Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Review: Rejects Will Grind

The collection of Warhammer 40K games is insanely huge, with many that I’ve never even heard of before. The one that I did play is Fatshark’s Vermintide 2, which was initially released back in 2018. Now the same studio is back again with the next evolution of the Warhammer 40K ‘tide games with Darktide, a four-player, horde-style cooperative first-person shooter. The premise is simple: You are a nobody prisoner granted a second chance to join the Inquisitorial Agents in order to investigate an infiltration of the Hive City of Tertium. Hundreds if not thousands of loyal cultists of the Chaos god Nurgle fall as you and your team of rejects rise. Darktide’s excellent combat system and gameplay loop are dragged down by unfinished content, performance issues, endless grind, and a predatorial microtransaction shop.

Addictive Combat

The game starts with a lengthy prologue that sets the scene and has you pick your starter class and design your reject’s look. You also have the option to customize your character’s background, such as where they came from and what their upbringing is. It’s a cool little feature, but it doesn’t really amount to anything, as it makes absolutely no difference during gameplay. Nobody plays a game like this for the narrative, so this added feature seems half-baked and tacked on for no good reason. It doesn’t matter what you choose your background to be, you are still a lowlife and nobody in the city of Tertium. After all, everyone’s here for the fast-paced squad-based multiplayer combat against waves of nasty creatures.

The obvious contrast between this game and Vermintide is Darktide’s emphasis on ranged weapons and abilities. This is easily and naturally immersed with the four playable character classes: Veteran Sharpshooter, Zealot Preacher, Psyker Psykinetic, and Ogryn Skullbreaker. Each class carries a unique ability along with various strengths and vulnerabilities. You’ll still be doing many button-mashing melee attacks as close-quarters combat remains the most effective way to deal with enemy hordes. Combat remains crunchy, visceral, and bloody addictive as you and your team of three other allies work together to complete missions. A generous variety of enemy types charges at you in well-paced out waves during what otherwise are recycled and repetitive objectives. The frenzied battle encounters are only elevated during boss fights that require articulate team coordination and communication. Darktide stresses teamwork as your shields regenerate when your allies are near you, and certain class abilities synergize well with each other.

Truly Embracing Warhammer 40K

Darktide bravely embraces the Warhammer universe by featuring a world that represents a totalitarian and oppressive society. Tertium’s environments are filled with filth and grime, and characters and enemies are equipped with equally appropriate and meticulously constructed armor and weapons. From trick weapons such as a chainsaw baton to badass energy swords, this game boasts an incredible arsenal of tools. A fitting dark and gothic color palette accentuates a depressing and abysmal universe. Excellent voice acting from the characters that displays emotional depth further immerses you into the sinister world of Warhammer 40K. You are but a small peon in something way bigger than yourself.

Unfinished Game With a Premium Shop

Monotonous missions make Darktide an extremely grindy game. No progression is shared between any of your characters, meaning all of your experience, weapons, quests, currency, and gear are tied to one character. The game also uses a random number generator system for a shop that changes its products hourly. Get ready to grind for specific equipment you want if the shop doesn’t have it for your class! If you want to get to the end-game build crafting portion of this game, then you need to grind four separate save files to the level 30 cap, which is beyond baffling. Though the locked progression mechanic probably won’t change, Fatshark did promise more content coming in the future. Whether or not it’s locked behind a paywall, your guess is as good as mine.

It’s unfortunate that this game released in such an unfinished state, but I guess that’s what all the ‘tide games do, because Vermintide suffered an infamously terrible launch as well. It’s the years of support from the developers and countless number of patches that allow these games to showcase their true potential and charm. There are only four playable classes in Darktide right now, whereas Vermintide 2 launched with 15 and added more later on. Many of the systems in-game are marked as “coming soon,” but the developers have already launched a premium microtransaction shop. I get that this is a multiplayer-centric game, but you can’t even play solo offline with bots. Heck, it doesn’t even support online private custom matches if you want to play with your friends. The silver lining of hope here is that Vermintide 2 evolved into one of the best cooperative horde titles out there, and I have no doubt Darktide can follow that same suit. It’s just not there right now due to unfinished mechanics, content, and overall polish.

Suboptimal Performance

I don’t have a super powerful PC, as my machine is running on a barebones 1070 GTX and 16 gigabytes of RAM. While I didn’t run into terrible performance issues such as constant crashes and stuttering like others, I did experience frequent frame drops and insanely long loading times, even on the lowest graphical settings. Missions would take upwards of 30 seconds to load, feeling painstakingly long. I sometimes get 60 frames per second when not much is going on in the game, but I also get dips to as low as 20 fps during intense action sequences. I would not recommend purchasing this game if you have anything equivalent to a 1070 or less powerful graphics card, even though the minimum recommended requirements are a 970 GTX and 8 gigabytes of memory. The game does not look pretty on the lowest settings, but that’s on my own machine due to its limitations. I’m sure the game looks stunning with ray tracing enabled on high-end 4000 series cards.

Conclusion

If you enjoyed Fatshark’s previous projects on Vermintide and its sequel, or you’re just an overall Warhammer 40K fan, then you will feel right at home with Darktide. As long as you can dig past the rough state the game is in right now with unfinished content and performance issues, then there’s truly an addictive and satisfying cooperative horde shooter lying underneath all those corpses.

Final Verdict: 3/5

Available on: PC (Reviewed),  Xbox Series S|X; Publisher: Fatshark; Developer: Fatshark; Players: 1-4; Released: Nov 30, 2022; ESRB: M; MSRP: USD 39.99

Full disclosure: This review is based on a copy of Warhammer 40000: Darktide provided by the publisher.