vermintide big thumb 27 Oct

Once in a while the task of putting together a video review for a title is such a pain… mostly because you have to stop playing the game you’re really enjoying. I love Vermintide. This game came out of nowhere and has just truly impressed me.

Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide was developed by Fatshark, best known for Lead and Gold, War of the Roses, and Krater. Without a doubt, this is their finest product yet and one of my favorite games this year.

Vermintide shares a ton of similarities to Left 4 Dead (a formula I’m a little surprised hasn’t been emulated much). It’s a four player cooperative experience where you and a your team need to get from point A to B while fending off hordes of monsters. This time (thankfully), it’s not roaming herds of zombies. It’s giant rat men.

There are a total of five characters to choose from, each representing their own distinct class. The Dwarf Ranger and the Empire Soldier are primarily built as tank classes. The Elven Waywatcher and the Bright Wizard deal out heavy damage from from away. And the Witch Hunter falls somewhere in the middle, he can play as a ranged class or as a primarily melee class. But since it’s Warhammer, everyone carries ranged weapons to compliment their melee weapons. The game finds a great balance between the two styles of fighting for every character and the best players will know and when is ideal to quickly switch between the two

As you finish maps, you roll the dice to get new gear, and every piece of gear can drastically change how each character plays. There are opportunities to obtain more dice in each map to increase your chances of getting better loot. A sword and shield will play much differently than a two handed hammer or a one handed mace. There are a variety of bows with a range of special effects. The Bright Wizard can go from crowd control to dealing pure pain. And special weapons have traits that can be unlocked through the games simple crafting system. Increased range, reduced stamina cost, health vamping, and more. The higher level you are, you are likely to come across and develop more and more complex loot that will help in the brutally tough levels of the game. The loot in this game is what will keep players coming back for more.

But the loot isn’t the only draw. The world and map design is stunning. It’s just beautiful. The game doesn’t hold your hand either (thankfully). Finding your way to the end of a new map is a big part of the fun. The maps are all unique to one another, ranging from creepy graveyard ruins, to the outdoors, to vacated city streets, to a twisted MC Escher-esque wizard tower. The world feels like it was once lived in, but abandoned because of the catastrophe.

There’s a good number of maps, but also a great challenge to go along with them. Each map can be set either as easy, normal, hard, nightmare and cataclysm.

Most importantly, it’s fun. The realm of video games is in staggeringly short supply of enjoyable and challenging cooperative experiences. And though this is is heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead, in many ways it exceeds it.

There are a few elements that irk me a little. A couple maps, particularly the ones where you have to gather scattered supplies and bring them back to a central location, feel imbalanced to me. Even set on normal difficulty, these maps can quickly wipe a moderately experienced team.

Twice in my twenty hours of playing the game, I’ve had servers reset… or something. All of the players will stay in the game, but the map would restart and we’d all be playing as a different character than the one we selected. Really weird.

When playing with 2 people or more, the NPC bots do a great job of holding their own. Unfortunately, I found when playing solo, they tend to do some really stupid things, like getting stuck in the environment… or jumping off of buildings… and then the rest will jump off of buildings to save their buddies. I hope they get a little patch.

And finally, the game does NOT feature any competitive multiplayer like Left 4 Dead. I personally never enjoyed the competitive play in Left 4 Dead, but I know that might be a dealbreaker for some.

I’ve had a few different friends ask me about the game, if you only fight against rodents of unusual size. Yes, giant rats of various shapes and classes are the only enemy. If that sours the experience for some, I have to say the action and excitement far outweigh any minor issues I had with the game’s choice of enemies.

The developers have made promises for some DLC for the game and NO microtransactions. With a universe as rich as the Warhammer series, I’m hoping to see some greenskins, or maybe even some space marines action.

If you’re a PC owner, Vermintide is a must-own, especially at its budget price of $30. It’s just pure fun, cooperative arcade action set in a wonderful world.

Tested on: PC
Developer: Fatshark
Publisher: Fatshark
Platforms: Windows
(PS4, Xbox One coming soon)
Launch Date: October 23, 2015
Review copy provided by publisher