Sundays are for unsubscribing to the deluge of ‘Happy 4/20! Here’s 10% off’ emails I’ve gotten from every place I’ve ever bought CBD from in the past five years. Before I do so much clicking my fingers get sore and I immediately order some soothing CBD - perhaps at a tempting 10% off? - let's read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things!)
]]>I've griped before that Warhammer 40,000 Darktide hides satisfying challenges behind tedious grind, but another interesting challenge is easily missed and forgotten at the opposite end of the scale. Darktide is hard when you start a new character, with weapons that barely scratch some foes and no talents to back them up. It's a challenge unlike the official high difficulty levels, which lean towards drowning you in special enemies. So after hitting level 30 on all four classes and grinding out great gear, I've started a new character who'll never learn skills or get a good gun. She's quite bad, and that's quite fun.
]]>The time is nigh for this month’s RPS Game Club liveblog, where we’ll of course be discussing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. We’ve already had some good pre-chat, and now at 4pm GMT today (March 28th), we’ll reconvene right here for a proper 41st Millennium natter.
]]>Readers may be aware that I am a Warhammer 40K orbiter, but I am not of Warhammer 40K. Recent events have conspired so that I have experienced a bunch of Warhammer 40K in a way that exposes me to the world passively, without lore dumping. I played the PowerWash Sim x 40K crossover DLC and loved it for just putting cool big machines in front of me and refusing to explain further, so when James picked Darktide as this month's RPS Game Club Game, like someone incautiously opening the door to Mormons, I was ready to let more of the God Emperor into my life. Except, having played some Darktide, I do not want to play Darktide. For me, playing Darktide does, in some measure, get in the way of enjoying Darktide.
]]>By this point you’ve probably had enough of hearing what I think about this month’s RPS Game Club game, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. But what say you, dear readers? Once again, the Game Club liveblog looms, and as with Cobalt Core, we want your thoughts, feelings, and questions to shovel into the conversational fuel furnace.
]]>I know that "Made one guy admit he was wrong about a subgenre" isn’t the kind of achievement they put in accolade trailers, but I must credit Warhammer 40,000: Darktide with tearing apart my blanket dislike of first-person melee fighters. Having spent months of stubbornly maining Veteran and sticking as closely as possible to FPS convention, I’ve since found peace in the simple act of swinging knives/swords/giant electrified hammers into and through people. Mainly because it’s not so simple: for all its chaotic spectacle, the meleeing in Darktide (this month’s RPS Game Club star) works because it’s secretly been a rhythm game.
]]>Well before anointing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide as this month’s RPS Game Club game, I’ve wanted to talk about its rock. The rock. The best rock. Best Darktide rocks 2024, number one: the rock.
]]>Hope everyone enjoyed the RPS Game Club returning with Cobalt Core, though personally, I’ve always found deckbuilders a bit short on the screaming slaughter of unclean heretics. Put down the cards and pick up a boltgun, then, as this month’s Game Club pledges eternal service (until April) to Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.
]]>After a successful first outing, RPS Game Club is returning for another year of gaming show-and-tells, and this time, we're publishing the schedule in advance so you know exactly what's coming up and when. Handy, say, if you want to keep an eye on certain sale prices for games you've got your eye on, or you want to clear your calendar so you can join us for our end-of-month liveblog session where we all get together book club-style to talk about the month's pick. Each member of the RPS Treehouse is getting involved this year as well, so read on below to find out what's on the Club docket.
]]>I've recently returned to Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, one year after the grimdark Left 4 Dead 'em up launched and eleven months after I stopped playing. It was always fun to tear through the grubby guts of a Gothic industrial megacity with your chainsword, but it became repetitive and its whole loot-o-crafting mess sucked. A year on, the loot and crafting still suck, but I've really enjoyed the variety added by new levels and weapons and the polish from a year of tweaks and quality-of-life changes. If you played Darktide on Game Pass (or bought it), consider another look.
]]>This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast, we get a little bit removed from the rails, as it were. Things aren't looking great for Starfield - or at least, they're looking mixed, as in the Steam reviews, and verified but nameless devs are responding to negative reviews with comments that are basically like "no, our space game is fun and you're playing it wrong". We laugh about this (but also discuss the role of Steam reviews and devs replying to them). As well as that, the lads have been playing, well, the same sort of stuff this week, James brings us talk of mini PCs, and Nate makes us play Dracula or Russell Crowe. Extremely normal.
]]>What is a birthday but a celebration that, despite all your struggles, you survived? It has been almost a year since the release of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, meaning it's been now a full year of apologies, paused expansions, and transformative patches. And yet it lives.
The co-op shooter now seems on firmer ground, and to celebrate it's getting a two-part update called The Traitor Curse. Part one will add a new zone and mission, among other updates.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide features fun, grisly, co-op combat, but at launch was criticised for live service cruft - from an incomplete crafting system to meagre progression rewards. Some criticism also fell upon its four classes, who lacked the 'career' subclasses of its developer's previous game, Vermintide 2.
Darktide's classes will therefore get an overhaul October 4th, when an update will introduce skill trees for each class.
]]>A hefty new Warhammer 40,000: Darktide content update arrives in the next week, adding two new missions as well as possibly preparing to let players on Steam and the Windows Store (that's you, Game Pass gang) play together. It won't fix the fundamental flaws of the grimdark Left 4 Dead 'em up but these are welcome changes. Darktide is also adding new cosmetics to earn by playing (yeah!) and resuming the release of new cosmetics sold for real money (yeahhh).
]]>Warhammer 40k: Darktide seemed like a recipe for certain success when it launched late last year. Developers Fatshark were taking the formula established in their co-op horde shooters Vermintide, throwing in some beefy melee, and moving it over to the 40k universe. Fans were less than happy with the end result, pointing toward technical issues, randomness in the endgame, and a lack of crafting systems, which Fatshark are hoping to fix in today’s update.
]]>The makers of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide have laid out their plans to improve the co-op shooter's shopping and crafting systems. The gear system changes, due to arrive in the next patch, do sound like improvements to the current state of things. These plans do not sound better than entirely ending the tedious grinds of random rolls and making numbers bigger. Why improve when it would be better to remove?
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide developers Fatshark have announced that they're delaying the co-op horde shooter's seasonal content in order to focus solely on addressing "the feedback that many of you have." That feedback is best witnessed via the recent Darktide Steam reviews, which sit at "Mostly Negative" after 8471 submissions. Specifically, Fatshark say they're going to improve crafting, stability and performance.
]]>I confess: I usually did my damndest to rig the RPS Advent Calendar vote. When every year has so many more than 24 good games, I always tried to tactically vote and reshuffle points to wedge in a few wee great games I knew not many people had played. But with a change to voting procedure this year, I simply couldn't get some games on our list. So, here are the games I would've slammed into our advent calendar if I were still allowed to cheat, along with some that simply didn't quite make the cut.
]]>Futuristic co-op action game Warhammer 40,000: Darktide receives its first significant update today. Dubbed a "content drop", you and your three grimdarkest pals can now take on the new Comms Plex map. Zealots and Ogryns are getting a new weapon each, too, both power mauls. The 1.0.20 patch lands alongside today’s update, bringing a long list of fixes and tweaks aimed at stabilising the game.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is not for the squeamish. Fatshark’s spiritual follow-up to Vermintide and Vermintide 2 is ferocious, violent, and involves a whole lotta gore. It’s a grisly co-op multiplayer where instead of brawling your way through torrents of gross rat humanoids, you and your rag-tag team are now up against hordes of scabby zombies all in favour of a Imperial fascist overlord.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide launched on November 30th following several weeks of pre-order beta, but some players are already rather ticked off that the full-price game includes microtransactions. In particular, Darktide players are miffed that the co-op action game offers bundles of its Aquila premium currency that fall just short of the cost of some items in the store, meaning you’d have to stump up for several bundles to afford those. Taking to Darktide’s Discord to ask why you can’t just buy a specific amount of Aquilas for the items you want, one player was told by a spokesperson for Fatshark that adding such a feature would be “immeasurably complex”.
]]>I knew the hulking Ogryn would be my class in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide as soon as I shot his starting gun: a shotgun which holds a single shell the size of a can of beans. Sounds excessive, but that's the kind of firepower you need when four outcasts face thousands of cultists, mutants, and demons. The follow-up to Vermintide is once again a Left 4 Dead-style cooperative first-person shooter with a fair whack of melee and, having played a lot of the beta and a little after launch, it's a joyously grubby brawl with a great cast of weirdos.
]]>Ray tracing has been temporarily disabled in newly released co-op accent simulator Warhammer 40,000: Darktide due to issues with AMD and Intel graphics cards. Devs Fatshark say they’re looking into what’s causing the problems. Anecdotal reports from the Darktide subreddit seem to suggest that ray tracing was staying on for people who’d set the fancy lighting technique to off. For now, Fatshark say they've turned off ray tracing by default for all players until they can figure out what’s going on and implement a fix.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide's pre-order beta has drawn to a close, because tomorrow the full game will release proper. That's also when our opinions on Darktide will start to flow across these pages like so many heretics across the streets of Tertium. Perhaps you'd like to enjoy one last dose of concentrated marketing before that happens, in which case you can hop below to watch the Darktide launch trailer.
]]>Grim co-op action game Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is out on PC on Wednesday, and devs Fatshark have taken a load off players’ minds by confirming that progression from the pre-order beta will carry over. Although Fatshark had mentioned in previous Steam updates about the game’s beta that player progression might not be fully guaranteed, they tweeted over the weekend to let players know that progression will be maintained once the game’s released. I do like that they address everyone as “rejects” in their announcements, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
]]>Warhammer 40,000: Darktide isn't out until November 30th - unless you pre-ordered it, in which case it's playable in beta right now. This also means that it's already being regularly patched and expanded with new features. Today's update, version 1.0.8, introduced "the first element of the crafting system" as well as new cosmetics.
]]>Last time, you decided that dynamic music is better than hex grids. Heart won over mind, and honestly I myself would struggle to know which to follow. Given that hexes aren't going anywhere and dynamic music is scarce, sure, let's celebrate dynamic music and hope for more. This week, I ask you to decide between two very different types of attack. What's better: overwatch reaction attacks (not Overwatch the game, okay), or the ridiculous gunfire overload that is dakka?
]]>If you have a Game Pass subscription, I don't see why you would buy a game between now and the end of the year. Earlier this month, Football Manager 2023 came to the service, a game so all-consuming it barely leaves time to sleep. Now Microsoft have announced the remaining games to arrive in November, and as expected it includes the year's remaining big release, co-op shooter Warhammer 40K: Darktide, as well as several indie darlings.
]]>Set aside your Vermintides, because there’s not too long to go until Fatshark’s next co-op action game, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, strikes out onto PC on November 30th. To gear players up ahead of time, some more details about one of the game’s four classes have been revealed in a new gameplay video. Watch below to find out why you don’t want to mess with the Psyker class.
]]>Warhammer 40K: Darktide's closed beta is underway, which you probably already know if you're one of the people granted access to test the co-op shooter. If you don't have access however, there's still time as you can still apply and more players will be let in over the course of this weekend. You might also enjoy watching some streamers play so you have a better sense of it ahead of its release in November.
]]>Warhammer 40K: Darktide is surely one of the most exciting games still to release this year. Before everyone gets to wield chainswords on November 30th, developers Fatshark are running a closed beta weekend and they just announced the dates: October 14th-16th.
]]>Feeling proud is a nice sensation isn't it? I've felt proud a number of times at this year's Gamescom so far, marked first by an excellent McDonald's choice (honey crisp chicken and bacon) on the first evening, followed by a doner kebab that put it to shame. And in a non-savoury twist, today it was being a member of the first squad to complete the Warhammer 40K: Darktide demo mission – the sweetest feeling of them all, and a perfect team-bonding exercise.
The bonus emotions? Surprise and... not being so surprised. Surprise that we'd accomplished such a feat, but not so much surprise in the game itself. It was, as expected, a good co-op FPS time! But a very familiar one.
]]>Warhammer 40K: Darktide, Fatshark's co-op shooter set in the grim darkness of the far future, has been delayed until a little further into our own future. It was previously aiming to release in September, but in an update on Twitter the developers say Darktide will now launch on November 30th.
The upside is that they're going to run technical tests and betas before the full release, and you can sign-up to participate now.
]]>A new trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide fresh out of the Summer Game Fest gives another look at the heretic-smashing cooperative shooter from the makers of Warhammer: Vermintide and yup, it looks like Vermintide in 40K. And that's fine. I'm good with that. That's great, really. Vermintide is fun but I've no affinity for Warhammer Fantasy so yes, give me bolters and Inquisitors and Ogryns and sci-fi Gothic cathedrals. See for yourself below.
]]>The week-long Warhammer Skulls event has kicked off with an avalanche of announcements. Leading the pack are three new games: CRPG Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, digital card game Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge, and retro FPS Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef, the 2D action platformer, also got a release date. It’ll be out on the 20th of October.
]]>The makers of cooperative Warhammer FPS Vermintide today finally announced a release date for the far-future follow-up, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. Its ragtag gang will start rooting out Chaos on the 13th of September, which, yes, does mean the game is delayed again. But this time they're committing to an actual date.
]]>Let me tell you, 2021 doesn't currently look like a fantastic year for major game releases. Warhammer 40k: Darktide isn't helping by today announcing that its co-op cult-smashing had been delayed into spring 2022.
]]>After turning the fantasy part of Warhammer into a fine Left 4 Dead-style cooperative shooter in Vermintide, developers Fatshark are now turning to the grim dark future of humanity. Today they released the first "gameplay trailer" for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, which really does look like Vermintide but in 40K - and that's no bad thing. Come see for yourself in the trailer below.
]]>They've gone and done it, team. Warhammer: Vermintide 2 developers Fatshark went and put their rat-smasher in space, announcing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide at today's Xbox Games Showcase. Frankly, it's about damn time someone made a rock-solid FPS in the 41st Millenium - and who better than the folks who turned a stodgy old fantasy wargame into a stellar Left 4 Dead successor?
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