a fantastic game with a very rocky launch.

fatshark has always excelled at left 4 dead-style melee combat, and this is their crowning example of that. darktide has the absolute chunkiest, most satisfying melee combat i've ever experienced in a game. unfortunately, this game runs terribly on anything short of a supercomputer. i'm lucky enough to have such a computer, but all the friends i used to play this game with don't. because of that, it's difficult to convince anyone to play this with me and i'm forced to endure quickplay matchmaking - which isn't by itself awful, but it's much more enjoyable with friends.

i still rate this game highly because of the sheer quality and polish that went into the gameplay itself - i just wish they put that same level of effort into optimization.

GawDAMN

THIS IS MY SHIET

Disclamer: Game runs like ass. I bought this on my pc (a slightly outdated gaming laptop ill admit but it can run a lot of more modern games on low settings) and it was a torture session. Horrible frameratel, drop ins drop outs every kinda dropping around. Refunded and didn't think about it.

Then i played it at an internet cafe with beefy fucking alienware computers. And it honestly,,,,,,,at ultra still ran like shit. SO i hope the workers in the NASA supercomputer facility are enjoying this game on max settings cause it's fucking gorgeous

I was kind of a vermintide guy, i played vermintide 2 around the time it came out and wasn't overly impressed. I returned to it after playing hundreds of hours of Total war warhammer 2 and enjoyed it a lot more once being familiar with the lore. The gameplay was really hit or miss for me but the writing and world building was awesome for a co-op survival action experience

The same great worlds and writing are here, with LEAGUES better gameplay. This shit RIPS. It's genuinely as engaging as left for dead, something i'd argue the horde zombie FPS genre has compltely failed to do ever since LD2 became the standard, with a sexy 40k skin over it. If you have a good computer, and enjoy decimating hordes of enemies with rifles, melee weapons, or literal fucking handcannons, buy this fucking game.

not really playing but "waiting" for a dedicated solo mode and new classes to play. The core of the game is an absolute blast but it gets old quick and is mired with performance issues and an absolutely infuriating weapon crafting system. You will NEVER have "the perfect weapon" that you crave since weapon traits are essentially a lottery. Imagine a game where you get a sword, you roll 3 traits on it: one is bonus damage, the other is say, very fast swing speed... and then the third is some shit like "+1 critical damage to lemurs" and you can only reroll once and you already spent it. thats how frustrating it can get.

[Quick note on the most controversial part of the game at launch: performance. The game has stabalized quite a bit, but you'll still probably wanna get some updated benchmarks before committing if you're running something like a GTX 1060 or a RX 6500.]

Since this is one of those kind of replayable-mission-based, multiplayer, co-op shooters, I put off reviewing this until I felt like I had a chunk of time in to see how my initial good impression held up as I sunk into the systems.

The answer is that after 40+ hours I still don't really care about the systems because I just wanna shoot plasma gun and watch dirty Nurgle worshipper pop like balloon.

Of this Left 4 Dead lineage of high-volume shooter, I'm quite confident in saying this is the most visceral, impactful, and satisfying one yet put out. I've been a casual enjoyer of the 40k universe since I was introduced to it with Dawn of War II, and this is the game my Quake raised brain has wanted in it since day 1.

The environments are awesome. The lighting is incredible. The graphics all-around make me feel pretty good about the money I've spent on my computer 😂. The sound design rocks. The MUSIC

OH LAWDY THE MUSIC

And so many of these weapons are so fun!

Even better — and probably why everyone's mid-low range computers were getting absolutely toasted on launch — Fat Shark somehow managed to up visually fidelity and shove 2-3 times more enemies onto the map at any one time than I ever saw in Vermintide. That, or they've managed to make the hordes "feel" more voluminous either by more aggressive, enveloping pathing or just through visual tweaks to the size and presence of each model. Probably a mix of all of the above.

The point is, I haven't been able to really think critically about things like "the scaling of combat" and "weapon balance" because when I go into a 3 or 4 difficulty mission (out of 5) with "High Intensity" active, I'm just swept away into the joy of trying to survive against an insane mob.

Even when it's overwhelming it never feels quite hopeless. Or perhaps it's better to say, even when it's hopeless I still just wanna cut and blast and try to fight my way out. It's great.

To that end, the game is actually surprsingly less punishing with health and reviving than Vermintide was. It's not coddling, but the rules on health and recovery have been made more cut-and-dry. If you make it to the next med-station, you can heal back to full and be ready for the next push. They've opted to have "shields" on top of regular health this time, instead of the temporary health recovery present in Vermintide, so now getting grazed by a hit or two isn't as annoyingly detrimental as before.

Geniously, they've introduced a "Unit Cohesion" rule (and other very tabletop inspired mechanics that I quite enjoyed) that serves as the only way to passively recover shields — outside of a handful of situational class abilities. That both removes the plainness of a hide-and-recharge based shield and has been fairly effective in getting groups of matchmade players to actually try and stick together.

As a hobbyist game designer, I bloody love that mechanic.

And they provide a counter balance to it with the active form of shield regeneration, keeping it from being miserable during the times where you need to split up: killing enemies in melee also recovers a chunk of shields. A skilled player can use that to cut themselves a bloody trail to their goal and back, but run out of nearby enemies when shooters descend or simply make too many mistakes and you're in for it.

So basically I'm in love with the core gameloop here and have been very satisfied with it....

Which is good because currently that's really all there is to the game: repeat the same 12-16 missions with different difficulty modifiers and collect gear to optimize your build. There are no story missions or a "Chaos Wastes" type rogue-lite mode to vary it up. The missions are designed a fair bit smarter than Vermintide's original set in that they took a few more clues from the Chaos Waste's maps on how to get more replayability out of them, but the fact remains.

So the game is best enjoyed in bursts. If you try to binge this with some kind of "completion" goal, the game will not satisfy you.

If you boot it up for an hour or two per session for lark with the boiz or to just let off some steam, then it will cover that need splendidly.

Definite recommend for Left 4 Dead fans and Warhammer 40k fans with an interest in shooters.

chugs on high end hardware
has too few missions to keep you grinding and player
each mission can and should be broken up into 3 or 4 missions because playing each one for multiple hours sucks. The last 30-45 minutes of each mission you're gonna be ready to wrap it up and move on to the end screen

one of the few Warhammer games that lets you play as a guardsman in first person though, and with them being my main army I enjoy having that