Really makes you appreciate how focused and coherent Left 4 Dead was.

I remember playing it for the first time, in single-player. If there's one word I'd describe the experience with, it's 'visceral'. It was such a brilliant mix of horror and survival-action where every component played a crucial part. It was a beautiful game distilled to its essentials.

Back 4 Blood in comparison feels bloated, generic and unnecessary. Somewhere underneath all the bloat, there is a mechanically-sound game. Fundamentally, it's still good old Left 4 Dead. But there are so many distracting pointless mechanics and systems piled on top of it that you can barely recognize it. Half of this shit I don't even understand nor do I have any energy to attempt to. You draw some kinda decks and then you earn cards as well. You collect memorabilia for whatever reason. And then there's money and shop where you can buy shit, completely killing the unpredictability of having to fare with whatever weapons and items you find.

Instead of 4 characters, you now have like 50 or something... none of which are memorable. The game completely lacks an aesthetic, looking like any random UE4 game with generic enemy designs and locations.

For some reason you can buy or find a lot of augmentations for your gun, but there is no flashlight. It will sometimes turn on automatically in SOME dark areas, but in many others it won't, so you're stuck stumbling in the dark. You now have a sprint ability, which makes you regular speed slow. You can aim down sights, which of course makes your regular aiming less precise and feels out of place in a game like this. Your melee attack is now a knife-stab for some reason. It used to be a push that could push back several enemies at a time and give you a clearing in a crowd. Don't see any reason why that was changed.

There's a lot of unnecessary items. Like I said earlier, everything in L4D had a very specific purpose and couldn't be replaced. I even sorta criticized L4D2 a bit for adding too much unnecessary stuff that doesn't add much to the formula. But compared to B4B, L4D2 was very subtle.

All in all, I'd say B4B plays almost like a mix of L4D and Call of Duty. It very strongly gives off the impression of a "modern" multiplayer shooter where it's all about upgrades, achievements, collectibles and scores. No longer can you simply immerse yourself into the dark and perilous world of intense survival, where it's just you and your comrades against hordes of undead. In my time with B4B there wasn't one moment that left me impressed or imprinted itself onto my psyche. A truly forgettable, unremarkable, albeit quite competent, but utterly mediocre experience altogether.