TGO Daily | October 13, 2021 | Back 4 Blood Review Roundup
✏️ From the Author
I did an indie spotlight on it yesterday, but I just want to reiterate:
Just…Just try it, ok? I can’t get enough of it.
— Adrian
📰 In The News
1. Back 4 Blood review roundup
Turtle Rock Studios’ Back 4 Blood released yesterday, and reviews are now available. Created by the original team of Left 4 Dead, the game has been received generally positively by critics, albeit with a few conditions.
Sitting in the 73rd percentile on OpenCritic, even the poorest reviews mention that it is a good game, just with a few fatal flaws.
The good: If you liked multiplayer Left 4 Dead 2, you will probably like this game. Back 4 Blood is a spiritual successor, and effectively captures what made its inspiration so fun. As Press Start explains:
“For all intents and purposes, this game is a reskinned and renamed threequel in the Left 4 Dead series, it’s got the archetypal enemy classes we’re all familiar with, it has hazards that’ll alert the horde when tripped. Name a gameplay beat from Left 4 Dead, and this game has an analogue for it.”
Their own additions to the formula were also widely praised by critics. There is a card system that makes every run different, with both sides of the fight constantly changing the rules. There are also some new zombie varieties.
The bad: Many critics noted two major issues, which influenced their final score to varying degrees.
The big one is that solo players really get shafted. There is no progression system available to those playing alone, with no ability to unlock achievements. The developers have said they’re working on it, but it’s important for people to know.
Many critics also mentioned the game’s difficulty options. There is apparently a “huge gulf between veteran (medium) difficulty and recruit (the lowest setting)” (PCGamesN), forcing the player to either cakewalk or struggle severely.
Polygon provides our summary:
“Left 4 Dead is a beautiful relic, something I and many others spent hundreds of hours playing in high school and college. But with games like Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and even Aliens: Fireteam Elite branching out and taking more of a class-based approach, I was sure Back 4 Blood’s more classic bone structure would crumble under the pressure. But Back 4 Blood is more like that makeshift, armor-clad Hummer you see in every zombie show and movie: The bones of what it once was are easy to see, but it’s been reinforced to survive in a new environment.”
Back 4 Blood released yesterday on Xbox One / Series X, PS4/PS5, and PC.
2. Epic and Innersloth mend fences
Two months ago, Fortnite released a new game mode called “Imposters”. Shamelessly inspired by Among Us, it took a number of distinctly unique aspects of Among Us with no mention of it along the way. The Among Us devs commented on it:
Well, today Epic Games credited Innersloth as the inspiration for the game in a blog post detailing the upcoming changes to the mode. They’ve also hinted at an upcoming collaboration on Twitter:
Looking deeper: This isn’t the first time Epic has run into issues being “inspired” by other media properties. The PUBG devs sued Epic for Fortnite’s very existence, and they’ve been confronted by many people who created various emotes/dances present in the game.
The situation with Among Us felt particularly unfortunate though — an indie team capturing such large attention is a rarity, and a collaboration from the start would have been the best option.
3. Hitman 3 outperforms
Source: gamesindustry.biz
IO Interactive has released its annual report for financial statements from March 2020 to 2021, following the release of Hitman 3 last January.
They reported revenues of $78 million USD, with $42 million of that being profit — a major increase from the previous year, when they did not release a game. The team told gamesindustry.biz in April that it performed 300% better than the previous two games in the franchise.
Why it matters: IO Interactively famously became an independent company after being a subsidiary of Square Enix for over a decade. Making a move like that is uncommon (with Bungie’s departure from Activision Blizzard being another big example), and can be very dangerous for a studio to do.
The success of the Hitman franchise has secured the studio for the foreseeable future, and has allowed them to expand. They are currently working on live events for Hitman 3, with an untitled 007 / James Bond title in the works, bringing that IP back to video games after a long time away. They’ve even got another unannounced project!
💭Adrian’s Thoughts: Couldn’t be happier for this team. Hitman is one of my favourites, and I’m looking forward to everything they do in the coming years.
💡 Worth A Look
“Raw Fury games to be adapted for TV and film.” Includes recently released Sable
“Long-standing Spelunky speedrun record revealed as fraudulent”
📅 Events & Releases!
October 14: Roblox Developers Conference, The Jackbox Party Pack 8
October 15: Animal Crossing Direct, Crysis Remastered Trilogy, NHL 22
October 16: Minecraft Live, DC Fandome
October 19: Inscryption
October 21: The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes
🔥 Thank You!
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