The first beta for Turtle Rock Studios’ Back 4 Blood launched last week and people all around the world are going crazy over it. As of right now, the beta is only open for people who preordered the game or found a way to get a download key. But that is not stopping the popularity by any means.
Back 4 Blood is currently on Steam’s top 10 most actively played list. “Over on Twitch Back 4 Blood also dominated the video platform–and at the time of writing–it has over 171,000 people watching it. Part of that success comes from Twitch streamers being able to gift early access Back 4 Blood codes to fans, as watching an hour of gameplay will result in a Twitch drop containing the code and three invites for friends,” reports GameSpot. Back 4 Blood has peaked at 88,403 players, which is an absolutely incredible amount given the lack of download keys.
The current Back 4 Blood beta will end on August 9th but will reopen for everyone on August 12th through the 16th. Both betas will have a significant amount of items as all guns are available, five of eight survivors, and most of the special infected. Even though it is different from the Left 4 Dead series, Back 4 Blood still gives players that nostalgic feeling while we run through hordes of infected with their friends.
Fans are loving Back 4 Blood
Of course, there is always room for improvement and surely there will be changes before the full game is launched on October 12, 2021. But even for it just being a beta it still feels like a Left 4 Dead 3. The game also has a deck-building mechanic that was on full display on the beta as players could choose cards to help give them more of an advantage over the infected hordes.
Players have also been obsessing over the player versus player swarm mode that allows two teams of 4 to fight against each other with one team being the infected and the others being the survivors. With that mode players really feel like they are playing Left 4 Dead as it had a mode that was very similar.
Back 4 Blood has taken over all platforms from console to PC, and it will only stop when the beta is over. But for right now we can all just enjoy the spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead and have a lot of fun playing both game modes with all our friends.
Emma Taylor