Back 4 Blood’s third expansion is out now for season pass holders. Titled River of Blood it has you taking on the Cult of the Wyrm directly at their base as you attempt to save the new cleaner Tala’s brother and stop their evil schemes. The new Act 6 has 5 missions of varying length and difficulty. It’s a short one overall but it’s fun if you’re looking for another excuse to jump back into the game, so let’s get into it.
Bowmanship
The expansion’s new cleaner Tala is the impetus behind its story. She is searching for her brother Dereck and loves using a bow! It’s a fun sidearm slot weapon that can either fire fast and inaccurate shots or be aimed for long-range, hard-hitting snipes. The best part of her kit is that her bow has no ammo requirements, immediately making her one of my favorite cleaners in the game.
For the expansion itself, the location variety is the best the series has seen yet, with more color and scope to it than even the base game. Real-world style locations take the place of backwoods towns, mining facilities, and the rampant use of stone and gray in the color scheme. Certain areas dazzle with pinks and purples and the new variations of the ridden are truly grotesque. The new Sentinel mob in particular is a disgusting, wriggling, grimy mass of worms with multiple hard-hitting variations.
I played through the new campaign in offline mode with bots who are unbelievably powerful and kept killing everything before I could even see it. It felt easy most of the time except for a distinct lack of medicine cabinets to help restore lost health. I ended up having little to no health bar remaining in the later levels which made them damned hard to beat.
Tala’s passive is that warped chests can now spawn in main missions instead of being in the Ridden Hives from the first expansion. Having her in your crew will also spawn a whistle in every level. Once used a unique friendly Tallboy named Jeff will fight alongside you. Tala’s attacks cause a bleed on anything she hits. New melee weapon attachments have been added to the game finally along with 11 new cards. Weapon wise we have a new LAW missile launcher that packs a wallop and a flamethrower that can be unlocked each mission with a Tool Kit.
In Conclusion
The third expansion for Back for Blood is more of the best parts of the game. It’s short, packs a huge punch, and is a lot of fun to go through alone or with friends. The gold edition of the game goes on sale routinely now for pretty cheap, and the base game is still on Game Pass for console and PC.
Back 4 Blood River of Blood (Expansion 3)
Played on
Windows Store
PROS
- Great Variety in Locations
- Tala is Fun
- Melee Attachments
CONS
- Short
