A sort of sequel to Vermintide 2, Darktide is a co-op first-person-shooter set in the Warhammer universe. It’s dripping in atmosphere, is brutal, and brilliant.
Whereas Vermintide was more about smacking rat-people, Darktide has you smacking about infected people by the plague god (called Nurgle). But you also have guns. And these guns move Darktide from a game that might be a bit of an acquired taste for some, to something that most people can probably get their teeth into with some reasonable ease. It also draws therefore significant comparisons to Left 4 Dead.
You get four classes to pick from, each with a ranged and melee weapon. This means that most people will get to pick from classes that favour the classic melee focused style the game is inspired from, by a more typical FPS type build. The playstyle is important as certain actions will help regenerate your toughness meter, which basically acts a bit like a shield and can help trigger character specific abilities.
Further to this, a perk system can let you further your build to a specific playstyle, rewarding things such as melee attacks with bonus health, to some slightly more unconventional boons which can lead you to favour elements such as charge attacks.
Missions are presented randomly, with the meta-game being the big draw here. Do missions, get stuff to level up in order to do more missions. The hard ones are really hard, but even the easy ones can be tricky – in part to their length which can run up past 45 minutes so if you get damaged badly at the start, you can be in for a rough time. Most are ‘go here, do this’ type missions but tend to be across sprawling levels so it doesn’t get too boring although it can feel a bit repetitive.
The real star here though is the combat, and the massive worlds it takes place in. It looks absolutely fantastic and is perhaps the best recreation of a Warhammer world I’ve seen (including maybe even the recent Space Marine game). It’s grim, it’s dark (as is par for Warhammer) but rather than just all look brown and black, it looks spectacular. It’s hard to be stunned into looking and admiring the scenery with hordes of enemies charging towards you, but Darktide teases and tempts this through what sounds like boring worlds – underground crypts, laboratories and labyrinths. Such is the lore of Warhammer though, interspersed with all of this are candles inflicting impressive lighting, a vast array of paraphernalia worshipping whatever local deity the plagued-up locals are interested in, huge cathedrals… there’s always something to look at. And that’s before you get to the copious amounts of gore and dismemberment that you’re inflicting on this world.
Happily this isn’t the same game that came out in 2022. Nearly two years later this PS5 version is launching with more content but important more performance improvements and quality of life tweaks that the PC one benefits from at launch, and even the Xbox one when that was released some time ago. Whilst a new Left 4 Dead is still sought after, Darktide offers a good enough spin on this formula to encourage fans to take a look.
Reviewed on PS5
