First Impressions With Warhammer 40k Darktide

My familiarity with Warhammer 40k is a passing one at best. I like the Ciaphas Cain novels explicitly because they make the setting palatable for me. Which is to say, by completely taking the piss. And that makes sense because 40k was originally created with a bunch of satirical elements baked into it, between the Imperium of Man and their “ends justify the means'' approach which satirised the West’s approach to the Cold War, the Space Marines being hypermasculine to the point of absurdity, etc. But there hasn’t really been much of that in recent years and I haven’t been as interested. But that hasn’t stopped me from at least playing a game or two in the setting every now and then. Relic Entertainment’s Warhammer 40k Space Marine is probably the best version of the playable Space Marines in video games. And that Rogue Trader game from Owlcat Games is also looking pretty sweet if I’m being honest. Basically what I’m saying is that while I’m not a mark for the franchise, I’ll at least get my foot wet for a good time.

This brings us to Warhammer 40k Darktide, developed by Fatshark. It’s a four-player co-op first-person melee combat/shooter game that has a lot in common with their Warhammer Fantasy Vermintide games. I haven’t played them myself, but I have heard great things. But back on track, I’ve played the opening hours so far, and it’s pretty neat if a bit rough around the edges.

The premise is as such: You are the latest unwilling member of the Imperium of Man’s Inquisition. Following a prison break where you help one of your former captors fend off an attack from a group of Traitor Guardsmen in a jailbreak, you are then sent to the Hive City of Tertium on Atoma Prime to deal with said renegade splinter faction due to their ties with the Chaos God Nurgle, and all of the nastiness associated with that. I think this might be the most 40k-ass 40k narrative I’ve experienced in a very long time. Granted, my exposure to the setting is largely through Space Marine and the Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM) novels. But if there’s one thing I can appreciate about the writing, at least on the player character front, is that it doesn’t gloss over the fact that the Imperium is really shitty. I know, that isn’t really groundbreaking, but it at least has characters in-universe acknowledge that this place fucking sucks. The exception is the Zealot due to, you know, being a Zealot. This could just be the satirical nature of the whole “Grimdark” gimmick, but it usually doesn't feel that way to me outside of this game, so I’ll call that a win. The game actually starts with a character creation setting for your player operative and you can choose their background and personality. Some of these vary from the completely loyal to the “this is full of shit” dissenter and that variety in personality is great to see because it informs all of your character interactions with other operatives in the Inquisition and even other player characters.

The gameplay of Darktide is a 40k-flavoured riff on Left 4 Dead. Much in the same way that Vermintide and Vermintide 2 were Warhammer Fantasy-flavoured riffs on Left  4 Dead. The main missions consist, so far of going in and doing various mission objectives like assassinations of high-value targets, disruptions of supply lines and intelligence gathering behind enemy lines. You have access to four highly unique classes to do these with:

• The Veteran Sharpshooters, disgraced former members of the Imperial Guardsman, who specialise in ranged combat more than the other classes
• The Zealot Preachers, masters of melee combat who wade into the thick of it and mete out punishment and justice in the Emperor’s name
• The Ogryn Skullbreakers are big beefy boys that use big guns and bigger melee weapons to serve as the frontline of the group
• The Psyker Psykinetics are Psychics who use their powers and Force Weapons to both deal with elite enemies and fire bolts of lightning
  

I spent the majority of my time playing as the Psyker because I wanted to give the psionics a try and I was not disappointed. While most classes can use most of the equipment in the game (the sole exceptions being Ogryn due to their larger sizes), they all have enough differences that make them wholly unique; the Skullbreakers have their aforementioned size difference making them limited in their weapon choices, but really good at their assigned niche, the Psyker using their powers to make enemies heads explode in lieu of having grenades like everyone else, the Sharpshooter has a higher maximum ammo capacity compared to the rest of the classes, and the Preachers can suppress large groups of enemies with stun grenades, flamethrowers, and Thunder Hammers (which are just Mjolnir on steroids). These differences might not seem like much, but they add up really quickly and go a long way to ensuring that you have a balanced group dynamic. Though I do wish that there were more class archetypes to play with like a Techpreist or an Imperial Commissar (it’d be cool to just execute an enemy to boost morale), but I guess that’s what DLC is for.

When you get into the thick of the gameplay, the main thing you notice is that this game is gorgeous in its utter filth. You go through the deepest parts of the Hive City and you see all of the taint-infested parts of the Nurgle cult’s corruption. It’s so intense that my computer, which can run Doom Eternal at the highest settings and not skip a beat, can only run this game on Medium. While I know that I built this system in 2020 before the 30 Series cards dropped and I’m not Digital Foundry, I could not help but notice the number of technical problems that Darktide was giving me over the last few days. Some Texture Pop-in here, some slowdown there, nothing as big as game-wide crashes or bugs, just small performance issues that sort of piled up in my 10 or so hours so far. I’m sure patches will come out and iron out this stuff, but it did put a damper on my enjoyment a bit. This is extra weird because I managed to run Elden Ring on my machine with no issues aside from occasional frame hitching.

And that sucks because the gameplay is really fun. While I heard that there were some reservations about how Fatshark was gonna handle the shooting because while Vermintide had classes with ranged options, they were never a main part of the gameplay. Here, guns play a substantially larger role. The melee is still the star of the show, but the shooting feels really goddamn good here, popping headshots will never not feel satisfying with how the heads pop. But nothing compares to just pulling out your sword, hammer, big stick, whatever and just going to fucking town on the hordes of enemies that swarm you. And I do mean swarm because they’ll be all over you like ants on sugar. Cleaving your way through them and just leaving piles of gibs everywhere is just so…so satisfying. These combined with the objectives and the gearing system (which is decent for the most part) all add up to make progress feel great. And said meta progression is interacted with on the hub level of the Inquisition ship, which looks awesome if a bit hard to navigate at times.

While the technical issues so far have been annoying, to say the least, I’m really enjoying my time with Warhammer 40k Darktide. It’s probably the 40k game I’ve had the most fun with, though considering that the choices are between this and Space Marine, my experiences are limited. I definitely want to check out more of it, but I think I’ll file it under the “Wait until after a few patches come through” folder.