6/10
I’m gonna be honest: if this game wasn’t constantly marketed as the “spiritual successor” to Left 4 Dead, I probably would’ve been much less harsh on it.

But that’s exactly the problem.

You CANNOT spend years telling people that Back 4 Blood is the successor to Left 4 Dead and that it’s made by the creators of Left 4 Dead, then deliver something that completely misses what made those games special in the first place.

Is it a terrible game?
No.

Is it Left 4 Dead 3?
Absolutely not.

The story is okay. The Cleaners are decent enough, the weapons feel good, and there are moments where you can see some genuinely cool ideas buried under everything else.

But man… the vibe just isn’t there.

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 had this unique atmosphere that made every campaign memorable. The music, the characters, the pacing, the special infected, the simplicity of jumping in with friends and immediately having fun.

Back 4 Blood feels like it looked at Left 4 Dead and said:

“What if we added 37 systems, 12 currencies, card decks, progression trees and a bunch of DLCs?”

Instead of improving the formula, it feels like it overcomplicated it.

And speaking of DLCs…

There are WAY too many paid expansions for a game that never convinced me it deserved them in the first place.

Every time I played, I couldn’t stop comparing it to Left 4 Dead 2, and every single time it made me want to go play Left 4 Dead 2 instead.

That’s probably the biggest criticism I can give.

Not because Back 4 Blood is awful.

But because after a few hours I realized I’d rather replay a 2009 game than continue playing the supposed successor released more than a decade later.

Overall:

Good guns.
Decent story.
Some fun moments.

But as a “spiritual successor” to Left 4 Dead?

Massive disappointment.

It’s not a bad game.

It’s just painfully average living in the shadow of two masterpieces.

Ok, so you've read the other reviews and now you know Back 4 Blood is a great game, but I want to talk about something different: playing it with a gyro controller.

What's a gyro controller? Well, that's any controller that allows you to control how you look and aim simply by moving the controller itself.

See, I'm the kinda guy who sucks at aiming with controllers, but I also like to sit back and chill with a controller. And if a game can be adequately configured to support a usable gyro then it immediately gets my attention. And the easier it is to configure, the more consistent and fluid it feels, and the more transparent it is, well... That's where I'll put in the effort to help others sit up and notice.

Back 4 Blood, without a doubt, ticks every gyro-gamer box because it's in-game controller configuration let's us COMPLETELY turn off any joystick-shaping features like acceleration, aim assist and deadzone, so that we can truly map the gyro to look and aim without any of the quirks we often see in other games that CLAIM to disable such shaping but actually leave a little something enabled under the hood that may utterly destroy tracking consistency and muscle memory.

Now yes - I know - you simply can't beat binding a gyro to the actual mouse, but when a game just gets out of the way and let's you bind a gyro that "feels" like a mouse via "Gyro To Joystick Camera" without the compromises doing so often brings (stutter cause by mixed input, flickering glyphs, etc) then it very much deserves to be highlighted. And Back 4 Blood absolutely stands out where so many other games promise to "get out of the way" but somehow ultimately fail.

"Gyro To Joystick Camera" is truly impressive in Back 4 Blood.

Anyway, I have 8BitDo Ultimate 2 Wireless, Steam Controller (2026) and Steam Deck pure gamepad controller layouts available for Back 4 Blood in Steam's "Community Layouts", but here are the Controller settings you will need to change in-game to achieve a consistent, fluid experience:

Horizontal Sensitivity: 100
Vertical Sensitivity: 100
Right Stick Deadzone: 0 (ZERO)

Camera Movement: LINEAR
Camera Acceleration: OFF
Camera Smooth Duration: 0 (ZERO)

Aim Assist: OFF

Aim Down Sights Low Zoom Sensitivity Multiplier: 1
Aim Down Sights High Zoom Sensitivity Multiplier: 1

Here is the "Gyro To Joystick Camera" Steam controller configuration settings that offer a good starting point:

Minimum Gyro Input Speed: 0 (ZERO)
Maximum Gyro Input Speed: 720

Gyro Sensitivity: 5x
Gyro Speed Deadzone: 0.1
Gyro Precision Speed: 10

All other setting are kept at defaults; I'll leave latching the gyro to your own personal preference. For ADS, we can configure a MODE SHIFT for the gyro with a LEFT TRIGGER activator, where the MODE SHIFT gyro is configured as above but with these changes:

Gyro Sensitivity: 2.5x
Gyro Precision Speed: 5

And, finally, here are the Steam controller configuration settings I use to help tame the right Joystick, since we have set the in-game joystick sensitivity to extremely high:

Horizontal Scale: 60
Vertical Scale: 40
Stick Response Curve: EXTRA WIDE

I find that this configuration presents an exceptional gyro experience, but don't be afraid to make it your own through experimentation and tuning.

Enjoy!

Great Fun Coop Zombie killing game as close to a Left For Dead 3 as we will ever get.