Both of these games explicitly ask you to fight frighteningly alien elements with as much control as possible, from carefully plotting hidden paths to constructing strategic loadouts. The Last of Us' stealth-driven levels where you need to stalk and kill several clickers to avoid their descent upon you reek with punishing stress, and Call of Duty's zombie modes complicate with various upgrades and inter-level goals to keep up with ( Back 4 Blood does have a similar, self-contained "horde mode" that walks closer down this path). In other zombie survival horror games, I would get frustrated or worn out by the appearance of certain over-stressful, over-difficult, uncontrollable combat sequences. But oftentimes, it is a necessity to move forward in a level if you want to activate a certain device to get to a certain essential area, you will trigger the horde, and there is nothing you can do about it. At times, it is a punishment for a sloppy player decision, like if you accidentally run into some zombie crows. You will get hurt and you will cause hurt, and you will wonder when it will ever end. The "horde," as you might imagine, is a ginormous, seemingly unending swarm of ridden that appears and appears and appears, crowding and overwhelming and cornering you into a frenzy of destruction and combat. I loved these qualities about it.īut I really loved when it pulled the rug under me and gave me something to worry about. Back 4 Blood didn't seem designed to punish me, or even necessarily challenge me it seemed designed to give me a good time. But by and large, I was surprised and relieved at how manageable it was to mow down these varying types of ridden and plow through these levels with a certain kind of adrenaline-pumped ease. Lower-level ridden are fast and bitey but reasonably easy to kill, while upper-level characters models like "exploders," "tall boys," and "ogres" have grotesque, mutated powers that can do some serious damage if you don't immediately peg the weak spot on their decomposed bodies. There are various types of "ridden," the zombielike creatures you battle, saturated throughout the world of Back 4 Blood.
#Pizza frenzy gameplay Pc#
RELATED: ‘Back 4 Blood’ PC Trailer Showcases the Game’s Impressive Graphics and Confirms Crossplay Instead of controlling via an external sense of control, the horde tells you to lean into the chaos, to “love the one you’re with.Image via Warner Bros. They tell you, straight up, “you will get submerged by chaos, now,” and encourage you to boldly dive into the deep end. They douse you with blood and guts, rendered in pleasingly squicky character animation (i.e. But the Back 4 Blood hordes hit you in the gut. I can get caught up in a kind of frustrated over-intellectualization in other versions of this kind of sequence, the main thoughts and feelings orienting around “What do you want me to do, game?!” rather than any gut-level, emotional sense of reward. There’s a visceral rawness, a genuinely nerve-rattling sensation to these sequences. In my experience, there’s not much you can do other than stand your ground, shoot, stab, and blow up these ridden as best as you possible can - or even better, to run away from a literally unending spawn of monsters and survive ’til you make the next safe room. There are “correct” ways to win these moments, the games argue, and it’s up to you to find them and tame the chaos in front of you.īack 4 Blood‘s horde swarms do not assert such calcified arguments. The Last of Us‘ stealth-driven levels where you need to stalk and kill several clickers to avoid their descent upon you reek with punishing stress, and Call of Duty‘s zombie modes complicate with various upgrades and inter-level goals to keep up with ( Back 4 Blood does have a similar, self-contained “horde mode” that walks closer down this path).
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