Left 4 Dead’s spiritual successor, Back 4 Blood, has fans reliving nostalgic memories of coordinated zombie killing. However, Back 4 Blood delivers a lengthier, meatier, and all-around better experience than its predecessor. The main campaign has plenty of replay value with the addition of mutation cards and varying player decks. How many acts are in the Back for Blood campaign? What sort of shenanigans will the Cleaners be getting up to this time?
Back 4 Blood features four acts broken down into runs and levels. The four acts tell the overarching story and contain several runs each. For example, the first act contains four runs with 13 different levels.
Thankfully, players don’t always have to start at the beginning of an act or a run. They can choose which level to jump in at, which is just the starting safe room tied to that run. Players can always back out of and resume a run without losing any progress. Even though you’ll be searching for new teammates, you’ll still spawn with the same weapons, health, and equipment you had when you left.
In Act I of Back 4 Blood, a small town has been overrun by the Ridden. It’s up to the Cleaners to rescue any remaining survivors and gather as many supplies as they can before the bridge leading into town is blown to bits.
The Cleaners make it back to their base of operations, Fort Hope, and regroup with the game’s four other leading characters. They’ve located what they believe to be a massive hive of Ridden living deep in the Blue Dog mines. The Cleaners must get rid of this hive once and for all if Fort Hope stands a chance of survival.
Act I breaks down into the following runs and levels:
With the Ridden hive taken care of, it’s time to resupply on weapons and provisions. The Cleaners head to an old police station and port to gather whatever they can. Of course, things don’t go according to plan.
Meanwhile, Phillips informs the team of a man named Dr. Rogers, who’s been studying the virus and developing a new chemical weapon called T-5 to combat it. The Cleaners will learn about the Devil Worm, the outbreak’s origin story, and why the world has become the way it is. Dr. Rogers hopes his new weapon can turn the tides. He puts it on display for the Cleaners but only opens the door to more danger.
Act II breaks down into the following runs and levels.
The Cleaners must escape with Dr. Rogers, but he’s useless without his research. They must battle through hordes of zombies to get the good doctor’s work, learning more and more about the outbreak every step of the way. Eventually, they stumble upon a massive breeding ground and the site of Dr. Roger’s T-5 tests.
Act III breaks down into the following runs and levels.
With all hell breaking loose, the Cleaners return via Helicopter to Fort Hope, only to find a creature called “The Abomination” towering over their home.
Act IV only features one level, called ‘The Abomination,” but it is a lengthy mission that will require every ounce of teamwork you have and the best cards in the game.
In total, the cleaners will embark on 32 different missions, which is a significant pre-DLC upgrade from Left 4 Dead 2. We’ll have to wait and see what the DLC future holds for Back 4 Blood, but if we can use Left 4 Dead as an example, fans should be in store for plenty of content. Back 4 Blood has already set itself up to work as a live-service game like Destiny and Warzone. As long as players get a handful of new cards and missions every couple of months, they’ll be happy.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.