Warhammer 40,000: Darktide – Review

Our Score: 9/10

In this intense and brutal action shooter, you have to take back the city of Tertium from hordes of bloodthirsty enemies. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is the new co-op-focused game from the team that made the Vermintide series, which won several awards.

Inside the hive, there are seeds of corruption that could grow into a huge wave of darkness. A new, mysterious, and dangerous force wants to take over the whole city. You and your friends in the Inquisition must find and kill the enemy before Chaos takes over the city.

The New Tide Rises

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is an incredible co-op shooter that is going to pull you in and not let go. opens with a quick but comprehensive character creation. There are four different classes available. My favourite Zealot, Preacher, was first. They are a maniac who only uses heavy-hitting melee and ranged weapons. Sharpshooter is exactly what you think it is, says the veteran. You work best from a distance while employing a combination of fierce chainsaw swords and long-range weapons. The Psyker is the next in line and is the most glass-cannony of the bunch. She wields strong magic. The big boy Ogryn completes the scene with this monster that is over ten feet tall and is trying his best to crush all the little people into dust. You get to pick your voice, appearance, home planet, and even the reason you’re a death-row inmate.

The game’s narrative begins with a prison break that results in your release and the saving of an imperial officer’s life. By doing so, you win back the government’s favour and begin climbing the Trust ladder. Your trust level increases with each mission you complete, challenge you complete, and bounty you submit. As you progress through the game’s levels, you’ll gain access to more and more of its numerous shops, mechanics, and your character’s Feats. You’ll spend each mission in a compact, exquisitely detailed hub world in order to access everything here.

Rip and Tear

Darktide includes four-player cooperative missions that pit them against waves of Nurgle, just like Vermintide and its follow-up. To keep the squad moving through the zones and to give the missions variety, missions have goals. The goals are fairly typical for multiplayer action games: hold a position, safeguard your team, flip some switches, complete an objective, and enter a new area. Even though the missions aren’t particularly inventive, they are enjoyable.

Battles are frantic, violent, and exciting. They are complemented by some truly funny dialogue, strong voice acting, and an action-oriented synthesised score. Overall, the sound design for the squishy combat, industrial sounds, and weapon impacts is superb. The graphics in Darktide aren’t state-of-the-art, but players aren’t given enough time to notice.

Look At It Go

One of the most lovingly created games from this part of the Warhammer universe I’ve seen since Space Marine earlier in 2011, and that’s quite an accomplishment in my eyes, is Darktide’s level design. Since then, the Warhammer franchise has experienced its share of highs and lows, but there are still plenty of fantastic depictions of this particular universe available. Some of the most painstakingly detailed and thoughtfully built environments I’ve seen from this franchise are found in Darktide, with its constant accumulation of dust, rust, and the mingling of grates, pipes, and other cobblings of metal and stone.

The level design is outstanding in terms of both appearance and gameplay. Due to the ingenious usage of lights and doors, the game hardly ever needs to employ waypoints because your next move always makes sense. Thanks to the spatial audio on my headset, I could usually predict where I would travel next by simply listening to what was going on around me. Lasguns and swords generate devastating sounds in the sound effects, while character shouts help players easily identify Elite enemies over any other background noise. However, the music that starts playing during the most dangerous moments of a mission is my favourite part. Instrumentals that are bold, strong, and heavy feed your fear and urge to murder your way through it.

Final Verdict

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is an incredible co-op shooter that is going to pull you in and not let go. With Fatshark’s reputation with the Vermintide games, we know this game is only going to get bigger and better from here. And since it’s on Gamepass PC, it’s a no brainer to play with your friends.