Warhammer 40K: Darktide review: Left 4 Dead-like coop in a sci-fi world

Having successfully captured the joys of bonking a scabby rat over the head with a Zweihänder in Warhammer: Vermintide 2Fatshark, a Swedish developer has opened a new office in New York. DarktideLooking for ways to improve your life? Four Dead Left-esque brawling to Games Workshop’s popular Warhammer 40,000 sci-fi universe. Think of the grimy war heroes in Warhammer Fantasy who now sport garish cybernetic monocles as well as chainsaws, guns and grenades. It’s violent and grimdark, and despite years of working within the genre, Fatshark continues to surprise me.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a cooperative first-person shooter where you and a ragtag crew are hauled off on a series of harrowing missions for the fascist Imperium — hopefully to smash your way through the Nurgle-infected horde so that you might come back home to your Inquisitor’s starship and central hub, “The Mourningstar,” and do it all again.

Vermintide’s sturdy combat Very little has changed. You will find many things that remain intact. Lot of guns now, although I’m happy to say this massive ranged arsenal doesn’t detract too much from the series’ signature chunky melee engagements. As with the 40K miniatures wargame itself, even when you’ve a heavily armed squad who can tear things up at range, melee combat often becomes its own separate phase — it always seems beneficial to charge in and finish things up close, rather than awkwardly reload and reset. Add on Darktide’s new “Toughness” system (essentially a shield that mitigates damage and regenerates when you get melee kills or remain close to allies) and Darktide This is a smart balancing act that combines elegant headshots with powerful power sword swings. Eventually, when you’ve taken a few hits and your Toughness is depleted, you’ll want to wade into the mix with your buddies beside you, if only to reinforce your defenses.

Fatshark

One of Darktide’s biggest changes is in how it structures its missions, and as a result, its general relation to place. Both VermintideCampaigns were structured according to the Fantasy tradition. You were one step closer in saving the world by completing a single mission. It was all forward motion that you could chart out on a hypothetical cloth map… You traveled from ruined city, dot dot dotYou will be taken to an enchanted wood. While you’d often replay older missions, in-fiction, it never really made sense to do so.

Darktide’s map, on the other hand, is a holographic projection of a single location — “Tertium Hive.” A Hive, in the 40K lore, is a densely packed arcology housing billions of people. Space Marines can be unnaturally hyper-pumped up in this city. You and your team can use the tactical map to travel to each of five locations within the city. However, the missions types may differ from one another. One time you might be required to reach the manufacturing zone and assassinate a target. You may be asked to return to the same area, with slightly different perspectives or new routes or rooms opened. Your next task will require you use a hacking device in order investigate an area.

Fatshark

On top of this, Fatshark periodically runs several “Conditions.” The two that have shown up thus far in the pre-order beta are Ventilation Purge, which filled rooms and corridors with a thick environmental fog, and Power Supply Interruption, in which all the lights are out and you have to wander in the dark with only a puny flashlight. All in all, it makes for a very interesting experience. Darktide More geared towards replayability and play-and-go sessions. It makes sense that your team would be repeatedly running missions in these same zones, as you’re fighting a long campaign against the entrenched forces of Chaos. We don’t know where this campaign will lead, or if these changing conditions and missions will become something similar to a traditional narrative campaign.

Despite the variation in missions, with only five distinct zones total, it’d be fair to ask whether the Hive ever becomes tired. But it’s a fantastic discrete location — a greebled megastructure that makes you feel like a microbe trapped on the infinite surface of a transistor. I’ve long been a fan of Tsutomu Nihei’s manga BlameTertium hive, with its large metropolis and strong resemblance to it. This is a very typical example of what a typical Darktide mission you’ll be trapped underground, navigating an endless sprawl of industrial and sci-fi corridors. But even here, I feel at home. As they rush towards me, I ask my team to slow down so I can inspect the many cool sliding doors as well as the intricate network of cables and ventilation pipes. Then, suddenly, these corridors open up and I’m hit with a huge vista. There’s a pipe the size of Godzilla crawling up the city walls, or a hall with a starship hanging casually from the ceiling. In some cases, industrial chimneys spout flame à la the intro to Blade Runner.

Fatshark

While I’m in awe of the setting and enthused about the general 40K mood and tone — the irony of playing the bad guys, ’80s punk attitude, and regional British accents — there’s also a lot of stuff that’s harder to care about. Cosmetics are all seriously overpriced. It took me several hours to remove my prison uniform, and I look terrible. There is also a slew of balancing issues to resolve and work out: It’s hard to judge, having mainly stuck to my big Ogryn “Skullbreaker,” but I’ve heard issues of other classes, like the brain-bursting “Psyker,” having been left underpowered, particularly at higher difficulties. Add to this the fact you’ll have to pray to the machine gods to get through a session without a crash to desktop (at the very least, it’s easy to join back into a mission), and this isn’t the smoothest of game launches I’ve witnessed.

Still, knowing Fatshark’s previous work, I’m confident Darktide will be in much better shape in just a few months’ time. It may even be extraordinary in the next year, with a few more expansions and many updates. As things stand right now, it’s only Excellent… which is hard to complain about. This is a great setting, with plenty of replayability and juicy combat. There’s plenty to get sucked into, and no signs of slowing down.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide On November 30, the game was available for Windows PC. Fatshark gave us a pre-release downloading code. The PC review was conducted using the downloaded game. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products sold via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.