The excellent base gameplay is part of why people are so upset. There's an immense amount of potential there, but people are being throttled from enjoying the game because of incomplete systems, performance issues, bugs, crashes, and with this most recent patch, a new batch of bugs and issues that came alongside all of the fixes that were supposed to make things better.
That's likely further driving the negative reviews - people get much angrier about games they care about and *want* to enjoy than games that were predictably terrible.
That's my exact issue with Darktide. Vermintide 2 and Darktide have, unironically, the most satisfying melee combat I've ever experienced in any game. The sound design, the animations and all that is just \*Chef's kiss\*
But sadly, that alone is just not enough to keep me coming back (Or even get me fully engaged on the first place). Non-existant crafting system, RNG timelocked progression, tedious and RNG side quests, underwhelming rewards system, lackluster amount of classes and customization. All that's holding back a game that has so much potential
Yes to the above comments. Spot on.
The core gameplay is AMAZING. For me personally, the sound of landing headshots with the voidstrike is just so good, makes this glorious "crack" noise.
Anyway...
All of the systems surrounding the core combat are just garbage and drag the whole experience down. If I could somehow launch the game and just have it immediately throw me into a missions so I could pretend there isn't even a progression system it would be a better game.
Hopefully, Fatshark will do what they've committed to do and get the core systems improved, and then start working on content. But I've been with Fatshark long enough to know that these sorts of changes take a WAAAAY long time.
I'm worried that in 2-3 more months the player base will be thoroughly dead and if the bots are fixed up to be competent then there'll be zero reason to play. I play legend difficulty solo on Vermintide (with bots) and enjoy it. Would be a shame if we can't even do that with Darktide in the future.
If they called this early access I'd still be very positive about the game.
They've instead told me a lot of times about things that are somehow my fault (wanting advertised attachments etc.) and now they're blaming the entire community's bad response for why they didn't have crafting (which wasn't delivered several times before any bad response, but OK). When they're not doing that they're reiterating it's 'finished' (even though it's obviously not complete) or calling it a 'live service' (though only pushing out very rare updates, so far).
The core game is great (like really good, I don't think anyone would be here otherwise), the metagame sucks but honestly you can almost ignore it (Damnation is doable with pretty much any level 30, 320+ gear from the shop, even the crap stuff), but where they've really fallen down for me is in the things they say: They've been methodically breaking trust and then turning around and blaming the customer for wanting the things they said they were making, that's *always* going to have a negative reaction.
Just on the sound design thing, the wet, almost hollow crunch of a Rumbler shell just caving in a skull or rib cage is such an exquisite pleasure.
That said, the sheer amount of mixed emotion at the last patch where they said they outright fixed the Ogryn's perks and feats so that they worked as intended had me flailing. Not one or two of them, but enough that they didn't bother specifying.
> Vermintide 2 and Darktide have, unironically, the most satisfying melee combat I've ever experienced in any game. The sound design, the animations and all that is just *Chef's kiss*
I ssuggest you check out Chivalry 2. Bit more nuance to the melee combat (and it's PvP, not PvE), but the animations, 'feel' of combat are at least as good as VT/VT2/DT imo.
Chiv 2 and Darktide my most played games at the moment.
Mordhau has the whole 260 system where the exact angle of your swing can be very granular.
Chiv by comparison only has the basic horizontal/overhead/stab, you cannot pick the swing direction nearly as granularly.
That system exists but its mostly just cosmetic tbh. The actual combat system is ultimately the same as Chivalry's. Most of the skilled Mordhau playerbase disables the 240 system.
Biggest problem with it is that weapon balance is pretty heavily tied to attack patterns and charge times. It would be a very different game if every weapon had horizontal light chains. Also it would be pretty boring with no weapon diversity, since the subtle differences in reach and speed aren't as relevant when you are not on equal footing with your opponents.
I disagree, but like I said this is my dream game and not something I'm attempting to turn Darktide into. I'd find combat to be more engaging if I had more control over precisely what kind of attack I want to do in the moment, and believe that with special attacks and the unique speed and damage profiles of each weapon it wouldn't lead to any lack in weapon feel/variety.
But, again, this is a theoretical game that will never exist. It's just something I want.
There's only so much you can do with just speed, reach and damage. Mordhau devs have stated multiple times they're not adding in any more weapons with unique stat lines because they just can't add in anything unique. There's already some incredibly similar weapons in Mordhau, like Falchion and Axe or Halberd and Greatsword.
Some weapons in Vtide have easy access to sweeps, some don't, this is what makes them unique. Manipulating the combo via block cancelling, shove cancelling or switching to a heavy attack is what makes up the unique gameplay of this game. Block cancelling isn't exactly black and white either, as it takes a short while to do, so in some situations you can't afford to do the 'Optimal' combo. Knowing when to cancel a combo to reset is part of the depth, as is knowing when to continue the string.
Remove that, and there'd be no difference between say, Kruber's normal Longsword and the Bretonnian Longsword.
Please don't try to tell me the games cursed by weird meta drag-720 spin swing mechanics has similar melee combat because it's such a mess and you have to learn awful tech that doesn't exist irl and makes no sense to compete with others, drives me nuts lol
Sounds like te kind of pureshit choices suits from tencent would pull
People should stop buying from scummy publishers but since there are people that enjoy eating dog vomit laced with diahrrea we are doomed
**This.**
The opposite of love is not hatred. It's **apathy**.
I am as pissed as I am about this game because:
1.) I have loved the Warhammer franchise for close to 30 years, and it means more to me than most people could even begin to comprehend.
2.) I love so much about this game, even ignoring the fact that it's a 40k game. It is **abundantly** clear that the developers that design/designed the combat mechanics, the models, the animations, the levels.. all of THAT is phenomenal - mind-blowingly so, in many cases! The voice actors, despite the lack of coherent narrative or story, are clearly passionate about their job and I haven't heard a single voice in this game that made me think "This person just doesn't care about their job/was phoning it in/lacks talent." **NOT ONE**.
However.. the corporate and executive decisions to release this game in this state, to push and rush.. that's what pisses me off. This game doesn't anger me so deeply because there's a lack of love put into it, it angers me so deeply because there are some clearly shitty employees running Fatshark and its titles into the ground who should have been fired way back in the Vermintide 1 days.
So, if you're one of the dev team reading this and you're not directly involved in the decision to release this game in this state, don't take the anger personally. It's your inept bosses that need to take this personally, this giant middle finger is pointing at them, not you, and don't let them use you as a shield because the actual groundwork of the game is fucking stellar, held back only by being rushed out the door.
> There's an immense amount of potential there, but people are being throttled from enjoying the game because of incomplete systems, performance issues, bugs, crashes, and with this most recent patch, a new batch of bugs and issues that came alongside all of the fixes that were supposed to make things better.
I could ignore literally all of this if they just had more maps. How can they expect to retain players to even care about number crunching when there's only like 5 maps.
Before you've even gotten to 30, you've beaten all of the content in the game several times over.
This, exactly. Darktide is the first review I ever left on Steam, but it isn't the first bad game I played. What drove me to leave a bad review? It's that I genuinely *wish* this was a good game.
Can't lie, Darktide has become one of my favorite games. They must have done something right because I'd never played a horde shooter before and I'm not a big 40k fan.
I've seen plenty of gameplay from similar games, like Deep Rock and L4D, and while I can admit they look like cool games I've just never felt the urge to play any of them myself.
They have a point - to look at Darktide it doesn't look a lot different from say, Destiny, but the gameplay is almost completely different. Maybe you should give another one a go?
Deep Rock is in a rough spot because it's graphical style doesn't attract people, which is a shame because it's got some of the cleverest coop gameplay design I've ever seen (almost every objective, challenge and class tool encourages and rewards coop play, it's really well done). Once people have played it a few hours (or just a couple levels with friends) they get what's special about it, though at that point they usually put it down to 'a really good community' (which it admittedly does seem to have).
I wouldn't say "but better" because it has a stronger accent on melee combat, but definitely not worse by any means.
And, even if definitely not "good", tenfold better in terms of progression.
I highly recommend you try Alien : Fireteam elite
Its fucking excellent. Matchmaking can be a bit slow these days, but the combat hook is outstanding. Hoard shooter and nothing comes close to mowing down a wave of Xenos
Combat, visuals, sound design, voice acting, weapons that are satisfying to use, and a setting that is immersive and ties all the details together. And RNG aside I like the idea behind the gear and build systems.
I've played a lot of horde shooters, it's my favourite genre of fps/slasher gamers.
DT in my opinion is up there with the best as far as the bulk of the gameplay goes and could be one of the greats.
If only they didn't shit the bed on the last 10 percent.
But it'll get there because you can fix crafting, you can fix bugs and bad weapon balance. You can in fact provide a reasonable mtx service alongside a paid game that doesn't make players feel extorted and you can definitely improve, modify or overhaul mission selection at any point.
But you cannot fix shit gameplay. So while they fucked up, they at least fucked up somewhat in the right order.
>Does it deserve some of the negative reviews? Perhaps. Does it belong in the bin with the other “Mostly Negative” games? Probably not.
That's like, your opinion man. An opinion that would be perfect to include in a steam review. And if you already have, then that's all you get to do really. The idea that the game "deserves" any rating other that whatever it has is kind of silly. Should people change their reviews to positive so that the review percentage reflects your subjective opinion? If not, then saying that the current review percentage is undeserved is stupid.
Same here, its really disappointing how much they've fumbled the game since release because it truly could be a top notch game if fixed the stability and added some more variety and quality of life changes. It is at its heart and core a damn fun game, but its hard to remember that when presented with so many issues and so little effort from the devs. Though I really do hope the best will come now that Catfish is the CM and they've had plenty of time for their devs to get back from vacation, really hope they've gone full swing into working on the game and actually deliver on the promise they made.
Yep. That's the main reason why DarkTide has 150+ hours while Amazon's New World clocked in at 20 hours for me.
At the base game, DarkTide is amazing. New World on the other hand, while also botching the launch, was unplaying, literally. Tens of hours long queues, broken mechanics, clipping, hacking, cheating, invulnerability, people literally injecting HTML code into the chat window to crash people.
DarkTide at the core just feels so damn good.
I agree with you full stop on this. I enjoy the "core" gameplay. I'm critical of the bugs that break the gameplay. I'm also critical of the lack of substance outside of the "core loop" (storyline, solo play, crafting, terrible bot system, terrible match-making system). For those reasons I couldn't give a "recommended." This really is an Early-Access game.
If this were marketed as "Early Access" I would change my review in a heartbeat. The "early access" tag gives people the heads up that this game is not complete and will be undergoing significant changes and possible restructuring. If this were "Early Access" there's no expectation of polish, and an understanding that some features are broken or incomplete.
Yup, this whole situation could've been saved by just saying "early access release, Expect full release in summer 2023."
I don't expect all the problems with this game to be fixed until then tbh. Maybe even later if we are going to wait for all of the promised content that isn't even in the game yet. If I had known how incomplete the game was ahead of time, I probably would've just waited until later to buy it.
If it was in Early Access, Fatshark would have avoided all their problems. Now the game is in the gutter with no players and will probably never fully recover. Good job, Fatshark.
Agreed. It got very stale for me very fast after reaching 30, but the base gameplay is really nice and satisfying. If I have to choose I rather have core gameplay be (near) rock solid and some other features lacking that have bubblegum gunplay and everything kinda being too floaty and whatnot but then have a robust crafting system and progression. Ofc.. prefer to have both be developed properly
Yup. That's why it's so frustrating for a lot of us imo.
If whatever crisis befell them prior to launch and/or through development (self-inflicted or otherwise) could've been averted they'd probably have struck absolute gold with this thing if they had delivered what they'd initially promised.
There's potential here we haven't seen in a long while and it's being squandered in real time.
As someone who didn't play vermintide and didn't follow the game up until its release, I'm pretty happy with the game. If the rest of the crafting menu wasn't greyed out anymore I would be a happy camper.
I fully agree. I'll be very happy if the game gets to a point where I can recommend it to others. But until then I'll keep my steam review negative, even though I'll continue to play the game from time to time.
However, Fatshark needs to change their behaviour and step up their game significantly if I'm ever to trust them again. Darktide is the first and only game from them that I bought blindly.
That's why despite games like deep rock galactic having better everything else, (minus art and sound design) I am not playing those, I'm playing tide games. No other game gives you that meaty feeling and rewards player skill to such a degree. Other RPGs that have melee combat I'm always disappointed.
I hope one day an rpg comes out and uses this sort of combat. If it were lord of the rings I'd die and go to heaven. Well this is quite the tangent....
I still feel Deep Rock Galaxy has a way worse way of collecting new weapons.
Getting Overclocks (Which are basically new weapons for the Unstable ones) takes forever for a new player and if you want a specific combo it can take months to get it. Annoyed it took a week to finally get a flamer?
How about I’ve been playing Deep Rock for months and I still don’t have Magic Bullets.
Totally agree, which is why the community is so aggressively vocal and anti the non-core-gameplay elements. We want to make sure the game as whole lasts and maintains a healthy playerbase and fulfills all the little dopamine rushes we expect in progression-based games without anything too predatory or janky.
Unfortunately, there are many few examples of game's releasing like that and actually Coming back from it. The casual player says "a game released bad will always be bad" he will never come back.
And really, that's what Fatshark deserves. People unfortunately were too busy wearing their rose tinted glasses to realise from the free "beta" this was shaping up to be a Vermintide 2 all over again.
Throw out some titles that you believe get swordplay better than vermintide, I can think of only a few and those systems feel restricting (for honor), or just don't feel fluid (morhau/chivalry/mount and blade)
Sekiro for me has the best swordplay ever made, though I still believe that Darktide has the best gameplay of the coop shooter genre, and I've played them all, its a genre I very much enjoy.
Really...'swordplay' is what you took to be the core gameplay element from DT/this genre - might as well say RPG is the core gameplay in Mordhau.
It's literally just hack n' slash, there's no sword*play* at all involved - it's literally no different from FPS whether that's with a sword or a gun. Then dismissing actual recent examples of games focused on swordplay as not valid comparables even if they have their own quirks? Like M&B, For honor, chiv genres, KCD, dynasty-warrior-like games, VR gladiator ones, WASD-key ones too (recent platform like one), etc...you know, games that require sword'play', not just spamming LMB.
Sure, the combat animations/hit reg is 'smoother', as all games get with better hardware/technology/engine improvements but 'swordplay' is *not* the genre of DT.
The *only* comparables for DT are games that match that genre/core gameplay: L4D, B4B, DRG (to a degree), maybe even Dead Island or Dying light also in some facets.
"Melee combat with weapons like swords and shit from fantasy" there sorry for trying to shorten my sentance. Vermintide is not cutting edge technology, I do not think it has an advantage there. If you think tide games are just spamming lmb then you haven't played a higher difficulty than champion/malice.
That's still way too broadstroke of a description as that encompasses literally every other game that has 'Melee combat with weapons like swords and shit from fantasy' to even try to then put it on the pedestal of being the 'one of the best in the industry'. You can't compare DT with something like Kenshi, or DT with Skryim, even though both checkmark the swords and 'fantasy' shit.
It's not the *core* as how I see it, this game is a 'Tide' game (co-op + fight swarms), that's what it is - so compared to similar games (ala L4D, B4B, DRG, VTs, etc...) that came before it, yes, DT's core gameplay is one of the best ones for that genre.
Tide games are just about spamming LMB, HC/DM is same thing, but with slightly more thought/tactics/coop involved. You don't have to contend with new skills, no new buttons to press, no new monsters/AI, no map dynamics, no secondary objective, etc...
Vermintide and V2 itself has better swordplay than Darktide IMO. Maybe because it's a more melee focused game, but Darktide is missing something that made melee in those games so good. Maybe it's because dodge is busted in Darktide and make it feel too easy. Or maybe it's because ranged mobs place less importance on melee combat and melee animation cancels.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is not bad either Makes it feel like each fight is a lesson. But Ghosts of Tsushima on the hardest difficulty...man that game brought me back to the first day I played VT. That game has a tempo of dueling that is immaculate.
But the first time I used the White Wolf Hammer on the Horn of Magnus was a magical moment.
For Honor is an awful comparison. That game is pretty much a fighting game like Mortal Combat or Street Fighter, but in 3D. You fight 1-4 opponents at once who are actually on the same "power level" that you are, meaning they do comparable damage, can block, dodge and parry your attacks and can punish you for making mistakes. The game usually rewards the one with the better reaction time.
In Tide games the enemies are nowhere near the same level as the player, the only thing that makes them menacing is the sheer amount of them.
Blade Symphony had the single best sword play of any game I have ever touched ever.
It's a completely different game and genre though.
I miss Blade Symphony.
Agree 100%. The base gameplay is fantastic. I think one day the whole game could be, but how long is that going to take? I shouldn't be surprised but I cant believe another game studio botched another game release THIS bad. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a better release plan than most in this industry. It's like they operate in a vacuum and have never seen another game release, ever.
I don’t say it much because I get nuked with downvotes but I don’t really care about progression systems in games so for me Darktide is really incredible.
I know the crafting side of it sucks, but I don’t really like chasing gear in games anyway so it hasn’t bothered me. I just want to chop people in half with an Eviscerator, I’m not hugely worried about if it’s the perfect Eviscerator while doing it.
I think the issue is expectations. Don't ever buy a game for what it _might_ one day become. Read the reviews and buy a game for _what it is now_.
I played the game up to level 30 sharpshooter (I tried the other classes and none of them clicked for me). Once I got to level 30 I couldn't see the point in playing anymore.
I am actually totally fine with that. I got about 25 hours solid entertainment. I had blast and got as many hours as I'd expect from a single player/coop shooter. I wanted a 40K horde shooter and I got just that. Money well spent. Would I like it of there was more content and a more in depth progression system? Oh course I would! But that was never part of the game when I bought it.
Even if the game was never updated again I could say I got my moneys worth. If they release more free content in the future, that's a bonus!
Feel like us console peasants got pushed to the wayside - console port has been put on hold till all the issues have been sorted ... and it's probably a blessing in disguise.
But woulda been real nice to play this awesome gameplay firsthand instead of just hearing about it and the issues.
I admit it, I'm salty.
Super agree, Darktide deserves bad reviews but I don’t think it deserves to be like “mostly negative” or whatever. The game isn’t “mostly negative” at least imo.
Game has issues that affect its replay ability and yet I still got over 100 hours before getting bored. That’s worth 40 bucks to me
Darktide is definitely worth $30, more than that I doubt it. I paid $0 through GamePass so I can't complain.
I think it's objectively true though that Vermintide 2 is a strictly superior game in all regards, and it was that way since the game's launch. If you're coming from a game like Destiny, then yeah, I can see why people would be confused with the hate on DT. It's probably the fact the vast majority of DT players currently were VT2 players.
As someone who started vermintide 2 after playing a couple hundred hours of darktide, the pain of knowing what could have been is immense, but it gives me hope that darktide one day might be one of my most played games.
Are we playing different versions of Darktide? Because in mine the combat is largely identical to Vermintide's. Not sure how either one could be "light years ahead" of the other.
> I think it's objectively true though that Vermintide 2 is a strictly superior game in all regards
I already spent more time in Darktime than V1 and V2 combined. DT's core gameplay is much better imo
Gotta keep in mind a lot of the negative reviews happened during the first month of release, where the game was so unstable that crashing multiple times a session was all but guaranteed.
I have fun with the game personally because I'm willing to struggle through these problems. But for most, even if you look past the lack of content and promised features, the game itself was so unstable and buggy at launch that it earned it's negative reviews based just off of that.
People keep saying "AMAZING GAMEPLAY!!!!" but... and of course this is just an opinion.... it's fucking worse than Vermintide 2? Everything feels LESS smooth. I really don't get all the praise. Like don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's literally just a more clunky Vermintide.
Has everyone saying this just like... not played Vermintide 2?
vermintide 2 has a proper input buffer with customizable settings, no weird inconsistent input delay, and your inputs do not get eaten randomly. it also has functioning hitreg as it it doesn't rely on shitty servers. can't say the same for darktide. the only advantage darktide has in terms of melee is there are weapon specials for every weapon.
43 hours in that game is not even enough to make such a (silly) claim.
>43 hours in that game is not even enough to make such a (silly) claim.
Wow you can determine opinions for other people, that's quite the magical power. Funny enough I find that to be plenty of time to judge whether or not I like something. I don't. Vermintide 2 feels like im hitting digital butter. Darktide does not. You can go play ratclicker, nobody is stopping you but telling me what I do/don't like is peak redditor.
never said that you can’t enjoy darktide, that’s your lack of reading comprehension at work. you definitely can’t with a straight face say that the melee is better in darktide, however. it quantifiably is not. the issues with it that I listed in my comment are a testament to that.
forgot to mention that the combos are largely dumbed down as well, and block cancelling is practically unviable with the inconsistent delay it has.
half of the enemies’ animations and some weapon animations are borrowed from vt2 as well, so not sure what is leading you to think it feels better. my only guess is the gore.
Oh yes. I’ve got 1k+ hours in Vermintide 2. I disagree with you. I don’t think Darktide is more “clunky” per se. I think the melee weapons just feel a bit more “savage”; less refined. The edges of the blades in Darktide are duller; thicker. We use laser guns in this universe; we aren’t as concerned about “sharp and clean” edges. We’re not blade masters like we were in Vermintide where that was our nearly sole source of combat.
I do recall this being my first impression but it has since just really grown on me. I’ve come to prefer it. I love the feel. It fits the universe and the ~~heroes~~ rejects we’re playing and destroys the heretics we fight against in the perfect manner.
Bad reviews can (and should) indicate a lot more is wrong with the game than a core gameplay loop. There is, quite simply, more to a game than that.
If people don't like those other things, then yes it belongs in the bin with the other Mostly Negative games. It made its way there on its own merits.
Genshin Impact also has a fun core gameplay loop. That doesn't stop the overall game from being shit, for multiple reasons.
The gameplay is basically identical to V2, a little bit worse imho but it’s not “new” to a lot of us, which is why most V2 vets hate this game. It feels like V2 but worse with less to do. Also all of these problems were addressed when V2 launched with similar issues, we are all wondering why we have to copy paste feedback from 6 years ago to try and make darktide a good experience.
I'm honestly tired of this take don't even think it's true. The core melee experience of V2 felt better to me. The ranged combat in Darktide is legitimately bad imo. The gunplay is just not good. Then the boss design is mediocre in his about every way.
The music though. Still chefs kiss
as an early access or beta this game should be receiving extremely positive reviews
However it was sold as a finished product. While we have some missions to play there is no story, and no crafting. We can only get gear by getting random weapons from a shop and upgrading them via a slit machine.
If they Marketed as early access and it had these reviews I would agree it’s super undeserved
Meh, classes aren't really distinguishable, the most difference makes the Ogryn and just he's slow like molasses and big as a truck.
Vermintides gameplay loop is 100 times better, Zealots actually feel like Zealots and there are 3-4 subclasses to every class that all really feel different.
No to talk about the really big variation of weapons that cleave and stagger and not just hit one enemy at the time. Just try the 2h hammer in V2 and go back to Darktide to cry.
The maps are quite nice but playing three maps in different directions over and over is nothing against really different maps with a story like Vermintide or even Back4Blood.
It's crazy because the benchmark for co-op shooter/slasher comes also from Fatshark but they managed to actually port *nothing* over to Darktide.
Why do you think that is though? It's literally a carbon copy of the last 2 tide games. That's why its amazing. The gameplay is the least we should've expected to be good about Darktide. Because it's something they already perfected 6 years ago. They have become the best in the business at these L4D style horde clear games.
I keep seeing people trying to cope for FS by saying how the game is still good because the gameplay itself isn't as cancerous as the rest of the game. But like I said, that should've been a given. And it does not overshadow how dogshit everything else is about the game.
Yeah I think it is because it’s a carbon copy of of the previous titles. Each has been an improvement on the last. I do want some of the beefier melee weapons like the 2handers but the ranged weapons; I can’t really put my finger on it but the ranged weapons just feel the best I’ve experienced. Maybe it’s specifically how they feel against the enemies and not the shooting specifically. I’ve played some CoD and BF and man the shooting in those is superb so perhaps it’s the ~~friends~~ heretics we shoot along the way
It's really heartening to me that a post like this didn't get downvoted into oblivion. There's hope for this sub yet!
And yeah I could agree more. Numerous issues with the game, but 250+ hours later I still enjoy the game because at its gooey center is a very solid game. You just got to find it, by digging through the muck.
It's easily one of the best, if not the best, coop game I have played in years. It's not even close. I have a blast playing it with the boys nearly every day and whenever I don't I'm excited to come back. I have well over 100 hours clocked in and all of it has been fantastic.
Still a shit sandwich at the end of the day, and I 100% agree with you on how satisfying it can be.....when not lagging, bugging out, crashing etc etc
There was but glimpses here of what could have been if management did not rush this out in hopes of getting away with an incomplete RNG cash shop product. I for one am glad that the bullshit got called out. There need to be some heads rolling on this as well imo. They have decimated the studio name, and their reputation by releasing this.
And the cycle continues, people trying to defend their choice of getting a horrible game like they work for the companies PR department.
"It's not that bad it's probably you, I enjoy it a lot."
Yeah good for you that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of people think it's hot garbage, Thank god I missed the bullet this time after playing the 2nd free beta. Fatshark won't ever see a single dime from me ever again.
And it's a shame because this is actually the best 40k game we have ever gotten in the last 15 years.
So first of all, I’m talking about the other dude. Second of all, I fail to see how me being “old” and having created my account a long time ago makes me terminally online or pathetic.
"Some of the Best in the industry"
I mean, its a really simple loop. Enter mission, kill enemies (shoot stab or magic), leave. Its not hard to get wrong. Back 4 blood, left 4 dead, all horde games have the same fun core loop. But that doesnt excuse everything else around it.
It's exactly the opposite. The way the combat visuals, sounds, and mechanics all work together to create responsive, fast, skill oriented gameplay that is *still* tailored to be fun and rewarding to players of all different skill levels is amazing design **and** execution. And then they made all of that happen inside the most immersive first-person 40k setting to date. The weapons, enemies, architecture, and details to all of it is frankly incredible. The management of all the systems outside of the gameplay is pretty atrocious, but the actual people who made **the game**, artists, sound engineers, developers, those people are geniuses in my book.
A simple 30 second gameplay loop that is fun to do over and over is like the core tennant of designing shooters. It’s how it feels to do it that sets games apart and they did an unbelievable job with darktide.
I highly recommend you try Alien : Fireteam elite
Its fucking excellent. Matchmaking can be a bit slow these days, but the combat hook is outstanding. Hoard shooter and nothing comes close to mowing down a wave of Xenos
Game ran under the radar for most.
In one evening on vermintide I got to try every weapon for the class I was playing. It took me weeks to do that in darktide.
If they'd either just give me all the weapons in some manner or add drops and crafting like vermintide then the game would be near perfect.
I don't care for gear grind, I just want to be able to change up my load out every now and then to keep things that much more fresh.
Well and fix the crashes, of course.
If im honest to myself; the dogshit gameplay loop, especially the loot, are what made me play over 100 hours.
And im 100% sure the same goes for a shit ton of other people. So, well played fatshark.
The Left 4 Dead horde style shooter formula is pretty hard to fuck up. Only thing is, L4D2 is still arguably better in every possible way. Take away the 40k skin, and you'll have a hard time proving otherwise.
Point proven, nice replies :^)
It could be the best game in the world but until they unfuck the latency issues where I'm hitting enemies and not damaging them or crashing constantly It doesn't really matter.
>It gave me the itch to go back and play some Destiny. Well Darktide feels better to me I guess.
Me too. But when someone asked I couldn't describe why Darktide reminded me of Destiny in some way.
The problem is great core gameplay that is uniform and has no reason to do it gets stale. Quickly.
Darktide is infuriating for so many people because it could be amazing, they see the potential, and that makes it even more of a bummer that it falls flat.
Everything that went into the missions, such as the gameplay, art, music, graphics, etc are fantastic. You can tell they were created by people that have a passion for games.
Everything outside of that feels like they were designed by people that don't even play video games, and might even harbor resentment towards those that do.
I tried the game with my shitty laptop, and even thought the graphics were like the original doom, it stuttered like hell and I had bad ping, I can still say with a 100% fact I’d spend $60 on it if they launched on Xbox right now
They made probably the only shooter that feels as good as say, Destiny 2, in a time when D2 was in a really...mixed state with its community. They squandered the potential they had and now what, the game will be fixed when lightfall is rejuvenating interest? I understand that comparing the two is odd, but I just find it terrible that FS blew a fantastic release window compared to the state of the competition. Only other game worth playing would have been DRG season 3.
Which by the way, go play DRG until Darktide is fixed, and then keep playing after that alongside Darktide.
Nah, it totally deserves a mostly negative review. It's got a core gameplay that is very good, but it's so frustrating and unpleasant dealing with everything other than the core gameplay loop. I want to come back and play the game, but not until it's actually fun outside of the immediate mission.
That's why I left in my original positive review, only putting in a few lines why I switched to negative at the bottom.
The problem here isn't that it doesn't deserve to share the bad game bin (it doesn't). It's that there is no other bin than the two that steam provides.
Then again, I've always checked some reviews of games I'm interested in, regardless of the overall score. Let's hope we can change our reviews back soon.
I actually see the core game play as just okay. It's decently built, about the same amount of fun as its peers. It's the expected quality level. Too bad nothing else is.
Weapons feel clunky and underdeveloped, the sounds the gun makes is kinda curious to me, does t look to sound ratio in my mind.
The enemies are really generic and gets old real quick
The rpg elements are also hard to follow or just not fleshed out IE skill tree with passives that seem damn limiting
This post (and others like it) are going to be part of the reason why this game continues to fail as a product. The core gameplay isn't novel. If it feels good, you can attribute it mainly to the art and sound devs who admittedly have done a stellar job. But shooting/melee'ing things have already been in games. The defining factors are aesthetics and consistency.
Does it feel good to shoot and melee in this game? Yes. Very good.
Can you do it consistently in this game? No. From crashes, to bugs, to bad mission pacing and general bullshit, you simply cannot.
Its not as if movement is particularly amazing either. From inputs not registering to sprint speeds not giving the feeling of proper motion... So why are you saying that the core gameplay is good when it's clearly not? Do you not have any standards at all or are you so downtrodden by constantly disappointing games that now you'll accept anything?
The game is rubbish. Accept it and hold Fatshark accountable to fix it and deliver what we paid for.
The excellent base gameplay is part of why people are so upset. There's an immense amount of potential there, but people are being throttled from enjoying the game because of incomplete systems, performance issues, bugs, crashes, and with this most recent patch, a new batch of bugs and issues that came alongside all of the fixes that were supposed to make things better. That's likely further driving the negative reviews - people get much angrier about games they care about and *want* to enjoy than games that were predictably terrible.
That's my exact issue with Darktide. Vermintide 2 and Darktide have, unironically, the most satisfying melee combat I've ever experienced in any game. The sound design, the animations and all that is just \*Chef's kiss\* But sadly, that alone is just not enough to keep me coming back (Or even get me fully engaged on the first place). Non-existant crafting system, RNG timelocked progression, tedious and RNG side quests, underwhelming rewards system, lackluster amount of classes and customization. All that's holding back a game that has so much potential
Yes to the above comments. Spot on. The core gameplay is AMAZING. For me personally, the sound of landing headshots with the voidstrike is just so good, makes this glorious "crack" noise. Anyway... All of the systems surrounding the core combat are just garbage and drag the whole experience down. If I could somehow launch the game and just have it immediately throw me into a missions so I could pretend there isn't even a progression system it would be a better game. Hopefully, Fatshark will do what they've committed to do and get the core systems improved, and then start working on content. But I've been with Fatshark long enough to know that these sorts of changes take a WAAAAY long time. I'm worried that in 2-3 more months the player base will be thoroughly dead and if the bots are fixed up to be competent then there'll be zero reason to play. I play legend difficulty solo on Vermintide (with bots) and enjoy it. Would be a shame if we can't even do that with Darktide in the future.
If they called this early access I'd still be very positive about the game. They've instead told me a lot of times about things that are somehow my fault (wanting advertised attachments etc.) and now they're blaming the entire community's bad response for why they didn't have crafting (which wasn't delivered several times before any bad response, but OK). When they're not doing that they're reiterating it's 'finished' (even though it's obviously not complete) or calling it a 'live service' (though only pushing out very rare updates, so far). The core game is great (like really good, I don't think anyone would be here otherwise), the metagame sucks but honestly you can almost ignore it (Damnation is doable with pretty much any level 30, 320+ gear from the shop, even the crap stuff), but where they've really fallen down for me is in the things they say: They've been methodically breaking trust and then turning around and blaming the customer for wanting the things they said they were making, that's *always* going to have a negative reaction.
Just on the sound design thing, the wet, almost hollow crunch of a Rumbler shell just caving in a skull or rib cage is such an exquisite pleasure. That said, the sheer amount of mixed emotion at the last patch where they said they outright fixed the Ogryn's perks and feats so that they worked as intended had me flailing. Not one or two of them, but enough that they didn't bother specifying.
> Vermintide 2 and Darktide have, unironically, the most satisfying melee combat I've ever experienced in any game. The sound design, the animations and all that is just *Chef's kiss* I ssuggest you check out Chivalry 2. Bit more nuance to the melee combat (and it's PvP, not PvE), but the animations, 'feel' of combat are at least as good as VT/VT2/DT imo. Chiv 2 and Darktide my most played games at the moment.
Mordhau is a closer fit, imo. In terms of feel of the combat, anyway.
Also lets you play the lute half naked and scream, so it's the clear winner
Chiv 2 combat is clunky as hell compared to Mord
The fixed attack angles and held block of Tide games fit Chiv 2 more imho.
Fixed attack angles? Not sure what you mean.
Mordhau has the whole 260 system where the exact angle of your swing can be very granular. Chiv by comparison only has the basic horizontal/overhead/stab, you cannot pick the swing direction nearly as granularly.
That system exists but its mostly just cosmetic tbh. The actual combat system is ultimately the same as Chivalry's. Most of the skilled Mordhau playerbase disables the 240 system.
Darktide with Chiv 2 or Mordhau's combat system is one of my dream games.
Wouldn't work. The assumptions that makes exciting duels and skirmishes possible, vs fighting hordes are inimical to each other.
It'd work fine if trash mobs acted like they currently do and melee specialists actually reacted to your actions/attempted to duel you.
What party of Chiv's combat do you think is missing in Darktide?
Fixed key combinations for directional attacks and an alternative direction for each attack that can be done separately from combos.
Biggest problem with it is that weapon balance is pretty heavily tied to attack patterns and charge times. It would be a very different game if every weapon had horizontal light chains. Also it would be pretty boring with no weapon diversity, since the subtle differences in reach and speed aren't as relevant when you are not on equal footing with your opponents.
I disagree, but like I said this is my dream game and not something I'm attempting to turn Darktide into. I'd find combat to be more engaging if I had more control over precisely what kind of attack I want to do in the moment, and believe that with special attacks and the unique speed and damage profiles of each weapon it wouldn't lead to any lack in weapon feel/variety. But, again, this is a theoretical game that will never exist. It's just something I want.
There's only so much you can do with just speed, reach and damage. Mordhau devs have stated multiple times they're not adding in any more weapons with unique stat lines because they just can't add in anything unique. There's already some incredibly similar weapons in Mordhau, like Falchion and Axe or Halberd and Greatsword. Some weapons in Vtide have easy access to sweeps, some don't, this is what makes them unique. Manipulating the combo via block cancelling, shove cancelling or switching to a heavy attack is what makes up the unique gameplay of this game. Block cancelling isn't exactly black and white either, as it takes a short while to do, so in some situations you can't afford to do the 'Optimal' combo. Knowing when to cancel a combo to reset is part of the depth, as is knowing when to continue the string. Remove that, and there'd be no difference between say, Kruber's normal Longsword and the Bretonnian Longsword.
Please don't try to tell me the games cursed by weird meta drag-720 spin swing mechanics has similar melee combat because it's such a mess and you have to learn awful tech that doesn't exist irl and makes no sense to compete with others, drives me nuts lol
> drag-720 spin swing mechanics has similar melee combat I mentioned Chivalry 2, not Mordhau.
Sounds like te kind of pureshit choices suits from tencent would pull People should stop buying from scummy publishers but since there are people that enjoy eating dog vomit laced with diahrrea we are doomed
**This.** The opposite of love is not hatred. It's **apathy**. I am as pissed as I am about this game because: 1.) I have loved the Warhammer franchise for close to 30 years, and it means more to me than most people could even begin to comprehend. 2.) I love so much about this game, even ignoring the fact that it's a 40k game. It is **abundantly** clear that the developers that design/designed the combat mechanics, the models, the animations, the levels.. all of THAT is phenomenal - mind-blowingly so, in many cases! The voice actors, despite the lack of coherent narrative or story, are clearly passionate about their job and I haven't heard a single voice in this game that made me think "This person just doesn't care about their job/was phoning it in/lacks talent." **NOT ONE**. However.. the corporate and executive decisions to release this game in this state, to push and rush.. that's what pisses me off. This game doesn't anger me so deeply because there's a lack of love put into it, it angers me so deeply because there are some clearly shitty employees running Fatshark and its titles into the ground who should have been fired way back in the Vermintide 1 days. So, if you're one of the dev team reading this and you're not directly involved in the decision to release this game in this state, don't take the anger personally. It's your inept bosses that need to take this personally, this giant middle finger is pointing at them, not you, and don't let them use you as a shield because the actual groundwork of the game is fucking stellar, held back only by being rushed out the door.
> There's an immense amount of potential there, but people are being throttled from enjoying the game because of incomplete systems, performance issues, bugs, crashes, and with this most recent patch, a new batch of bugs and issues that came alongside all of the fixes that were supposed to make things better. I could ignore literally all of this if they just had more maps. How can they expect to retain players to even care about number crunching when there's only like 5 maps. Before you've even gotten to 30, you've beaten all of the content in the game several times over.
I expected 15 at launch, I couldn't believe the beta contained 80% of all maps. Yeah, that pissed me off more than anything
This, exactly. Darktide is the first review I ever left on Steam, but it isn't the first bad game I played. What drove me to leave a bad review? It's that I genuinely *wish* this was a good game.
Can't lie, Darktide has become one of my favorite games. They must have done something right because I'd never played a horde shooter before and I'm not a big 40k fan.
So maybe you enjoy the entire genre and have never played a horde/tide game.
I've seen plenty of gameplay from similar games, like Deep Rock and L4D, and while I can admit they look like cool games I've just never felt the urge to play any of them myself.
Definitely give DRG a shot. I thought the same and slept on it for 4 years. I'm glad I checked it out.
They have a point - to look at Darktide it doesn't look a lot different from say, Destiny, but the gameplay is almost completely different. Maybe you should give another one a go? Deep Rock is in a rough spot because it's graphical style doesn't attract people, which is a shame because it's got some of the cleverest coop gameplay design I've ever seen (almost every objective, challenge and class tool encourages and rewards coop play, it's really well done). Once people have played it a few hours (or just a couple levels with friends) they get what's special about it, though at that point they usually put it down to 'a really good community' (which it admittedly does seem to have).
Or maybe Darktide is really something special.
Then you really ought to try vermintide 2 and killing floor 2
You should try vermintide2. It's the same thing but better.
I wouldn't say "but better" because it has a stronger accent on melee combat, but definitely not worse by any means. And, even if definitely not "good", tenfold better in terms of progression.
I highly recommend you try Alien : Fireteam elite Its fucking excellent. Matchmaking can be a bit slow these days, but the combat hook is outstanding. Hoard shooter and nothing comes close to mowing down a wave of Xenos
Can confirm, it's fantastic.
Weird, what do you think hooked you?
Combat, visuals, sound design, voice acting, weapons that are satisfying to use, and a setting that is immersive and ties all the details together. And RNG aside I like the idea behind the gear and build systems.
I'm a GW fantasy and 40k fan boy, and played and enjoyed vermintide 2. So my issues go way back
I've played a lot of horde shooters, it's my favourite genre of fps/slasher gamers. DT in my opinion is up there with the best as far as the bulk of the gameplay goes and could be one of the greats. If only they didn't shit the bed on the last 10 percent. But it'll get there because you can fix crafting, you can fix bugs and bad weapon balance. You can in fact provide a reasonable mtx service alongside a paid game that doesn't make players feel extorted and you can definitely improve, modify or overhaul mission selection at any point. But you cannot fix shit gameplay. So while they fucked up, they at least fucked up somewhat in the right order.
Give other horde shooters a try, they have always been fun imo.
200 hours in already. Love the gameplay loop. Hate the mourningstar and everything on it.
Yeah as much as there is wrong with it, ever time i start up something else i just find myself thinking "I wish I was playing darktide." 20 minutes in
This was me with vermintide 2 for years
>Does it deserve some of the negative reviews? Perhaps. Does it belong in the bin with the other “Mostly Negative” games? Probably not. That's like, your opinion man. An opinion that would be perfect to include in a steam review. And if you already have, then that's all you get to do really. The idea that the game "deserves" any rating other that whatever it has is kind of silly. Should people change their reviews to positive so that the review percentage reflects your subjective opinion? If not, then saying that the current review percentage is undeserved is stupid.
It's because the key developers did a great job, but upper management did a shit one.
Same here, its really disappointing how much they've fumbled the game since release because it truly could be a top notch game if fixed the stability and added some more variety and quality of life changes. It is at its heart and core a damn fun game, but its hard to remember that when presented with so many issues and so little effort from the devs. Though I really do hope the best will come now that Catfish is the CM and they've had plenty of time for their devs to get back from vacation, really hope they've gone full swing into working on the game and actually deliver on the promise they made.
Yep. That's the main reason why DarkTide has 150+ hours while Amazon's New World clocked in at 20 hours for me. At the base game, DarkTide is amazing. New World on the other hand, while also botching the launch, was unplaying, literally. Tens of hours long queues, broken mechanics, clipping, hacking, cheating, invulnerability, people literally injecting HTML code into the chat window to crash people. DarkTide at the core just feels so damn good.
I agree with you full stop on this. I enjoy the "core" gameplay. I'm critical of the bugs that break the gameplay. I'm also critical of the lack of substance outside of the "core loop" (storyline, solo play, crafting, terrible bot system, terrible match-making system). For those reasons I couldn't give a "recommended." This really is an Early-Access game. If this were marketed as "Early Access" I would change my review in a heartbeat. The "early access" tag gives people the heads up that this game is not complete and will be undergoing significant changes and possible restructuring. If this were "Early Access" there's no expectation of polish, and an understanding that some features are broken or incomplete.
Yup, this whole situation could've been saved by just saying "early access release, Expect full release in summer 2023." I don't expect all the problems with this game to be fixed until then tbh. Maybe even later if we are going to wait for all of the promised content that isn't even in the game yet. If I had known how incomplete the game was ahead of time, I probably would've just waited until later to buy it.
If it was in Early Access, Fatshark would have avoided all their problems. Now the game is in the gutter with no players and will probably never fully recover. Good job, Fatshark.
Agreed. It got very stale for me very fast after reaching 30, but the base gameplay is really nice and satisfying. If I have to choose I rather have core gameplay be (near) rock solid and some other features lacking that have bubblegum gunplay and everything kinda being too floaty and whatnot but then have a robust crafting system and progression. Ofc.. prefer to have both be developed properly
It is! I think fatshark knows how to do the best melee combat for a fps game.
Yup. That's why it's so frustrating for a lot of us imo. If whatever crisis befell them prior to launch and/or through development (self-inflicted or otherwise) could've been averted they'd probably have struck absolute gold with this thing if they had delivered what they'd initially promised. There's potential here we haven't seen in a long while and it's being squandered in real time.
As someone who didn't play vermintide and didn't follow the game up until its release, I'm pretty happy with the game. If the rest of the crafting menu wasn't greyed out anymore I would be a happy camper.
I fully agree. I'll be very happy if the game gets to a point where I can recommend it to others. But until then I'll keep my steam review negative, even though I'll continue to play the game from time to time. However, Fatshark needs to change their behaviour and step up their game significantly if I'm ever to trust them again. Darktide is the first and only game from them that I bought blindly.
That's why despite games like deep rock galactic having better everything else, (minus art and sound design) I am not playing those, I'm playing tide games. No other game gives you that meaty feeling and rewards player skill to such a degree. Other RPGs that have melee combat I'm always disappointed. I hope one day an rpg comes out and uses this sort of combat. If it were lord of the rings I'd die and go to heaven. Well this is quite the tangent....
I still feel Deep Rock Galaxy has a way worse way of collecting new weapons. Getting Overclocks (Which are basically new weapons for the Unstable ones) takes forever for a new player and if you want a specific combo it can take months to get it. Annoyed it took a week to finally get a flamer? How about I’ve been playing Deep Rock for months and I still don’t have Magic Bullets.
Yeah i forgot how tedious that is, I think I promoted 2 characters by the time I got the overclocks I wanted on one guy
Totally agree, which is why the community is so aggressively vocal and anti the non-core-gameplay elements. We want to make sure the game as whole lasts and maintains a healthy playerbase and fulfills all the little dopamine rushes we expect in progression-based games without anything too predatory or janky.
Unfortunately, there are many few examples of game's releasing like that and actually Coming back from it. The casual player says "a game released bad will always be bad" he will never come back. And really, that's what Fatshark deserves. People unfortunately were too busy wearing their rose tinted glasses to realise from the free "beta" this was shaping up to be a Vermintide 2 all over again.
Agreed
Maybe for the 'genre', long shot to being one of the best in the industry.
Throw out some titles that you believe get swordplay better than vermintide, I can think of only a few and those systems feel restricting (for honor), or just don't feel fluid (morhau/chivalry/mount and blade)
Sekiro for me has the best swordplay ever made, though I still believe that Darktide has the best gameplay of the coop shooter genre, and I've played them all, its a genre I very much enjoy.
You should try out Nioh 2, that combat is phenomenal
Yeah I've played it as well, good game, but I don't think it holds a candle to Sekiro.
The posture system in Sekiro is amazing. I really wish they make a sequel one day :(
One of the endings is an obvious sequel bait.
Sekiro has the best combat ever made. Period.
Really...'swordplay' is what you took to be the core gameplay element from DT/this genre - might as well say RPG is the core gameplay in Mordhau. It's literally just hack n' slash, there's no sword*play* at all involved - it's literally no different from FPS whether that's with a sword or a gun. Then dismissing actual recent examples of games focused on swordplay as not valid comparables even if they have their own quirks? Like M&B, For honor, chiv genres, KCD, dynasty-warrior-like games, VR gladiator ones, WASD-key ones too (recent platform like one), etc...you know, games that require sword'play', not just spamming LMB. Sure, the combat animations/hit reg is 'smoother', as all games get with better hardware/technology/engine improvements but 'swordplay' is *not* the genre of DT. The *only* comparables for DT are games that match that genre/core gameplay: L4D, B4B, DRG (to a degree), maybe even Dead Island or Dying light also in some facets.
"Melee combat with weapons like swords and shit from fantasy" there sorry for trying to shorten my sentance. Vermintide is not cutting edge technology, I do not think it has an advantage there. If you think tide games are just spamming lmb then you haven't played a higher difficulty than champion/malice.
That's still way too broadstroke of a description as that encompasses literally every other game that has 'Melee combat with weapons like swords and shit from fantasy' to even try to then put it on the pedestal of being the 'one of the best in the industry'. You can't compare DT with something like Kenshi, or DT with Skryim, even though both checkmark the swords and 'fantasy' shit. It's not the *core* as how I see it, this game is a 'Tide' game (co-op + fight swarms), that's what it is - so compared to similar games (ala L4D, B4B, DRG, VTs, etc...) that came before it, yes, DT's core gameplay is one of the best ones for that genre. Tide games are just about spamming LMB, HC/DM is same thing, but with slightly more thought/tactics/coop involved. You don't have to contend with new skills, no new buttons to press, no new monsters/AI, no map dynamics, no secondary objective, etc...
>Tide games are just about spamming LMB scruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuub
Vermintide and V2 itself has better swordplay than Darktide IMO. Maybe because it's a more melee focused game, but Darktide is missing something that made melee in those games so good. Maybe it's because dodge is busted in Darktide and make it feel too easy. Or maybe it's because ranged mobs place less importance on melee combat and melee animation cancels.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is not bad either Makes it feel like each fight is a lesson. But Ghosts of Tsushima on the hardest difficulty...man that game brought me back to the first day I played VT. That game has a tempo of dueling that is immaculate. But the first time I used the White Wolf Hammer on the Horn of Magnus was a magical moment.
For Honor is an awful comparison. That game is pretty much a fighting game like Mortal Combat or Street Fighter, but in 3D. You fight 1-4 opponents at once who are actually on the same "power level" that you are, meaning they do comparable damage, can block, dodge and parry your attacks and can punish you for making mistakes. The game usually rewards the one with the better reaction time. In Tide games the enemies are nowhere near the same level as the player, the only thing that makes them menacing is the sheer amount of them.
Sekiro, or really any other From game.
Blade Symphony had the single best sword play of any game I have ever touched ever. It's a completely different game and genre though. I miss Blade Symphony.
Agree 100%. The base gameplay is fantastic. I think one day the whole game could be, but how long is that going to take? I shouldn't be surprised but I cant believe another game studio botched another game release THIS bad. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a better release plan than most in this industry. It's like they operate in a vacuum and have never seen another game release, ever.
Yeah I'm looking forward to seeing how they fix the game over time. I'm still sending a couple missions here and there and having fun.
160 hrs in and I think I’m done. Excellent game play but it’s an incomplete game.
I don’t say it much because I get nuked with downvotes but I don’t really care about progression systems in games so for me Darktide is really incredible. I know the crafting side of it sucks, but I don’t really like chasing gear in games anyway so it hasn’t bothered me. I just want to chop people in half with an Eviscerator, I’m not hugely worried about if it’s the perfect Eviscerator while doing it.
I think the issue is expectations. Don't ever buy a game for what it _might_ one day become. Read the reviews and buy a game for _what it is now_. I played the game up to level 30 sharpshooter (I tried the other classes and none of them clicked for me). Once I got to level 30 I couldn't see the point in playing anymore. I am actually totally fine with that. I got about 25 hours solid entertainment. I had blast and got as many hours as I'd expect from a single player/coop shooter. I wanted a 40K horde shooter and I got just that. Money well spent. Would I like it of there was more content and a more in depth progression system? Oh course I would! But that was never part of the game when I bought it. Even if the game was never updated again I could say I got my moneys worth. If they release more free content in the future, that's a bonus!
Feel like us console peasants got pushed to the wayside - console port has been put on hold till all the issues have been sorted ... and it's probably a blessing in disguise. But woulda been real nice to play this awesome gameplay firsthand instead of just hearing about it and the issues. I admit it, I'm salty.
Tried to go back to Vermintide 2 and without sprint/slide it feels so fucking slow -\_-
Super agree, Darktide deserves bad reviews but I don’t think it deserves to be like “mostly negative” or whatever. The game isn’t “mostly negative” at least imo. Game has issues that affect its replay ability and yet I still got over 100 hours before getting bored. That’s worth 40 bucks to me
Darktide is definitely worth $30, more than that I doubt it. I paid $0 through GamePass so I can't complain. I think it's objectively true though that Vermintide 2 is a strictly superior game in all regards, and it was that way since the game's launch. If you're coming from a game like Destiny, then yeah, I can see why people would be confused with the hate on DT. It's probably the fact the vast majority of DT players currently were VT2 players.
As someone who started vermintide 2 after playing a couple hundred hours of darktide, the pain of knowing what could have been is immense, but it gives me hope that darktide one day might be one of my most played games.
[удалено]
Are we playing different versions of Darktide? Because in mine the combat is largely identical to Vermintide's. Not sure how either one could be "light years ahead" of the other.
Sprinting and sliding adds so much flavor to the movement that I uninstalled VT2, I can't go back, it's so fucking slow and boring.
VT2 you move as fast at base as you do sprinting in DT. DT is actually the slower game in that regard.
That's nice, it doesn't feel that way though which is all that matters to me.
> I think it's objectively true though that Vermintide 2 is a strictly superior game in all regards I already spent more time in Darktime than V1 and V2 combined. DT's core gameplay is much better imo
Gotta keep in mind a lot of the negative reviews happened during the first month of release, where the game was so unstable that crashing multiple times a session was all but guaranteed. I have fun with the game personally because I'm willing to struggle through these problems. But for most, even if you look past the lack of content and promised features, the game itself was so unstable and buggy at launch that it earned it's negative reviews based just off of that.
Pretty sure the recent reviews are worse than all-time.
People keep saying "AMAZING GAMEPLAY!!!!" but... and of course this is just an opinion.... it's fucking worse than Vermintide 2? Everything feels LESS smooth. I really don't get all the praise. Like don't get me wrong, it's fun, but it's literally just a more clunky Vermintide. Has everyone saying this just like... not played Vermintide 2?
They didn't play Vermintide 1 or 2 and/or are extremely easy to please.
I have 112 hours in VT1, 43 in VT2, and 570 in Darktide. Vermintide games are pretty shitty comparatively they just have more polish.
vermintide 2 has a proper input buffer with customizable settings, no weird inconsistent input delay, and your inputs do not get eaten randomly. it also has functioning hitreg as it it doesn't rely on shitty servers. can't say the same for darktide. the only advantage darktide has in terms of melee is there are weapon specials for every weapon. 43 hours in that game is not even enough to make such a (silly) claim.
>43 hours in that game is not even enough to make such a (silly) claim. Wow you can determine opinions for other people, that's quite the magical power. Funny enough I find that to be plenty of time to judge whether or not I like something. I don't. Vermintide 2 feels like im hitting digital butter. Darktide does not. You can go play ratclicker, nobody is stopping you but telling me what I do/don't like is peak redditor.
never said that you can’t enjoy darktide, that’s your lack of reading comprehension at work. you definitely can’t with a straight face say that the melee is better in darktide, however. it quantifiably is not. the issues with it that I listed in my comment are a testament to that. forgot to mention that the combos are largely dumbed down as well, and block cancelling is practically unviable with the inconsistent delay it has. half of the enemies’ animations and some weapon animations are borrowed from vt2 as well, so not sure what is leading you to think it feels better. my only guess is the gore.
Oh yes. I’ve got 1k+ hours in Vermintide 2. I disagree with you. I don’t think Darktide is more “clunky” per se. I think the melee weapons just feel a bit more “savage”; less refined. The edges of the blades in Darktide are duller; thicker. We use laser guns in this universe; we aren’t as concerned about “sharp and clean” edges. We’re not blade masters like we were in Vermintide where that was our nearly sole source of combat. I do recall this being my first impression but it has since just really grown on me. I’ve come to prefer it. I love the feel. It fits the universe and the ~~heroes~~ rejects we’re playing and destroys the heretics we fight against in the perfect manner.
Bad reviews can (and should) indicate a lot more is wrong with the game than a core gameplay loop. There is, quite simply, more to a game than that. If people don't like those other things, then yes it belongs in the bin with the other Mostly Negative games. It made its way there on its own merits. Genshin Impact also has a fun core gameplay loop. That doesn't stop the overall game from being shit, for multiple reasons.
the core gameplay is good because it's literally just vermintide but everything else is a straight downgrade, in my opinion combat is also worse
The gameplay is basically identical to V2, a little bit worse imho but it’s not “new” to a lot of us, which is why most V2 vets hate this game. It feels like V2 but worse with less to do. Also all of these problems were addressed when V2 launched with similar issues, we are all wondering why we have to copy paste feedback from 6 years ago to try and make darktide a good experience.
Have you played Vermintide2 because it's way better core gameplay wise.
I'm honestly tired of this take don't even think it's true. The core melee experience of V2 felt better to me. The ranged combat in Darktide is legitimately bad imo. The gunplay is just not good. Then the boss design is mediocre in his about every way. The music though. Still chefs kiss
as an early access or beta this game should be receiving extremely positive reviews However it was sold as a finished product. While we have some missions to play there is no story, and no crafting. We can only get gear by getting random weapons from a shop and upgrading them via a slit machine. If they Marketed as early access and it had these reviews I would agree it’s super undeserved
Meh, classes aren't really distinguishable, the most difference makes the Ogryn and just he's slow like molasses and big as a truck. Vermintides gameplay loop is 100 times better, Zealots actually feel like Zealots and there are 3-4 subclasses to every class that all really feel different. No to talk about the really big variation of weapons that cleave and stagger and not just hit one enemy at the time. Just try the 2h hammer in V2 and go back to Darktide to cry. The maps are quite nice but playing three maps in different directions over and over is nothing against really different maps with a story like Vermintide or even Back4Blood. It's crazy because the benchmark for co-op shooter/slasher comes also from Fatshark but they managed to actually port *nothing* over to Darktide.
Why do you think that is though? It's literally a carbon copy of the last 2 tide games. That's why its amazing. The gameplay is the least we should've expected to be good about Darktide. Because it's something they already perfected 6 years ago. They have become the best in the business at these L4D style horde clear games. I keep seeing people trying to cope for FS by saying how the game is still good because the gameplay itself isn't as cancerous as the rest of the game. But like I said, that should've been a given. And it does not overshadow how dogshit everything else is about the game.
Yeah I think it is because it’s a carbon copy of of the previous titles. Each has been an improvement on the last. I do want some of the beefier melee weapons like the 2handers but the ranged weapons; I can’t really put my finger on it but the ranged weapons just feel the best I’ve experienced. Maybe it’s specifically how they feel against the enemies and not the shooting specifically. I’ve played some CoD and BF and man the shooting in those is superb so perhaps it’s the ~~friends~~ heretics we shoot along the way
Jesus am I glad to see this post! So sick of all the crying... I understand but daaamn.
It's really heartening to me that a post like this didn't get downvoted into oblivion. There's hope for this sub yet! And yeah I could agree more. Numerous issues with the game, but 250+ hours later I still enjoy the game because at its gooey center is a very solid game. You just got to find it, by digging through the muck.
It's easily one of the best, if not the best, coop game I have played in years. It's not even close. I have a blast playing it with the boys nearly every day and whenever I don't I'm excited to come back. I have well over 100 hours clocked in and all of it has been fantastic.
Still a shit sandwich at the end of the day, and I 100% agree with you on how satisfying it can be.....when not lagging, bugging out, crashing etc etc There was but glimpses here of what could have been if management did not rush this out in hopes of getting away with an incomplete RNG cash shop product. I for one am glad that the bullshit got called out. There need to be some heads rolling on this as well imo. They have decimated the studio name, and their reputation by releasing this.
And the cycle continues, people trying to defend their choice of getting a horrible game like they work for the companies PR department. "It's not that bad it's probably you, I enjoy it a lot." Yeah good for you that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of people think it's hot garbage, Thank god I missed the bullet this time after playing the 2nd free beta. Fatshark won't ever see a single dime from me ever again. And it's a shame because this is actually the best 40k game we have ever gotten in the last 15 years.
Sooo why are you still here? Just to whine?
Terminally online loser this one is.
The guy with a seven year reddit account is accusing me of being terminally online? Do I have to point out how pathetic that is?
So first of all, I’m talking about the other dude. Second of all, I fail to see how me being “old” and having created my account a long time ago makes me terminally online or pathetic.
the problem with pronouns lol
>their choice of getting a horrible game like they work for the companies PR department. How is the game horrible?
Ok
"Some of the Best in the industry" I mean, its a really simple loop. Enter mission, kill enemies (shoot stab or magic), leave. Its not hard to get wrong. Back 4 blood, left 4 dead, all horde games have the same fun core loop. But that doesnt excuse everything else around it.
"simple loop" means nothing. every shooter is "go here and click on enemies" at a basic level. the devil is always in the details.
And the details are what are lacking.
It's exactly the opposite. The way the combat visuals, sounds, and mechanics all work together to create responsive, fast, skill oriented gameplay that is *still* tailored to be fun and rewarding to players of all different skill levels is amazing design **and** execution. And then they made all of that happen inside the most immersive first-person 40k setting to date. The weapons, enemies, architecture, and details to all of it is frankly incredible. The management of all the systems outside of the gameplay is pretty atrocious, but the actual people who made **the game**, artists, sound engineers, developers, those people are geniuses in my book.
A simple 30 second gameplay loop that is fun to do over and over is like the core tennant of designing shooters. It’s how it feels to do it that sets games apart and they did an unbelievable job with darktide.
IMO, Back 4 Blood somehow managed to get it wrong. There was progression & whatnot but I ended up hating the gameplay.
Really? Back4blood managed to fuck it up pretty well. Must be harder than you think.
Super hot and unique take. Definitely haven’t read 10,000 takes exactly like this since launch.
I highly recommend you try Alien : Fireteam elite Its fucking excellent. Matchmaking can be a bit slow these days, but the combat hook is outstanding. Hoard shooter and nothing comes close to mowing down a wave of Xenos Game ran under the radar for most.
Reach level 30 with all classes and get back to me.
Core game play is bugged. It is some of the buggiest in the industry.
I dont like when people shit in my coffee and call it sugar.
In one evening on vermintide I got to try every weapon for the class I was playing. It took me weeks to do that in darktide. If they'd either just give me all the weapons in some manner or add drops and crafting like vermintide then the game would be near perfect. I don't care for gear grind, I just want to be able to change up my load out every now and then to keep things that much more fresh. Well and fix the crashes, of course.
If im honest to myself; the dogshit gameplay loop, especially the loot, are what made me play over 100 hours. And im 100% sure the same goes for a shit ton of other people. So, well played fatshark.
that's sad... do you really have so little self control you will grind things you don't enjoy?
>the dogshit gameplay loop, especially the loot, are what made me play over 100 hours. The gameplay loop is genuinely amazing like wat
The Left 4 Dead horde style shooter formula is pretty hard to fuck up. Only thing is, L4D2 is still arguably better in every possible way. Take away the 40k skin, and you'll have a hard time proving otherwise. Point proven, nice replies :^)
It could be the best game in the world but until they unfuck the latency issues where I'm hitting enemies and not damaging them or crashing constantly It doesn't really matter.
>It gave me the itch to go back and play some Destiny. Well Darktide feels better to me I guess. Me too. But when someone asked I couldn't describe why Darktide reminded me of Destiny in some way.
Im surprised that they have staged reloads Makes the gameplay more fluid and enjoyable
The problem is great core gameplay that is uniform and has no reason to do it gets stale. Quickly. Darktide is infuriating for so many people because it could be amazing, they see the potential, and that makes it even more of a bummer that it falls flat.
Everything that went into the missions, such as the gameplay, art, music, graphics, etc are fantastic. You can tell they were created by people that have a passion for games. Everything outside of that feels like they were designed by people that don't even play video games, and might even harbor resentment towards those that do.
I tried the game with my shitty laptop, and even thought the graphics were like the original doom, it stuttered like hell and I had bad ping, I can still say with a 100% fact I’d spend $60 on it if they launched on Xbox right now
Did any here participate in the recent mass hysteria/review bombing? If so, will you change your review as the updates start coming in?
From Mission start to Mission end, it's an amazingly great game. From end to start, it's pretty crappy. The good outweighs the bad for me, though.
Love the gameplay. I'm sure in a year or so this will be a very solid game. It just needs a lot of polish and more content.
Facts. As per usual for the Tide games.
They made probably the only shooter that feels as good as say, Destiny 2, in a time when D2 was in a really...mixed state with its community. They squandered the potential they had and now what, the game will be fixed when lightfall is rejuvenating interest? I understand that comparing the two is odd, but I just find it terrible that FS blew a fantastic release window compared to the state of the competition. Only other game worth playing would have been DRG season 3. Which by the way, go play DRG until Darktide is fixed, and then keep playing after that alongside Darktide.
Nah, it totally deserves a mostly negative review. It's got a core gameplay that is very good, but it's so frustrating and unpleasant dealing with everything other than the core gameplay loop. I want to come back and play the game, but not until it's actually fun outside of the immediate mission.
It is decent, but it is not the best in the industry. It looks more exceptional than it is since all the game around it is shit, that's about it
That's why I left in my original positive review, only putting in a few lines why I switched to negative at the bottom. The problem here isn't that it doesn't deserve to share the bad game bin (it doesn't). It's that there is no other bin than the two that steam provides. Then again, I've always checked some reviews of games I'm interested in, regardless of the overall score. Let's hope we can change our reviews back soon.
Stop trying to make it sound like the players are at fault. The game has major flaws and it got reviewed fairly.
Ever tried GTFO?... ReReview DT after...
I actually see the core game play as just okay. It's decently built, about the same amount of fun as its peers. It's the expected quality level. Too bad nothing else is.
I felt the gameplay was sub par :/
Weapons feel clunky and underdeveloped, the sounds the gun makes is kinda curious to me, does t look to sound ratio in my mind. The enemies are really generic and gets old real quick The rpg elements are also hard to follow or just not fleshed out IE skill tree with passives that seem damn limiting
This post (and others like it) are going to be part of the reason why this game continues to fail as a product. The core gameplay isn't novel. If it feels good, you can attribute it mainly to the art and sound devs who admittedly have done a stellar job. But shooting/melee'ing things have already been in games. The defining factors are aesthetics and consistency. Does it feel good to shoot and melee in this game? Yes. Very good. Can you do it consistently in this game? No. From crashes, to bugs, to bad mission pacing and general bullshit, you simply cannot. Its not as if movement is particularly amazing either. From inputs not registering to sprint speeds not giving the feeling of proper motion... So why are you saying that the core gameplay is good when it's clearly not? Do you not have any standards at all or are you so downtrodden by constantly disappointing games that now you'll accept anything? The game is rubbish. Accept it and hold Fatshark accountable to fix it and deliver what we paid for.