The incredible Grimdark future of the 40k universe has finally been put in the hands of Fatshark. The Swedish developer well known for their work on the Warhammer fantasy entry, Vermintide, and its sequel, have taken everything they’ve learned from those fantastic first-person survival titles and put it in a darker future with a stronger emphasis on the shooting component. If anything, while Darktide borrows from its predecessor’s design, this is closer to a game such as Left 4 Dead, be it mission structure or the enemy types. This is a universe that spans an immense registry of novels, figures and of course lore, and unsurprisingly, there’s a massive catalogue of video games under its belt, yet Darktide seems to offer something special. Does Darktide succeed in bringing one of the best video game entries in the 40k universe or do we rollback to Fatshark’s more feature-complete game?

The story in Darktide is laughable at best. It’s primarily there just to have some sort of progression as there’s upwards of thirty levels of Trust to be earned towards the Imperium, unlocking various skills and weapons. It starts off with the player-created protagonist professing their innocence, but then all of a sudden the jail that they’re housed in is attacked. It’s their time to escape and fend off minions of Chaos in the thousands. At this point they’re brought to a ship to help on missions throughout a Hive city which theoretically houses tens, if not hundreds of billions of residences, but unfortunately all that’s left in the lower layers is corrupted beings. Various people on the ship will commend the protagonist, but establish there’s a traitor amongst them, and they'll weed out exactly who it may be in no time. And that’s about it. There’s not a grand reveal or really any characters to talk about because the story just isn’t here. What Fatshark does well is implement little references to the lore of the universe: people, places and events from the vast history; you can tell this was made by 40k fans, even though there’s probably only a portion of the player base who might catch the references made. In the end, though, while the gameplay will be the component that’ll entice the players the most, it’s still disappointing there wasn’t anything meaningful put into an actual plot in Darktide.

Speaking of which, combat is by far the most compelling part of Darktide. This is a four player cooperative experience that, if there’s no one else in the party – which is highly unlikely – it will populate it with relatively intelligent bots (higher difficulties is where their intelligence falls). It’s hard to get over how addicting the combat truly is, with Left 4 Dead levels of engagement as players will take on hordes of Chaos, such as mindless drones, machine gun wielding soldiers and something a lot deadlier. There’s an impressive array of special enemies to watch out for, be it frustrating snipers who can take players down with a single bullet, or dual-handed, fully armored mutants that will quickly deplete your health pool with a couple swings. There are even mini-bosses placed at random such as Beasts of Nurgle, Plagued Ogryns and Daemonhosts, with the latter being something completely avoidable. Especially in the later difficulties, all of these combine in a sea of bodies you’ll find constantly slashing through with coordinated pushes, blocks and dodges, not to mention specials. Being that there are upwards of five difficulties right now, even at the third level, most players will have a challenge upon them. Even after over sixty hours, we still go in for more and enjoy every minute of it.

At launch, we are only given four characters with no sub-classes to offer a variety among them. Veteran is a shooter-centric class that helps replenish ammunition among teammates and highlights enemies within a certain radius. Zealot is similar but tankier with a stronger emphasis on toughness regeneration and melee. Psyker is essentially a mage that can pop heads with a mere thought and conjure various spells through a staff. Finally, there’s giant Ogryns which are general crowd control beasts. The classes have their own weapon tree unlocks as they’re leveled up, but most of the weapons themselves are shared, with the exception of Ogryn being that it’s a colossal Abhuman. Each one has their own use and enjoyment factor, although I feel the Zealot class is in need of tuning as most of the others somewhat outclass it, and its ultimate ability is unimpressive. It would have been great to see sub-classes for each of these, but at least they’re varied enough to leave a positive impression.

Unfortunately, one of the larger issues we have with Darktide is its mission structure. While there’s a good variety of mission types, such as Strikes, Espionage and Assassinations, just to name a few, they’re all rotated in and out. You’re not necessarily going through a selection of maps and missions and selecting a desired difficulty; everything is pre-set on the mission selection with them cycling out for alternate difficulties and secondary objectives anywhere between fifteen and thirty minutes. On one hand, it makes it so everyone has the same exact offerings on a specific difficulty, meaning lesser queue times. On the other hand, it limits the player’s ability to choose a specific mission they might enjoy or feel like playing in the moment because it might be locked to the highest difficulty. Speaking of which, the maps themselves are disappointing only because of the lack of variety. While there are thirteen maps, a lot of them are reused or recycled with slight variations. There are maps that essentially take you from the end of another map and back to near the start.

Outside of the maps, there are strange decisions spread throughout that drags down the overall user experience. Most of them are minor nitpicky things, but there’s quite a few. For starters, nothing is shared between characters. While there’s five open slots (with only four classes available right now), all of them have their own currencies, gear, materials, weeklies and so forth. The only thing that showed Fatshark seemed to partially encourage playing multiple jobs is allow the prologue to be skipped after finishing it on one character. Then there’s other things such as, after every mission you’re placed at the back of the entire room of the ship, meaning there’s a trek to start another mission or purchase/upgrade a weapon. What would have helped immensely would’ve been, outside of a more condensed hub, a Warframe-esque navigation system that moves the character between the different menus through the actual menu system. There’s also no indication for the person who selected a mission in an existing party to know which party members have accepted or how much time is left. There isn’t a way to look at Penances in the middle of a mission. There’s no good explanation of how a failed mission distributes experience or materials. Why do hoods essentially shave the character’s head? And so forth. There’s just a lot of design decisions that are just baffling.

As for the presentation in Darktide, it ranges from masterful to abysmal. Starting off with the positive, the soundtrack by Jesper Kyd, the same composer who did the Vermintide games, nails the ambiance of the 40k universe. There’s a sense of dread and calm uneasiness in a lot of the tracks and some head-banging boss themes. Even after so many hours in the same missions we couldn’t help but still turn up the music as it gets players in the mood for slaying the indoctrinated. The sound cues are also well done, allowing you to identify when an attack is coming along with a specific special has spawned. The visuals are also a spectacular in their own right, as Fatshark have done wonders with the style and atmosphere, not to mention it’s a graphically-solid experience.

Now onto the negatives: sadly, the city we’re able to traverse is kind of boring. While there’s a few compelling locales, the vast majority are similarly built. Heck, a good portion of the maps reuse the same locations, just with slightly different paths such as starting from the end of one and finding your way to the beginning. Cities in the 40k universe can have  stunning architecture and sceneries, despite their disturbing living conditions, but a lot of Darktide seems to just use a similar palate with little exploration outward. On top of this, at least at launch, Darktide has quite a few technical and performance issues. The framerate seems to have evened out after the first couple of days, but there are still an abundant of crashes and long load time hang-ups. Even getting into a mission can take exceedingly long one instance and then happen quickly the next. There’s a lot Fatshark have to work on, so here’s hoping the future looks brighter on the technical and variety side of things.

Closing Comments:

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is one of the most enjoyable games of the year, but it’s tremendously rough around the edges. There are a baffling number of design decisions that drag the user experience down, with the variety of maps being questionable as well. There’s barely a story to speak of, and there aren’t any sub-classes to choose among Zealot, Veteran, Psyker and Ogryn. Darktide is the base of a profoundly good game that truly feels like it’s meant to be built upon, but in its current iteration, it’s a limited offering. Fortunately, where Darktide shines the brightest is in its gameplay, as the combat is highly engaging, and the soundtrack is groundbreaking. Even though a good deal of maps lack variety, Fatshark still captures 40k’s atmosphere perfectly, creating a compelling, depressing world to shoot and slash your way through. While combat feels better than, say, Vermintide, everything else about the experience is a step backwards in its current state. At the end of the day, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a highly-addicting mess that we can’t put down.