Malf on 25/10/2021 at 09:41

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So Henke, Jeshibu and I played some of this yesterday, and overall, I reckon we had a pretty good time!
It's basically Left 4 Dead 3 in all but name, and I think if you approach it as such instead of seeing it as derivative, you'll have a good time with it.

The campaign segment we played never felt overwhelming, but did build up to a very cool crescendo, which forced us to split up in order to achieve the final objective.
There were several really nice set-pieces throughout our session, with the addition of the Ogre being of particular note. It's a mahoosive boss that seems to pop up at random, and usually takes two appearances to defeat. It's like a giant Tank and even rips bits of itself off in order to hurl them at the the players.

I can definitely see this being something I would play with friends regularly, but there are caveats.

One, the price is simply too much considering the type of game it is. This may sound unfairly dismissive considering how much effort has obviously gone in to the game, but this is the kind of game that is best played in short bursts, not for extended periods, and with a regular group of friends, and not randoms. To that end, I think I would be comfortable paying £20-30 for it. But £40 is a bit too much.

This is also amplified by the presence of season passes which seem to cost as much again, and the intention is obviously to have players paying that amount for every new season. To encourage that, there's the usual things included like progression systems and cosmetics, and to be honest, these all feel a bit out of place in a L4D style game.
There's even weapon drops with increasing power levels a la Borderlands or Destiny, and I really feel this is completely out of touch with the way people play these games.
I like to pick a couple of weapons at the start and stick with them throughout the campaign, maybe swapping out for different scenarios. But to have to stop and compare stats on weapons throughout the game during normal play partly breaks the flow and partly feels completely unnecessary.

In short, B4B has had a lot of "Games as a Service" ideas crammed in to it, where I don't think it needs them.
I am somewhat worried that the director will be balanced towards forcing players to engage with the progression systems, but time will tell.

Whatever my feelings around that side of the game, I am looking forward to playing it again. It's got a lot of the stuff that made the original games great, such as fantastic environmental storytelling and compelling characters on top of very solid core gameplay that runs exceptionally well whilst looking good.
And there are enough additions to the formula to make it interesting.

One final note on price; it's currently included with Game Pass, so effectively, we're playing it for "free". So if you fancy giving it a go, and you already subscribe to Game Pass, there's very little to lose.

henke on 25/10/2021 at 11:50

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We used Mumble for VC, not sure what the in-game chat is like.

But yes, t'was good zombie shootin. And yeah we can aim for another session this Saturday.

Malf on 25/10/2021 at 12:58

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We did the "Tutorial" I think, but it played out pretty much like a normal L4D episode.
If you've played L4D before, you should be fine in B4B.

Edit: Does the game even have inbuilt voice comms, or is it handled by XBox?
Mumble worked fine for us on Saturday. I'll have to check if Mumble supports positional audio for the game.

Edit Again: Doesn't look like there's support for positional audio in B4B in Mumble.
Here's the list of games that do support it:
(https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Games#Supported_games)

Malf on 26/10/2021 at 12:43

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If you've got Game Pass or can find a decent promo for it (it regularly offers trials for £1/$1 a month), I'd say it's definitely worth a shot.
From our session on Sunday, it felt rock-solid to me. It looked great and had a consistently high framerate.
Be aware that the install footprint is quite large though.

I've not got much experience with Vermintide, so my nearest comparison is the Left 4 Dead games, but the moment-to-moment gameplay certainly doesn't feel any "gamier" than those.

The surrounding bollocks is very "Games as a Service" though, as noted above. And I feel like the card system isn't entirely necessary, just being a way of bolting on not-needed complexity (and feeding the Skinner box).

Side thoughts:
Progression systems are increasingly the bane of online games, and actively counter attracting new players over time. I've always known this, but it really hit hard for me when I tried to play The Division with a few of the guys from here.
I think there's a lot in that game that gamers should experience, but the progression system puts barriers in the way of playing with friends who have differing amounts of free time. I wanted to play some of the Underground content with friends, or explore the Dark Zone as a group, but in order to get to that level of play, there was a large amount of levelling and gear-gating, which just turns a lot of people away.
And if I wanted to play with my main character while playing with new players, it would make earlier content trivially easy and boring. The end result was that the new player would feel like they weren't contributing.
Which was a shame, because The Division's Underground missions are some of the best examples of procedural content in modern AAA games, and the Dark Zone can be incredibly tense and exciting.

And this is the same for Destiny 2, The Division 2, Diablo 3, any MMO you care to chuck a stick at, etc.

The last thing a new player wants to hear is that the real fun starts after they've spent many hours grinding away at filler content.

I don't think that problem will be quite as pronounced in Back 4 Blood, as I suspect you can always choose to play at lower difficulties in order to bypass the progression mechanisms. But it's still an unwelcome barrier to entry.

Thirith on 11/11/2021 at 15:38

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This weekend not, unfortunately, but I sent a Steam message to you (as well as henke and Jeshibu) about Saturday the week after.