'Back 4 Blood' Is Bringing Back The Best Feature From 'Left 4 Dead 2'

Back 4 Blood, the upcoming zombie co-op shooter from developer Turtle Rock Studios isn't shy about letting us know what it wants to be. It's the spiritual successor to the developer's hugely popular Left 4 Dead franchise, and based on what we've seen and played so far? It's Left 4 Dead 3 in all but name.

Everything you might have expected from a sequel to the original Valve/Turtle Rock franchise seems to be making its way to Back 4 Blood, and it we're pretty confident it'll only get better as the studio continues to work on the game ahead of the full release. There are massive zombie hordes, plenty of different types of weapons, co-op FPS gameplay, and some huge undead beasts that players will need to work together to take down.

Take a peek at some of our gameplay of the recent Alpha below to get a better feel for just how Left 4 Dead Back 4 Blood really is.

You could pretty much slap Left 4 Dead 3 on the trailers and I'm not sure anyone would bat an eyelid, right? Back 4 Blood already looks like exactly the kind of sequel we wanted, and according to Turtle Rock Studios, there are plenty more fan-favourite features from the Left 4 Dead franchise coming to the new game.

In a new video all about Turtle Rock's vision for Back 4 Blood, the developers acknowledge the obvious comparisons between this new project and their last franchise. They also tease the return of one exciting feature that helped make the original zombie shooter franchise such a hit.

Specifically, it looks like Back 4 Blood will be bringing back Left 4 Dead 2's Game Director mode. This mode extended the game's replayablity by a ridiculous amount, allowing an AI to remix aspects of levels and, essentially, completely change up the experience with each playthrough.

In Left 4 Dead 2, this mode would change things like enemy spawn locations, items, and things like that. Back 4 Blood will build on Director Mode in a big way, however, by introducing a number of new tricks to keep things fresh for much longer.

One of the new mechanics being added to Director Mode is something called Corruption Cards. Turtle Rock explains that the Game Director will deal random Corruption Cards at the start of each game to introduce various random modifiers. You can hit back with your own deck of cards to counter these changes though, using your own modifiers to increase things like health, damage, and stamina. Turtle Rock teases that "no experience is going to be the same twice", which sounds good to me.

Topics: News, Back 4 Blood, left 4 dead