Missed it by that much

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is developer Fatshark’s follow up game to the popular Warhammer: Vermintide which itself spawned a sequel. Those games were set in the fantasy part of the Warhammer universe and say players fighting a race of rat men called the Skaven and allowed players to play co-op as they fought off the armies of Chaos. Darktide is also a 4-player co-op game which also allows the players to customize their class, appearance, and gender through choosing one of the 4 classes which are the Human Veteran, Human Zealot, Ogryn, and Human Psyker.

Each has special abilities and traits that synergize well together, for instance the Ogryns are basically the tanks. These hulking figures use heavy ranged weapons and have the ability to rush forward into a wave of enemies using their huge bodes to hurl them aside. If players prefer more of a ranged class, then the Psyker is going to be for them. Using the mystical ‘warp’ energies Psyker’s have a risk/reward mechanic that I love. They are the only class that won’t require ammo due to the fact they use staves instead of guns and channel their energies. The risk comes into play due to the fact that the more they use their abilities the more peril they are in. The power is great, but they run the risk of it consuming them and if not quelled (this is done simply by holding a button) they will explode and cause damage to everything around them.

$39.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), Xbox
Price I’d Pay: $39.99

Just as in Vermintide, most of the combat in Darktide will be via melee weapons. And it is a sheer joy and delight to hack up the followers of the Chaos God Nurgle. The game is in a first-person perspective, which is great because players will see as their attacks decapitate abominations or hack off limbs and things. The moment-to-moment gameplay when players are on a mission is a blast. I have had more than one time where I found myself grinning from ear to ear like an idiot as I cleanly worked all my skills to expertly dispatch a wave of baddies. Teamwork is key to victory however, and it will behoove players to stay with their team. It is very easy to get lost and overwhelmed in this game, it’s not made for solos.

My real issues with Darktide begin to crop up after a mission, you see its here when the game will tally the experienced earned and dole out any loot or any other commendations. My problem is for some reason Darktide is extremely stingy with its rewards and experience which snowballs into a larger issue; allow me to explain.

There are multiple difficulty levels for which players can tackle missions; rewards and XP are meant to scale with these levels and it’s nothing we haven’t seen done in other games. The issue here though is even if players start playing on the low levels, chances are they will not earn any gear for their missions. The game will reward a pittance of XP and gold which makes it extremely hard to level up or purchase a better weapon so players can tackle the harder missions in order to get the better rewards. And the cycle just continues like that as players will be putting in the work on these missions but be receiving a pitiful reward for their blood, sweat and probably more blood.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a system requiring players to put in the work to get better, but this just feels like it’s too extreme for no reason. If the game wasn’t a joy to play, I probably wouldn’t even bother as it just feels cheap which is something Vermintide 2 never did. Couple that with the fact that the narrative for this game is going to come out over the coming weeks due to its live service nature and you end up with a kick ass co-op game that has hordes of enemies to kill, secrets to discover and loot that’s really only at its best when playing with friends in its current state. And that’s really not even going into all of the technical issues that the game has on PC currently, I myself have had lock ups, crashes, my weapons and enemies were invisible and other issues.

I have no doubt that these will be fixed in time but when are WE as gamers/consumers going to stop allowing this to be the norm. I feel like I say this on far too many reviews, fact of the matter is the game should have launched without these technical issues but I won’t start preaching here… we have a podcast for that. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is coming to Xbox at a later date and my hope is that all of its extremely rough edges are grind down to perfection by then, the moment to moment in battles is a blast to play but the pitiful rewards and technical issues just turns it into more of a chore than a joy to serve the Emperor.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.