One of the first things to learn about life in Warhammer 40k: The Dangerous Underground Hive City of Darktide is that the chainsword works whether it’s on or off. By not activating it, you can use it as a great club that can also help you defend against the hordes of Chaos. At the push of a button, however, it gnaws through armor and bone with depressingly pleasurable ease. This is the mode you’ll need for one-on-one encounters with the most dangerous elites in the Hive Tertium.
Developer Fatshark showcased Darktide at Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles and I played two sessions and was blown away by the experience. Darktide is steeped in ghoulish atmosphere, but it’s the slick 40,000+ version of Vermintide 2. The new theme forced a new focus on weapons and ranged combat, but Fatshark managed to pull it off without sacrificing the meaty, insane face from the Vermintide games. .
During my first session, I play like a fan. She’s armed with a powerful Thunderhammer and standard Imperial automatic weapons, and while I’m starting to like the new rifle, my Vermintide reflexes kick in after a few minutes and I often switch between ranged and melee combat.
While some Vermintide weapons had alternate fire modes, each weapon in Darktide has an additional cheat that you can activate. For my automatic pistol, it’s a flashlight mounted along the trunk, nothing special, but a useful tool when the crowds start to thicken in the dark labyrinths of the lower hive.
The Alternate Fire activation for a thunder hammer charges it with electrical energy, allowing it to deal a potentially lethal blow to the next object it hits. But, as the developers warn me, it’s best used with caution: you should activate it after isolating a large and powerful enemy, and not when surrounded by low-level chaos infantry, because a reinforced hammer blow can leave the user stunned. for a few seconds.
The temptation to cut everything into a blasphemous burger
Something similar happens with the veteran’s chainsword. The temptation, of course, is to chop everything up into one blasphemous burger. But this feature is best reserved for armored enemies, who won’t mind normal shots and melee attacks.
Anyone who has enjoyed playing the flamboyant Vermintide mage Sienna Fuegonasus will feel right at home playing the psychic Darktide I played in my second session. She can fire arrows of warp energy from her fingertips or channel it into her staff for close combat. Similar to Sienna’s overheat mechanic, the psyker must release the Chaos Energy she’s building up using abilities, but in Darktide this can happen at any time without taking damage, just hold down the reset key. Like Sienna, the Psyker also has a powerful long range AoE attack that I launch into the center of hordes to send the Chaos Heretics flying.
Another change in Darktide is that grenades are now part of your class gear: instead of a consumable you find in the world, grenades act more like an ability you equip and use. They take forms unique to each of the four classes, and in the psychic’s case, it’s the ability to literally give someone a searing headache. By holding down the grenade button, I can reach out and smash a nearby cultist’s skull, or hit a large mutant attacking my team.
The loose, throaty diesel growl emitted by the chainsword is just perfect.
This detail seems to come directly from Dan Abnett’s The Ghosts of Gaunt novels, and it’s no wonder: Abnett was recruited as a co-writer for Darktide and worked closely with Fatshark to create its atmosphere. The ins and outs of the missions we undertake, the recoil of weapons and their devastating effects, are imbued with Abnett’s attention to personal detail. The loose, throaty diesel growl a chainsword makes when an ally just swings it Perfect – a chef’s kiss, without notes.
The weapon is a joy to use, and it’s clear that Fatshark has spent a lot of technical time getting its engine to work with automatic fire. But even with boltguns and laspistols, Darktide manages to hold off the Vermintide horde. Firearms are another tool to fight back against the screaming hordes, but there’s always a moment when it’s clearly time to “fix the bayonets” and draw the chainsword, so to speak.
During the sessions, I noticed various types of elite enemies. Basically, there’s a human sniper who will accurately shoot you in dark corners, and another who runs up to your party and shoots himself. Another type can spread poison gas like the globadier Vermintide, and there’s a mutant ogreen that will lunge at you and grab you by the throat before smashing your fragile corpse against the wall or ground repeatedly until your allies come to the rescue.
Another interesting Vermintide landmark is the Darktide base of operations. While the Vermintide games used this space primarily as a central lobby, the Darktide version is a social space that Fatshark says can be thought of as Destiny 2’s tower. with other players while on an orbiting space station between missions.
At the last minute, Fatshark had to fiddle around a bit to find a spot for the second day of demo sessions during Play Days, and ended up finding a location in Burbank, in ideal conditions, meaning half an hour from downtown Los Angeles. Angels. , where he spent the rest of the game days. The fact that I was looking forward to hopping in a cab and heading there on a beautiful Southern California Saturday night just to have one extra session should tell you how much I enjoyed my time with Darktide during the show.
Warhammer 40K: Darktide will be released in September and will be available on Steam, Windows Store and PC Game Pass.
Source : PC Gamesn
