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Warhammer 40K: Darktide on PC
Fatshark Studios, creators of the latest Warhammer fantasy co-op experience, is a unique game development team best known for their fresh take on the famous Left for Dead style of co-op gameplay. Warhammer Vermintide both 1 and 2 are really great games and the second one can even be considered a masterpiece. However, can its latest title, Warhammer 40k: Darktide, live up to its predecessors?
Warhammer 40k: Darktide is a game about prisoners rising up to save the city of Tertium from hordes of enemies enslaved for a minor offense against their will. From the beginning of your servitude, you will endlessly go from mission to mission until you are no longer useful to the Emperor.
It’s a dark and straight forward story, but well done with a bitter undertone; May I remind you, Warhammer 40k has a tale of an orc traveling back in time to duplicate his favorite weapon and eliminate himself from existence. Simple, dark, and entertaining storytelling is what Warhammer does best.
When it comes to character creation, the player is responsible for creating their own story, which is a big change from previous games, and it honestly feels really well done. The choices you make based on your class, backstory, and personality will change how you interact with actual players in the game and how your character interacts throughout the story.
The gameplay, while very familiar, feels great at times and strange at times, as the vast majority of your combat is melee – which is unfortunate and strange considering the nature of 40k with planet-sized ships and weapons, the whole destroy buildings. However, if you intentionally choose the Veteran Sharpshooter, the game’s main shooter class, you’ll oddly end up spending most of your time in melee combat.
The limited ammo and tight corners provided will require you to spam your sword endlessly, and while the first strikes are novelty, it gets old quickly. Warhammer 40k: Darktide really feels like it lacks more love in the firepower department or attention to detail in melee combat, as it currently doesn’t commit in any significant or fun way. The main problem with this is that all four classes feel very similar.
While four available classes, the Veteran Sharpshooter, Zealot Preacher, Psyker, and Ogryn are fun, none but the Psyker, with its electricity and power attacks, feels unique enough to be a different class. That doesn’t necessarily mean the gameplay isn’t fun, but the feel of spamming a hammer, shovel, or ax feels the same across all classes.
And while classes get special abilities and perks differentiate classes a bit, the special abilities are so limited when active that you often forget you even have them. Additionally, they recharge as quickly as they disappear, making them feel like they lack a lot of value. One can certainly argue that the frenetic endgame combat is fun with a group of people, but single-player contestants will notice the issues fairly quickly.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide Struggle in the frame-rate department
While the graphics are phenomenal, each level feels the same, with most of the maps having a dark factory look, making the levels feel almost identical. Performance issues are also common, as it’s difficult to get through a cutscene or level without crashing. Crashes are inexplicable and occur during screen loading, cutscenes, and even mid-game.
Unless you have one of the latest Nvidia 40-series graphics cards, you won’t be able to do ray tracing and should generally expect the game to struggle overall in the frame-rate department. It must be mentioned, at least briefly, that these are real and current problems. While the game will likely be patched in the near future to help with some of these issues, its current state is pretty bad, especially if you’re a true believer in this sort of thing.
Warhammer 40k: Darktide is a fun game, but a shallow one, with a great formula, unfortunately overwritten with stability issues and a lack of content. Despite these shortcomings, playing with friends or random people is still a lot of fun, and its issues are likely to be fixed quickly.
Is Warhammer 40K: Darktide Worth Buying
Warhammer 40k: Darktide is definitely worth buying if you love the franchise, but even then just barely at the moment as it’s hollow and unstable. Here’s hoping they can fix it so it can be considered equal or better than Vermintide 2.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide Game advantages
- Great lighting and detailed textures.
- Fun team-based game with necessary roles on higher difficulty that encourages teamwork through health and ammo mechanics.
- Atmosphere is solid.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide Game Disadvantages
- Important performance and stability issues.
- Lack of Content: Needs more missions, map variety, and gunplay.
- Melee spam is overwhelming.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide release date
November 30, 2022
Warhammer 40K: Darktide developer
fat shark
Warhammer 40K: Darktide publisher
fat shark
consoles Warhammer 40K: Darktide Available On
PC, Xbox
