The spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, Back 4 Blood, has just released. Made by Turtle Rock as well, it was hotly anticipated after rumours of a third Left 4 Dead game circulated for years. To get you in the mood, here’s five great mods for the previous entries in their lineup!
Chernobyl
By Av3ris
Chernobyl was a long-awaited Left 4 Dead 2 campaign in development for around nine years before its first release! Owing to a huge number of custom assets and a unique setting, the campaign brings L4D2’s iconic gameplay into a brand new region with a personality of its own. It’s on the tougher side for campaigns, pulling no punches and expecting good co-operative play to survive, but the sheer attention to refinement in both the levels and gameplay make this a standout experience worth trying again and again.
Back to School
By 100_o/o_f@ke
L4D2 is known for a good spread of tones across its campaigns - quiet and rural locales join busy urban towns with both quiet moments and bombastic action to enjoy. Back to School definitely fits into the latter of both categories, putting you squarely in the middle of a city where the Green Flu went crazy. Huge numbers of infected assail the player whilst ambitious setpieces like fighter jet collisions happen overhead, with more physically-minded gameplay than the average Left 4 Dead campaign. If you’re trying out Back 4 Blood, you may as well try out Back to School, too.
Dead Before Dawn
By CosmicD
George Romero is one of the fathers of the modern zombie idea, and this mod team pays homage to his work with Dead Before Dawn, a campaign based on the 2004 remake of his Dawn of the Dead film. As is par for the course for legendary L4D2 campaigns, custom assets and extensive scripting work goes out of its way to pull the player into the experience, with hundreds of custom voice lines selling the mod’s narrative.
I Hate Mountains
By NykO18
If you’re looking for a mod trying to take after Turtle Rock’s campaigns, I Hate Mountains fits in well alongside the other co-op experiences in the game. With the authors themselves noting they simply wanted to make more fitting content, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles of other mods but still carries all the personality befitting of Turtle Rock’s own work. Great environments and settings mean you’ll still have a blast with this mod, and if you’re more of a L4D2 purist, this might be just what you’re looking for.
DNIEPR
By Khelben
Whilst L4D2 usually mixes bombastic action with its humour to create a more light-hearted, witty experience, DNIEPR tones down the bombasticity and places players in difficult, grim, dark environments with their backs to the wall and resources running low. Once more set in the Ukraine, DNIEPR pulls you a little more into the real horror that is a zombie apocalypse, player more like an action-horror game than the usual L4D2 fare.
Returned 2 Life
Left 4 Dead is one of the most recognisable zombie franchises in gaming. Created by Turtle Rock on behalf of Valve, it brought co-operative zombie survival to the Source Engine over ten years ago and made headlines for its unique blend of resource management, cooperative play, and fitting writing. Thanks to Source, it also propagated a healthy and still rather active modding community who create content as simple as retextures to as complicated as fully-fledged campaigns.
Back 4 Blood returns with special enemies, a hallmark of L4D’s gameplay experience
Grabbin’ Kills
After L4D2, it’s known that Valve and Turtle Rock both played with the idea of a threequel, but nothing came to fruition. Striking out alone, Turtle Rock began working on their own addition to their lineup - a spiritual successor to their classic franchise. Back 4 Blood was the product of that venture, bringing not only the same classic co-operative gameplay we’ve come to expect, but new systems like cards that affect stats and items availability to change up the gameplay experience between matches.
Players can pick from one of eight “Cleaners”, individuals immune to the zombie virus
Safe...For Now
Back 4 Blood went through several public testing periods before eventually going public, refining many mechanics and systems along the way. It’s not a carbon copy of Left 4 Dead and there are quite a few differences, but fans of the original games will likely find a lot to keep themselves busy with Back 4 Blood.
The main feature missing from Back 4 Blood right now is modding - something that was crucial to the continued success of the Left 4 Dead brand. Back 4 Blood’s crossplay offering is part of the reason a modding solution presents complications, but there are alternatives that could be pursued for the future, and at any rate, PC modders can mod just about anything they set their mind to. In the long term, we might still see the occasional mod for Back 4 Blood.
Deleted my prior comment. Came off as a little dickish. However, I do NOT want to play Back 4 Blood. The main reason it has positive reviews on Steam is because Gaming Generation Z will eat ANYTHING up (And I mean 'anything'), and it makes me sad that another generic corporate post apocalyptic FPS about uber-badass warriors beating the crap out of zombies is a smash hit. The one thing Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 wasn't... and Turtle Rock has embraced what it was trying to avoid being.
We don't need games like this anymore, and it's insulting that people like the original author and Youtubers are calling it a 'spiritual successor' when it's literally anything BUT. Like it? Fine. But this is NOT the successor we were promised.
That's fair enough - everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter. As I said on the other comment, if B4B isn't your thing, there's five great mods for L4D on this list that might be :)
Thankfully I didn't pay for B4B, it just felt off to me. I hope they eventually add mods, other maps or campaigns. I feel it isn't a spiritual succesor to L4D, just a shame people felt like calling it that.
R. Bell you're entitled to your opinion but opinions need to be backed up by facts in order to have any value. I don't know what you're trying to say that the B4B are "uber bad-*** survivors" while suggesting that the L4D survivors aren't. Nothing about the b4b survivors is any more "uber" or "badass" than the L4D2 survivors. The only difference you could POSSIBLY mean is that in the game's lore the L4D2 survivors are merely survivors while the ones in B4B are 'cleaners' -- that doesn't make them uber or badass -- they are just surviving the only way they know how.
If you listen to the dialogue between characters, particularly Mom who is the "Bill" of the group, you know they have a kinship, and they express concern for one another (they also give each other grief).
It is the shallowest of excuses to judge B4B by this criteria alone and as such one can dismiss your critique.
Secondly you're not doing yourself a favor by ranting like a boomer complaining about "Gen Z eating up anything" nonsense. I'm a Xennial (midway thru GenX and Millenial) and I love both games. B4B is a worthy follow-up to L4D, especially considering that Valve has completely abandoned its obligations to the series' fans who have waited for over TEN YEARS for a L4D3 to no avail.
Shame on you for your superficial opinions and for fanboying for a company that throws you peanuts while Turtle Rock worked hard to make B4B a good game.
(buried)
old thing good new thing bad hurr duur
Get over it grampa the golden age of games is over if you don't like it then you can keep playing left 4 dead all you want instead of acting like a cranky old man.
Left 4 Dead (and 2) has so many amazing campaigns, both official and custom. It's one of those games I'll never uninstall. I wish good luck to the B4B devs in trying to capture at least a fraction of the impact L4D and its community left in the history of videogames.