Ever since I've heard about Left 4 Dead as a kid, my mind has been filled with thoughts about how awesome this game sounds on paper. Years later, when I got a proper PC to play games on and finally figured out how digital stores work (since most of the games were obtained locally from renting services or certain shops), I decided to play it. I got bored after around 10 hours, and there were attempts to try it again, but it wasn't even close to fulfilling my expectations. During the next few years, I've tried many co-op shooters that were L4D inspired, but they also weren't my cup of tea. Even Vermintide, which is the developer's previous game, didn't fulfill my needs.

Darktide is finally a game that scratches that itch I had as a kid. For me, the core gameplay of this game feels just perfect. Every aspect of the combat contributes to how the game is always engaging to play, from its hybrid arsenal to varied playstyles, given by classes and a huge amount of weapons. The rich range of specialists in this game provides the unpredictability that you would want in a game like this. Levels, despite feeling samey have a lot of replay value (provided in typical for genre enemy director and level modifiers) are still very fun after a number of replays. I just wish game had something more to go for than better equipment (Like a scoring system for example).

Sometimes you would get a match where you and your team don't have well-rounded builds, and you happen to play on the Damnation difficulty. During these matches, Darktide can have this great "going against the impossible" feeling, where you are brute-forcing with minimal health left against those huge hordes and waves of specialists just to get to the elevator that creates a safe place to rest for 10 seconds, before placing you back into the action and facing an even bigger horde.

Despite all the positive things I have to say about Darktide, the game is objectively... shit. The list of flaws you can find is very very long, and they also bother me. For me, the biggest one is probably the awful progression of newly made characters (with different classes). Once you are familiar with the game, you don't want to go back to easier difficulties ever again. They function more like a tutorial, and it would be fine if you had to do it once, but you have to do it like 25 times before you can get your character properly set up.

I feel like I'm this game's target audience, so that's why it gets such a high score from me.

I am so deeply conflicted about this game. I want to love this game. It has the potential to be much better than vermintide 2 which has become one of my favorite games of all time but it just has some very shoddy design choices that bring it down.


The core gameplay goes hard and feels like mostly an improvement over vermintide 2. weapons feel better to use, they have more of an impact, ranged weapons are more fun and weapons have more varied movesets. Combine that with the music and that makes the game feel perfect in some moments.
I like the map layouts. They've def gotten better at that with time.
They also captured the atmosphere of 40k perfectly through the environments, dialogue and music.The class system is good tho rn I haven't messed around too much with it.


The mission board is not good design. Instead of a clear cohesive campaign or even just being able to select any mission after unlocking them you just depend on RNG. My early game experience was repeating one or two missions because that is all people in quickplay were doing.

Grims and Scriptures being randomized is a very bizarre move. Was this some misguided attempt to dissuade grinding or something? because it just dissuades people from going for grims and tomes in general.

Toughness is likely the second worst thing about Darktide for me. Its the opposite of THP in vermintide 2 and ends up rewarding playing safe instead of aggressive and the punishment for losing teammates is much harsher than in vermintide 2.

The worst thing tho is the progression system. Getting weapons is somehow more randomized than vermintide 2.

In v2 you get one chest every mission with the item rarities depending on factors you have a direct control over and each chest had three random items. You would likely not get exactly what you want but you could just scrap it and craft the weapon you wanted easily.

Here there's like two currencies for a randomized shop with very stupid requirements for upgrading them based on more resources that you get in missions. One of the currencies you use to get weapons is the same currency for the non-premium cosmetics. The last one feels extremely stupid.

I'll come back to this game after an year or so. Maybe it won't be a game held back by stupid progression paths then