Back 4 Blood, the new zombie co-op that isn't Left 4 Dead 3 but looks very much like what it would have been, enjoyed a seriously successful beta weekend with almost 100,000 players sawing their way through the hordes on Steam.
From developer Turtle Rock Studios, the first-person shooter and survival horror shares a lot in common with Left 4 Dead with a group of four characters who are slashing and shooting down the undead. Each of the eight Cleaners offer different gameplay perks - for example, Hoffman has one extra offensive item slot and Holly boosts stamina for the whole team. There's also the Cards that augment a Cleaner's Health, Ammo, and Stamina. However, the game's artificial intelligence has access to Corruption Cards that will stack the odds against the survivors, like triggering a beefy special zombie or layering fog on the battlefield to confuse and split the squad.
"We've really upped the replayability here with all of those different systems," said executive producer Matt O'Driscoll in an interview with Inverse. "We truly believe each time we're going to do a run, it's going to be something new, depending on how you build your deck, who you play with, the Corruption Cards, and what level of difficulty you're on."
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Turtle Rock Studios is of course home to the original creators of Left 4 Dead so the two games are going to share DNA, so to speak. Check out Back 4 Blood in action below!
Over the weekend, SteamDB recorded a peak player count of 98,024 and the game is now in the top ten most-wishlisted titles on the storefront. Furthermore, Twitch Tracker shows that there were approximately 433,000 viewers tuning into streams of Back 4 Blood on August 8th. It's an impressive performance thus far and the game releases in two months' time. Should Turtle Rock Studios surf this wave of hype like Carissa Moore, we could be looking at a game that gnaws its way into GAMINGbible's list of the best games of 2021.
If the game is ticking a lot of boxes for you, you've not missed the boat. There will be a second beta session starting on August 12th and ending on August 16th. It features all of the same stuff with two PvE missions, five of the eight Cleaners, all weapons, and brutal PvP opportunities.
Featured Image Credit: Turtle Rock Studios