


This effectively lets you tailor your character’s growth as you run through an act of the story, each level letting you choose from one of five randomly drawn cards. That weight being placed on the special enemies can also invalidate some of the options found in the deck building card system. It’s telling that the game again throws multiples of these enemies, diluting their initial impact in a video game equivalent to the shift from Alien to Aliens. Where these were towering monstrosities that you simply had to run away from in what was shown prior to the game’s release, here concerted fire on their weak points will take them down pretty quickly. The second act also has levels where you face off against a huge wave of these special enemies, backed up by the game’s boss zombie types, the Ogre and the Breaker. Honestly that would be fine if it didn’t feel like this was the lynchpin for the game’s difficulty. In Back 4 Blood, it always throws waves of them at you, doubling up on particular special zombie types, which have often been augmented by the game’s card system so that they need much more concerted gunfire to take down.

In that game, you’d typically be accosted by a few specials at a time, the telltale coughing or whining making you look to the rooftops and scouring for blindspots that they and their ilk might be hiding in waiting for an ambush. It’s almost like the game’s AI director has taken it upon itself to one-up the Left 4 Dead AI director in how it throws special zombies at you. It’s how the game provides you with that test that we’ve felt is a little bit off at the game’s launch. In addition to there being three difficulty levels, the easiest of which – Recruit – will still provide you with a stern test. They can also give you different optional objectives, like finding a vial and successfully getting it to the exit, beating a boss Ridden and running through in a certain time limit, or simply making it through to the end with all four players surviving. Alternatively, all the special enemies are now tougher with shielded weakspots that you need to put more damage into. It could be that you will now face common enemies in bullet proof vests, meaning that you really need to go for headshots. Between each level, you see the new modifier cards that the AI has drawn to augment its own abilities and throw different challenges at your team. However, what Back 4 Blood does differently is that, in addition to having the AI director control the flow of zombie waves your way, mixing up the lock boxes and pick ups you can find, and keeping you on your toes with special zombie spawns, you also have game-wide modifiers.
