Back 4 Blood - Expansion 1: Tunnels of Terror (DLC)

My first question going into Tunnels of Terror was simple: does it give people who bounced off Back 4 Blood a reason to return, or is it fan service for those still grinding the campaign? After spending time with it, the answer is pretty firmly the latter. The DLC slots seven Ridden Hives directly into the base game's existing campaign acts rather than standing up as a separate mode you can launch from the menu. You stumble across a glowing tunnel entrance mid-mission, dive in, fight through a maze of warped Ridden, and surface back into the campaign hopefully carrying better gear. It is clever in one specific way: by routing everything through the existing campaign, Turtle Rock avoided fragmenting an already thin matchmaking pool. But if you were hoping for a fresh standalone reason to reinstall, this is not that. The Hives themselves are the one area where the DLC earns real credit. The seven procedurally shaped dungeons introduce Warped Ridden variants with attack patterns you haven't seen before, and a new webbing-removal mechanic forces one player to stand exposed while the rest clear the path. That small moment of coordinated tension captures what co-op horde shooting does best. Going deeper into an Inner Lair is a genuine highlight, delivering a dense, almost arena-style encounter with strong loot at the end: seven new legendary weapons including the Prototype 378 (lightning rounds that slow enemies) and the Damnation rifle (incendiary rounds that ignite the Ridden). Skull Totems scattered through the hives double as a currency for a new supply line of cards, skins, and cosmetics, adding a light progression loop on top of the main run. The two new Cleaners, Heng and Sharice, are functional additions rather than transformative ones. Heng, a former chef turned survivalist, can sense and ping nearby hive entrances, prepper stashes, and weapon attachments through walls, which makes him quietly invaluable for teams who hate aimless searching. Sharice, an axe-wielding firefighter, generates makeshift armor by shooting armor plates off enemies and brings solid trauma resistance to the group, making her the go-to pick for anyone who likes to absorb punishment. Neither has cutscene presence in the existing story, so they feel a little bolted on narratively, but their ability kits are genuinely useful. The real sticking point is the same one the base game has never fully resolved. Balance is still rough in spots, and the Hives can tip from tense to exhausting fast when the game throws four mini-bosses at a single doorway. Running into a no-healing corruption card deep inside a Hive can turn a fun detour into a slow death march. The no-matchmaking restriction inside Hives also means you need friends or a pre-formed group to get the best out of them; random pub teams will often skip hive entrances entirely or drag the act out to two to three times its normal length while half the lobby argues about whether to go in. That social friction is real and shows up regularly in community feedback. Where the expansion succeeds is in not walling off its content behind ownership walls. Anyone in a party can enter a Hive as long as one player has the DLC, which is the right call and keeps groups intact. The accompanying patch also tightened some longstanding bugs and AI behavior, so the overall game genuinely feels better to play than it did at launch. For fans still running campaigns regularly, that combination of new legendary weapons, 12-plus new cards, fresh Cleaner abilities, and hive loot loops offers a meaningful amount of new mileage. For everyone else, the underlying issues that drove you away haven't been fixed here, just temporarily covered by a new layer of tunnels.

Alex · Scout Team

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