Warhammer 40000: Darktide - Left 4 Dead, but only for Warhammer 40000 fans

Many people sin by self-copying. There is nothing wrong with plagiarizing one's ideas, as long as the magic of goodness flows from time to time into the object of adoration. In 2015, Swedish studio Fatshark resurrected interest in cooperative shooters with their game Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide. Although they failed to dethrone Left 4 Dead, their attempt was a worthy one. In 2018, Vermintide 2 was released. The second part was the result of extensive work on bugs and was loved by many players. However, Vermintide 2 played a cruel joke on Fatshark: the game raised the bar of quality to a level that proved unattainable for the developer.

Having exhausted the Warhammer fantasy theme, Fatshark decided to put their game on new, but familiar rails. It so happens that the Warhammer 40000 universe, a dark fantasy about the eternal war of the future, has a dubious reputation. Despite the impressive elaborated lore and unique background world of Warhammer 40000, the last good games in this series were released back in 2008. Will Warhammer 40000: Darktide be able to change the situation?

The target audience is predetermined

Looking ahead, I will answer the question of the previous paragraph - no, Warhammer 40000: Darktide will not be a springboard into the universe of scavenger orcs, undead terminators, heretics and endless "Did Magnus betray?" arguments. Darktide doesn't even try to chew on what's going on. We are simply informed that there is some kind of war going on in the universe. Who the Emperor is, why it's so honorable to lay your head on the battlefield for him, and what the hell is going on - you won't find answers to all of these questions in the game itself or even online. Even the main active location, Tercium, has no direct or indirect backstory. Sort it out for yourself.

For the development of the universe was responsible Dan Abnett - a British writer-comixist who wrote three novels in the Warhammer 40000 universe, one of which, "Heresy of Horus," became a bestseller. Dan's track record shows that you don't have to worry about working out the game's universe, but the curse of the clever man has come into play. Dan is well versed in the Warhammer 40000 universe, but he did not take into account that not everyone is able, not only to list from memory all the orders of the space commandos, many will not even name the four gods of Chaos. As a result, for some reason the game implements detailed character creation with its detailed backstory, but there is no introductory part.

Then offer to mold the life of the hero up to the beginning of the action of the game: starting with childhood, ending with the turning point - the player is free to build the fate of his dummy.

The dummy, for the choice of backstory only affects the dialogue options during the sessions. Characters find it necessary to express their point of view on this or that object of discussion, to make a joke or, on the contrary, to sympathize with a partner in misfortune. A similar system with handwritten fate was in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, but there the choice of fate directly affected the gameplay, in Darktide the choice of backstory, apparently, was added in order to plow a little Dan Abnett to earn his honest, writing money.

For some reason, they added character customization, as if we were playing an MMORPG, not a cooperative shooter. There will be many more MMO comparisons, so get ready...

Does personalization get in the way? No. Is it necessary? Also no, just a given. Warhammer 40000: Darktide doesn't fall in love with its universe, doesn't ignite interest once or twice to google a term like "repository" and won't serve as a good introductory game. Sadly, Warhammer 40000 didn't get the universe enticed until the late noughties, during Dawn of War, the last time it did. But in what ways was engagement achieved? The notorious spelling out the obvious things for fans, but not obvious for ordinary people. For example: psykers have telepathic abilities and use their mental powers in battle. However, the abilities correlate with the Warp, the local underworld. If a psiker gets carried away and starts flirting with forbidden magic, he risks becoming a puppet of the local counterpart of Satan, the gods of Chaos.

The sentence above is the chewing up that Warhammer 40000: Darktide lacks. The game is designed for you to already navigate the universe and know the meaning of many terms. Or can you get oriented as you go along?

A good game doesn't need a plot, and Warhammer 40000: Darktide didn't need one either.

But the Warhammer 40000 fans will be disappointed - there are no battles on the galactic scale, and everything that happens in the game is more like a script bait, not a coherent, complete story. Each character levels up to level 30. At the end of the journey, the protagonist is called to the carpet to...praise and inspire new feats for the Emperor. A through storyline as if present, but does not come together in the big picture. Sadly, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 had a storyline both in the sessions and throughout the game.

Warhammer 40000: Darktide might as well be called "Vermintide 2 with guns," but the narrative regression is there. Why hire an experienced writer and not use his mind? There's no answer. To berate a cooperative shooter for lacking a coherent story is like berating a racing simulator for lacking a role-playing system. But wouldn't Warhammer 40000: Darktide be many times better if the player was motivated not only by meat races and leveling up, but also by story intrigue? Too many unanswered questions.

Will it be fun...?

It will be rather sad. Warhammer 40000: Darktide is a compilation of ideas from proven cooperative shooters and MMORPGs. Of the positive borrowings: the game has some sort of build system and a grain of variation. Whichever of the four proposed characters you play, the way to level 30 will not be a solid straight line, shuffle perks even a little interesting - eh, the early years of PayDay 2, before the grass was greener...

Of the successful borrowings in Warhammer 40000: Darktide noticed the location-hub, as it was in Deep Rock Galactic. However, in the latter hub was full of interactive objects, funny activities, and in general was and still is just a beautiful location, sticking in your memory. In Warhammer 40000: Darktide the hub is grey, dull and full of MMO activities of dubious usefulness...

In addition to buying weapons in the hub, also provides for sharpening weapons. This is like any self-respecting MMORPG - you need two types of resources for sharpening, which you will find in the levels. Affixes, prefixes, and postfixes are awarded randomly, which can be a stumbling block for those who are not too fond of casinos.

Items are divided by color, i.e. - rarity. Not to what screwed up mechanics looter-shooter works for involvement, drags on for a dozen hours, after which you realize that the game is not so much weapons. Many of the guns are a reskin of existing ones, you can't fix that.

Experience you get only for the character you play for - a stick of two ends. On the one hand, by selecting the appropriate class the game does not give you the opportunity to glimpse the other classes; on the other hand, if you start the game on an unsuitable for a beginner character, get ready for a mixed experience. The same Psyker requires more control than the Ogrin. There are four classes in total:

And here is the problem with classes, too. Again, in that same Deep Rock Galactic the best option was and still is 4 different, complementary classes, in Warhammer 40000: Darktide the synergy between the characters is much less. 3 Ogrins and 1 Sniper are quite normal for the local lobby. In addition, the controls of these very characters seem one-button, until you get to the maximum difficulty.

Not everyone will be able to endure to the maximum difficulty, because... the maximum difficulty can not be selected. At the will of the God of random, the global map displays available missions with a built-in, unchangeable complexity.

More MMORPGs for God MMORPG

But this is not the end of the Warhammer 40000: Darktide fun. There's a lot of action figures, too. For them in the hub have allocated a corner and called the requisitorium. There you can rent a random powerful weapon for 24 hours and play a little with lootboxes for a special currency. Why does a cooperative shooter need MMO elements with hints of gacha?

And, of course, cosmetics. What can you do without it in modern AAA? For a certain amount of real money you will be offered a set of armor, which will distinguish you from the gray crowd. Nothing new. Thanks to the fact that the game does not have a paid combat pass. Purchased items do not affect the characteristics.

But one element of the hub came in handy: the scarecrow, i.e., the polygon. At the range we get a whipping boy, who reports on the damage he's taken. The range is a seemingly small thing, but it helps to test builds not in matches. And the line between shooter and MMO is increasingly blurred...

And if all of the above doesn't put you off in the slightest, Warhammer 40000: Darktide might appeal to you...

A good shooter?

As for the feel of the melee attacks, weapon impact and animations, Warhammer 40000: Darktide is at least tolerable. Chain swords plunge into the flesh of heretics, psykers' staffs tear them to shreds, and automatic shotguns effectively mow down foes in droves. I was pleased with the attention to the peculiarities of weapons and their canonical nuances. For example, the plasma gun quickly overheats while shooting. Lazergan and can explode in the hands of the shooter.

The weapons in Warhammer 40000: Darktide have, shall we say, a sense of character. It's a shame that you have to try out all these killing weapons on the same type of opponents. As any self-respecting cooperative shooter should, in Warhammer 40000: Darktide the heretics shooting is not limited to cannon fodder, the gameplay is designed to complicate and diversify as unique opponents, and entire bosses. Unique opponents are archetypical to the extreme, they take more in quantity and will become the main problem on high levels of difficulty.

And yes, the Left 4 Dead director returns, but with a different sauce. The map can be drawn by the dense smog, sometimes you will have to wade through a crowd of enemies in the crumbling darkness, and to win can appear another variable, such as finding a grimoire.

A local modifier adds a couple of points to replayability, and procedural generation of levels fuels interest. There can't be two identical sessions, but the game itself is rather monotonous...

Is Warhammer 40000: Darktide worth buying?

Warhammer 40000: Darktide suffers from the disease of early access, but nowhere does the proverbial phrase appear, only in the perception of the player. It is reasonable to buy Warhammer 40000: Darktide only at a discount of at least 60%.