In another great move for cloud gamers, Back4Blood launched day one on Microsoft xCloud. In this review, we will be focusing how it performs across different devices and screen sizes.
Mobile Phone
The phone we used for this review was an iPhone 11 Pro Max, so that should give you an idea of the size. We went into this expecting it to be far too cramped on a phone, given how busy the game is, but it was a very good experience.
Although there is a lot going on at any given time, it was still easy to pick out our enemies, and the on screen prompts and HUD were always easily readable.
The only thing that felt cramped was the settings and menus, but they weren’t unreadable, just a little on the small size.
As you’d expect, the game looks gorgeous on the smaller screen and we had an absolute blast playing it this way.
Tablet
Given how well it worked on a phone, we were expecting good things when we moved across to a tablet. The one we used was an iPad Pro 12.9.
We weren’t disappointed. The things were easy to see on screen and the larger display made it much easier to follow the action. Controls worked well, and despite the shift to a bluetooth controller, we didn’t experience too much added latency or input lag.
On the larger display the graphics definitely take a hit. It still looks fantastic, but it becomes clearer that the game is being streamed and the compression starts to show.
PC/Big Screen
Playing on the big screen is just as good as the smaller, although it definitely feels more natural. There’s a FOV slider which is nice to see since this seems to be lost in a lot of cloud games.
Unfortunately there is no mouse or keyboard support, but the controller works fantastically well.
One thing to note is that on the larger screen the compression becomes much clearer. Things don’t feel as sharp as if you were playing it locally, but it still looks pretty good!
Conclusion
All in all, Back4Blood on xCloud is a much more playable experience than we were expecting. We really thought it would be a tiny and cramped experience on a phone, but it is actually one of our favourite ways to play!
If you have xCloud then it’s worth giving a go.
Check out our video review below.
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