so these high moments would be few and far between.
And there isn't ways to take off or store attachments for your gun, and no way upgrade your weapon's tier. I get the idea of choosing between you highly upgraded White gun vs an unupgraded Orange gun, but having neither of these systems just leads to people waste time shuffling around attachments off the ground until they get what they want on their gun.
It just, it feels like Turtle Rock could've done more with these things and they just didn't. Its just, Feelsbadman.
LOL. The currency and card system is what made the game so bad.
@@JumpingJack6 Nah that is pretty subjective opinion I can understand why some ppl like yurself hate it. But that doesn't make it bad it is just more of a matter preference cuz some ppl like more simplistic gameplay cuz its easier to get into plus it makes the game more fast pace while there are ppl who enjoy the more in depth side of games like this cuz there is more strategy and ways to play. One is not better then the other cuz its all about the kinda player you are
Me and some buds got really into it for a while, but the writing became a meme for us especially Holly's rant on the phrase "shooting fish in a barrel"
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”
Can’t wait to see your video about Redfall.
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
Left 4 dead 2 was a masterpiece ! 800h of play and sometimei go back... still 10 000 ppl online...after 15 years
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
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.
Game ratings are often way different between users and critics
Imo a big part of this is that critics focus mainly on the gameplay (bugs, amount of content, accessibility, balance and monetization rarely have any effect on critics just look at sports games being the same)
Users can more freely predict the future with content and monetization as critics don't have much of a chance to since they can't experience all or most of a game at the time of a review
Knowing this difference in reviews has helped me find games which aren't mainstream but are great in my own opinion
I wonder if that's a compliment to the B4B game, or a negative feedback to it.
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.
Ross Scott has been holding the "games as a service/online only" torch for a bit my friend. I think all detectives and dungeon goers can agree. Let's look for those clues and catch these perps early before Nerdslayer needs to analyze another case :3
"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
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.
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.
Thank you for this video.
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
I know it just came out, but Im really looking forward to you covering Redfall.
Hey first time viewer and gotta say, love your opening title very cool
I remember playing the beta and thinking it felt like a zombie mod for any other shooter game
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..
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.
I love Evolve and still play it with the peer to peer servers being live.
I really appreciate this video.
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
Looking forward to this video for a while. This game looked so promising at first.
Just from start I loved the video so much!!!! the starting music is from hotel 215 for the ds correct??? Sends me so many good memories.
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.
It was often more frustrating than fun... with friends.
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
That track from detective Conan / case closed is so fitting hypes me up every time
World War Z feels like more a spiritual successor of L4D2
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.
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
*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...
Crazy how innovators of the tactical shooter genre bombed an L4D clone this badly...
Love the intro every time!
with so many layoffs studio closures im amazed turtle rock is still around
When you see the “from these guys” its a major red flag that just means they’re not confident in the game standing on its own