Last weekend, closed beta testing (hereinafter referred to as CBT) of the upcoming first-person action game Darktide took place, and we, of course, could not miss it.
Darktide is another game from the Fatshark studio, which is mainly known for the Vermintide series. And it’s no surprise that Darktide draws most of its game mechanics and play style from Vermintide 2 – first-person co-op for up to four players. More or less, most of the gameplay elements can be categorized as “you’ve seen this before”, which isn’t too bad, but it’s not perfect either. At first glance, the biggest difference is, of course, in the setting of the game – from the dark fantasy world of Warhammer we move into the even darker world of Warhammer 40,000, where dark gothic fantasy is combined with science fiction. After a short tutorial, Darktide will park you in the HUB location aboard the Inquisition spaceship and get to work. The planet you orbit is suffering from a rampant infection of chaos, and due to a lack of military forces, you and your roommates have been called out of prison for targeted destruction.
At the beginning of the game, you choose one of four characters (so all are available). Choosing from Veteran, Ogryn, Fanatic Priest, and Psyker (a wizard in the 40k universe), you choose her background and voila. It is worth noting that in addition to the Ogryn, you can play both male and female characters. How much this short start will correspond to the full game is difficult to assess, but as part of the CBT, the introduction did not seem unnecessarily long to me. Once you’re in the HUB, there’s nothing for you to do as NPCs (buy weapons, later challenge NPCs and that’s it) won’t mess with you – you need to earn their trust. You are a respected convict, not an ordinary hero. It remains only to enter the game. There were four maps in CBT, on which several missions were carried out – to kill a target, start a factory or “nationalize” special ammunition and the like. Missions have 5 difficulties and, like Vermintide, some of them contain relics or grimoires, collecting which makes the mission more difficult, but rewards you with big rewards.
Unfortunately, the game has a problem with the balance and behavior of weapons in general. While hand-to-hand combat is cool and fun, firearms are just plain bad. I will skip details such as the inconsistency of the beam lasgun for flashlights with recoil (probably due to balance and immersion in the game, or rather the pleasure of shooting as such). The big problem is that the magazine reload time is horrendously long for all the weapons I’ve tried, and the weapons are indeed ridiculously inaccurate (a few times I felt like a stormtrooper in the Star Wars movies) – for example, a lasgun in hand. the veteran sniper character is literally shooting beams from almost completely off, which is just not right. In general, it’s easier to take a shovel, an ax or a sword and go deal with the situation up close. How about each enemy firing the same weapon as if they were a top-notch sniper. I would understand some level of inaccuracy due to the “RPG” loot system, but even that has to have some sort of limit.
As for the technical side of the game, apart from a few problems with the disconnect (if you were on a mission and managed to quickly return, reconnecting to the game works, which is great), I did not notice any problems. The game runs smoothly even on a fairly average PC (RTX2080S at 3440×1440) and there were minimal glitches. But what can only be praised is the musical accompaniment. Jesper Kyd is shining again and I will definitely include his soundtrack in my playlist.
Unfortunately, the aforementioned firearm behavior affects characters like Ogryn or Priest, who are more suited to close combat and therefore have a slightly easier time getting through the game. By all accounts, this is an issue that Fatshark game studio needs to address as soon as possible, and I hope they can do so before the game launches. I’ve spent about 10 hours playing the Darktide beta and other than this balance issue, I haven’t run into any major issues. So I hope that the creators will not disappoint and release a fixed game, and my friends and I can plunge into the battle with a balanced party, and not a combination of three Ogryns and a priest.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide launches November 30 on PC (Steam Wishlist). Xbox doesn’t have a date yet.
Source :Indian TV
