It takes a special kind of entitled bellyacher to complain that you wanted a different game from a game that hasn’t even been announced yet, and which may simply be an internet rumour. It’s like the “glass half empty” mindset, but the bartender hasn’t even taken your order and this might not even be a bar. Odds are you’ve wandered into the local antique shop. Well I, friends, am that bellyacher. Here I stand at the “bar”, gesticulating wildly over my non-existent glass.
In this scenario, the confused bartender/antique shop owner is Turtle Rock, developers of Left 4 Dead homage Back 4 Blood. Rumour has it that they’re making a Back 4 Blood 2 – but as I loudly explain to the bartender/antique shop owner, showering the cocktail measures/vintage Toby Jugs in spittle, I don’t want a Back 4 Blood 2. I want a follow-up to 2015’s Evolve, in which four hunters team up to track down a fifth person playing as a kaiju. “A flagon of your finest Gorgon, please,” I roar, thumping the bar, while Turtle Rock tries to sell me a gentleman’s travelling suitcase from the 1920s.
I guess we should talk about the Back 4 Blood 2 rumour first. It’s a short, thrilling tale with only one character, Jesse Hutch, a man with very large arms who did motion capture work for Back 4 Blood. On his iStunt page, Hutch mentions that he’s “lead performer” on “Gobi 2”. The original Back 4 Blood is listed as “Gobi” on SteamDB. I learned about all this via MP1st, who note that somebody registered a domain for back4blood2.com back in May 2023. Tangential observation: stuntpeople resumes make colourful reading. Hutch’s feats include “Misery Style Kidnap Escape” in the movie House Of Terror. He also did “Frat Guy/Massive Puking/Backflips” in Scary Movie 3. Did… did he have to puke and backflip simultaneously? I guess I’ll have to watch Scary Movie 3.
Colour all this speculation for the moment, but it seems reasonably solid. Now, let me re-commence whinging. The words “Left 4 Dead spiritual successor” will always rouse a hunger in me, but I found Back 4 Blood quite disappointing. Usefully, Graham did too, so I can just copy-paste the relevant section from his February 2023 news story about Turtle Rock beginning work on an untitled new game.
“It seemed to replace the immaculate pacing and tension of its spiritual predecessors with empty spectacle and bulletsponge boss fights,” Graham wrote. I will only add that I really hated the very non-L4D-ish emphasis on hoarding and customising weapons. It felt like they’d ripped Left 4 Dead’s face off and grafted it to a bog-standard zombie shlooter.
Evolve had its share of gun-massaging. It was also nakedly DLC-driven and had a very grindy unlocks system. But I’ll forgive all that because it was somehow both a multiplayer stealth experience and a game in which one player is a giant monster, who must roam the map eating other wildlife until they have enough biomass to cocoon themselves and evolve. Meanwhile, the human hunters flit about with their silly jetpacks and tracking tools, trying to trap the monster inside an energy dome so that they can make proper inroads on its enormous healthbar.
I had a lot of fun as the Goliath, Evolve’s starting beastie. I used to hide in bushes and throw rocks at people, a tactic that has also served me well at company training events. I was also pretty good as the Kraken, an aerial lightning caster who can seed the map with electro-mines. Other multiplayer have done the many-versus-one bossrush format – the standout is probably Hunt: Showdown – but few have done so on such a scale, with maps even Godzilla can get lost in. Sadly, Evolve is no longer officially available on PC. I’d love them to make a sequel that strips away some of the unlocks cruft and gives the fundamentals more chance to breathe. Come on, Turtle Rock. You could get Jesse Hutch to play the new Goliath. He’s got the biceps for it. Perhaps the backflip puke could be one of his special attacks.
In the absence of such a prospect, I guess I’ll keep an eye out for Back 4 Blood 2. If you’re looking for the “glass half full” mentality here, Alice B (RPS in peace) did quite like the original Back 4 Blood. “This game is peak early-00s cheese,” she wrote. “Not just because many of the enemies have the same texture as a fully loaded pizza.”