| Our Score | 7.8/10 (Good) |
| The Good | Excellent combat in impressively formidable environments |
| The Bad | Technical issues, shallow progression, hollow hub area |
| Release Date | November 30, 2022 |
| Developed By | Fatshark |
| Available On | PC, Xbox Series X|S |
When you have a game as wonderfully well-paced and tightly designed as Warhammer: Vermintide 2, where do you, as the developer, go from there? Yes, porting that compelling swarm shooter-slasher flow to the 40K setting is the most natural setting shift imaginable, but Fatshark deserves plenty of praise for trying to make Warhammer 40,000: Darktide more than just a copy-paste job set several dozen millennia into the future. Darktide makes some meaningful changes while keeping the core loop very much intact. And while some of those changes are appreciated and logical, others feel hollow and incomplete.
The result is a game that feels ambitious and exciting–especially as you’re wading through the deep dirty waters of Nurgle fanboys in the bowels of the Hive City they’ve overrun–but in other ways, it’s as unpolished as an Ogryn’s rusty cleaver.
One of the big changes in Darktide from its Fantasy predecessor is that you’re no longer playing from a pre-existing bunch of heroes, which has its ups and downs. The character creator really lets you stamp some identity onto your character, selecting their home planet, background, and ‘defining moment’ (as well as appearance, of course) before heading into the fray. I’ve already praised the game’s naming rules too, which gently direct you toward giving your characters lore-friendly names.
In-game, your RPG-style choices on your character’s background affect the dialogue and banter between the characters. The number of permutations given all the different class and background combinations is impressive, but there’s still a little of the Vermintide crew’s soul missing here. While you really feel like the five heroes of Vermintide are on this epic against-the-odds journey together, developing unique dynamics and relationships with each other as they go on, in Darktide the characters are strangers each time, and that’s reflected in the more impersonal interactions. I certainly have a fondness for my eccentric Austrian-sounding Psyker, and my Slavic-voiced Ogryn Chungov, but I can’t say the same of the other people I fleetingly play alongside.
Likewise, the scattered non-linear mission selection process–whereby randomised mission types pop up across the game’s maps on a countdown timer–takes away from any sense of a campaign or story here. You’re essentially a miscreant in a squad of fellow miscreants, given a chance to redeem yourself for your past crimes by going on suicide missions into a Hive City besieged by the rising tide of the Plague God Nurgle’s followers and forces. The rather unrefined cutscenes as you level up do little to imbue the experience with much meaning, though in a mythos as hopelessly ruinous as that of 40K, you could make the case that the nihilism you feel playing this isn’t misplaced. You are meant to feel disposable and unheroic, though whether or not this chimes with you is a matter of personal taste. For me, the Vermintide wild bunch just ‘clicked’ better.
Of course, the real business of Darktide is in the missions themselves, as you and three other players charge into the depths of the Hive. There are seven mission types taking place across several maps, which curiously overlap with each other in five distinct biomes. Most of these missions essentially involve running through a level from A to B, fighting swarms of enemies in large areas, then pressing some buttons, fighting a final mega-swarm, and getting the hell out of there. It’s a simple formula, and it works.
Each level takes 20-30 minutes to complete, and much of that feels like a white-knuckle, balls-to-the-wall gauntlet as you tear through hundreds of enemies. The roster spans regular zombie-like grunts, well-armoured gunners, and heavy ‘Elite’ troops, as well as mid-level bosses—such as the hideously huge Beast of Nurgle and the elusive Daemonhost—who make randomised appearances to keep you on your toes. There seems to be more variety in Elite enemies this time round, ranging from kamikaze Pox Walkers to Hounds, shield-wielding Ogryn, and even extremely meddlesome long-range snipers.
Darktide’s combat feels great. It’s brutal, cathartic, and true to its predecessors, evoking both panic and power-tripping in equal measure.
Ironically, the end-of-level bosses in Assassination missions are often easier than those you meet mid-level, and the fact that it’s always pretty much the same fight–big dude with a force shield in an arena–is a little disappointing given the pleasingly unique boss battles of Vermintide 2 (not to mention that there is no chronological final boss because there is no form of chronological story progress).
There are four classes in the game, each with a distinct role to play (though none more distinct than the charmingly oversized Ogryn Skullbreaker). For all their differences, each class is bound by the same basic controls and rules, which are extremely easy to pick up and master. You have your light and heavy melee attacks, blocking, dodging, and a special ‘Warp Charge’ ability that recharges on a timer.
Of course, guns play a big part here too, with each character having access to a range of firearms that generally allow battles to take place at longer distances and with more verticality than in Vermintide. There’s more high ground here, and as the Psyker, I made it a habit to climb up a ladder where possible to get a top-down view of a skirmish; from here, I’d tag enemies for my teammates, pop heads using the Psyker’s super-satisfying psychic power, and break up swarms using my Surge Staff’s area-of-effect explosion. A similar strategy can be used as the Sharpshooter, while Zealots and Ogryns are better off tearing things up on the fight floor.
Enemies also benefit from Darktide’s increased focus on ranged combat. They can now ‘suppress’ you with gunfire, which staggers your movement and puts you into something of a mini-stun state. While the long-range firefights give Darktide an interesting new layer, playing as the largely short-range Ogryn or Zealot–classes that need to close the distance on enemies–can make an excess of ranged enemies feel like a bit of a nuisance, and the staggering effect of enemy fire doesn’t always work well with the otherwise liquid-smooth flow of battle.
But niggles aside, Darktide’s combat feels great. It’s brutal, cathartic, and true to its predecessors, evoking both panic and power-tripping in equal measure. The gore and dismemberments are immensely satisfying, with enemies falling apart in a confetti of leeches, brains, and dark rotten blood; each individual enemy really feels like a corporeal pile of flesh and bone, even though they’re disposable by the hundreds.
On the surface level, Darktide is an uncomplicated first-person hack-and-slasher. But at higher difficulties, teamwork and tactical play really count for a lot. One of the most memorable games I had was stepping up, grossly underpowered, to the fourth difficulty tier for the first time as my Psyker. I formed an excellent wordless bond with an Ogryn player, who protected me with his shield while tagging distant Elite enemies so I could easily spot them and pop their heads. It was all going swimmingly until we got to the final boss battle, and said Ogryn got knocked off a ledge surrounded by enemies, making him impossible to save. Once he fell, the synergy of the team collapsed and we failed our mission. But it’s a big credit to Darktide that the defeats are often just as exhilarating as the victories.
Much like Vermintide, progression is fairly simple, shaped by weapons of ever-increasing ‘Power,’ and leveling up your character. Every five levels each class gets to choose one of three unique ‘Talents,’ which you can switch in and out between missions as much as you please. That flexibility is much appreciated, though the lack of Vermintide-style sub-classes or ‘Careers’ makes it feel a little less robust.
While I don’t normally dwell on technical issues in a new game, I have to say that Darktide’s performance has been a mess for me on a powerful PC. Both in the pre-order beta and since release, the game’s been crashing frequently, and there’s a general lack of polish in the little things; the loading screens feature various ‘motivational’ Imperial propaganda in generic font, the cutscenes feel stiffly animated, the ‘dropship’ scene as you go into a mission sees player models ‘popping’ into their seats ungracefully, and the hub area–which you share with other players–looks like it’s designed to be some kind of social hub but is totally void of activities and interactivity.
Despite the shaky start, I do believe that Darktide will, like its predecessor, get much better with time. It needs expansion, polish, and more sense of a campaign and community. Either that, or it should just follow Vermintide’s approach with Chaos Wastes and create an endlessly replayable mode with plenty of randomisation.
Once you get down into the dilapidated yet impressive levels of the Hive and start swinging, Darktide is as great a swarm shooter experience as any, but it needs to improve much of the surrounding infrastructure to make that core combat experience feel rewarding and meaningful. Who knows? I may even come back in a year to re-review the game (which is something that should generally happen with more game reviews), but in the meantime it’s a simmering cauldron of potential that still feels a little raw.
