Recent reviews by Cheezus Crisp

Darktide is a complicated emotional rollercoaster for me. I'm a huge fan of the last several Tide games from Fatshark including Vermintide 2 and the original Vermintide having sunk an almost cumulative 4000 hours into them. But with the technical issues and game design decisions, it made what could've been a masterpiece into an incredibly mediocre and boring game.

THE BAD:
Let me start with the big controversy first. The game is built like a FOMO gacha mobile game. And I despise it for that. Timers revolve around everything. You want new weapons? Timer-based shop with the added sprinkle of RNG. You want to play maps? On a certain difficulty? Timer-based map pool with no option to select which map you want to play. Premium paid cosmetics are set with an expiry timer(FOMO) and you buy them with premium currency. Conveniently the said premium currency does not match any of the item or bundle prices. You either buy too much or too little. And of course, the premium shop runs perfectly while the crafting system is still coming "soon". Big surprise...

Secondly, the game just runs really poorly. Ranging from slightly tolerable, to infuriatingly alt-f4 levels of performance. Forget about framerate. You'll probably get stutters and low framerates on everything but NASA's super computer. The networking is a mess. No-regs is infuriatingly abundant (YMMV). You swung at an enemy? Haha forget about that. They'll take no damage and attack you back immediately. Shot something? Consumes the ammo but disappears into thin air. Fatshark took all the downsides of both P2P and Dedicated servers and combined them into DarkTide. Inputs are handled server-side for whatever reason and causes severe de-syncing between the client's animations and what is actually happening. Enemy collision causes players to teleport left and right in complicated situations and it ruins the combat experience.

The game is overall pretty boring. As of right now for content alone, Darktide is incredibly shallow. You have 4 heroes, a stark contrast and downgrade from the 15 that you start with in Vermintide 2, and two of these heroes have dash abilities. None of them feel particularly special or unique although the Psyker was fun to play. You can't properly optimise builds because the crafting system doesn't exist so your best bet is to just get lucky. There also really aren't a lot of weapons. Feels quite a bit less compared to what FS was originally promising. There are a few maps sure. But you can't choose what you want to play. You're at the mercy of the RNG map board that (MIGHT) have what you want.

THE GOOD:
At the beginning I said that this game could have been a masterpiece. And I genuinely mean it. The game is technically amazing. The graphics are top tier. Insane levels of detail, gorgeous textures, lighting, everything. It's a work of art to run through the levels, and admire every little detail that Fatshark put into the game. The combat system shows insane levels of potential. Every enemy is mapped correctly to their appearance. You see armour on them? Only the armour parts are actually shielded. Shooting or swinging at them at exposed areas have different stats and damage values. The weapons are interesting and creative and all have unique special abilities, swing patterns, and feel to them. Combat feels meaty and quite realistic in a sense. I feel like I'm in the game when things do work.

CONCLUSION:
With the way things stand right now, I find it hard to recommend this game to people at its full price. Because there isn't enough content, and it doesn't run good enough for most people. The game feels predatory with its money-milking practices despite costing $40-60. But with how games are these days, release now fix later. Time will tell how Darktide hopefully improves. I will update my review to reflect the positive changes that Fatshark makes for this game.

Too many cards. 11/10 IGN