Warhammer 40_000_ Darktide might be the 40k game I've been waiting for (Hands-on Impressions) -

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hello and welcome to my preview for Warhammer 40K dark tide the next big thing from fat shark I love that name by the way fat shark I never get tired of saying it dark tide is the follow-up tothe spectacularly popular and beloved vermintide series and this time fat shark have abandoned the fantasy era of Warhammer and fast forward time like 50 000 years or something to arrive at the age of the god Emperor and the hive cities and the Inquisition and nurgle another name I never get tired of saying I was fortunate enough to play this bad boy I was recently in La for the summer games Fest and there I was invited by fat shark to go Hands-On with the game I got a chance to chat with the developers in particular Victor Magnuson who's the head of design line for dark tide I was the very first person in the world to play this game outside the studio since before that only Edge magazine had their hands on it but that was back at batshark HQ in Sweden it was really funny because when I finished my session I was like Hey guys that was sick this rules and they were clearly very relieved because developers always get really nervous showing off their game for the first time and I could clearly see that they were like oh thank God because yeah it was super good I actually only meant to do one play test session for it but I ended up going back on day two for more because I enjoyed it so much that I really wanted to nail this preview video I wanted to capture more footage try more classes speak to the developers some more and I'm really glad I did that because each new round I played through gave me more confidence that we're probably in for a pretty good time come September this year when the game releases on PC and Xbox where it will be a day one game pass release for both platforms so that's pretty cool so in this video I want to cover a whole bunch of stuff classes gun play since I know people are a little bit nervous about that level Design Story as well as just a whole bunch of little things I noticed along the way that made me very excited for this before I begin just a quick note on the nature of the footage you're seeing some of the footage was recorded by me at the capture event in LA and that was my own gameplay part of it was other gameplay sent to me from the same event but it wasn't actually me playing I don't know who that was by the way so essentially if you see someone playing really badly and missing all their shots that wasn't me but if you see someone pulling off heaps of sick plays and looking like a total badass then yeah that was absolutely me let's go with that finally there was some other footage in here that was sent to me by fat shark and it's from an even earlier build of the game and it's perhaps running on different Hardware because it appears as though the lighting is a bit flatter and it's running at 30 FPS where I was playing at or above 60 FPS during my play test I can't tell you which system this other footage was captured on because I don't know but I wanted to shout that out here so you know why some of the footage looks quite different from other footage finally bugs this was a pre-release build for a game that was still three months from launch when I played it in June it had some bugs particularly audio bugs which you may hear in this video some clipping issues some of the objective based activities didn't quite function correctly and a few other small things that's not something to be worried about at this point in a game's development I'm not saying that dark tide is going to launch bug free I'm just saying that bugs in a preview build are very normal and nothing that I saw made me go uh-oh which is something I've definitely thought during other preview builds I've played through my takeaway after spending time with dark tide was wow this looks in place super well hell yeah it wasn't oh hey that's a lot of bugs I'm really worried so I just wanted to be clear on that from the outset and with all that out the way let's talk about why I'm very pumped for dark tide foreign so I'm gonna be real with you and say that I never quite clicked with the vermintide games for two reasons both of which are kind of answered by dark tide in a way the first is I don't love the fantasy side of Warhammer nothing wrong with it just doesn't do anything for me I'm more of a Sci-Fi guy than a fantasy dude more Mass Effect than Dragon Age to put it in Stark gamer terms the 40K universe is not one I'm close to but recent trips there through the likes of the impressive 40K Inquisitor Mata and the janky But ultimately enjoyable necromunda Hired Gun have been enjoyable trips and each new 40K game that I play I find myself edging closer towards going all in on this universe and really starting to immerse myself in its law will I be buying and painting little miniature figures no I will not but will I be playing more 40K video games and maybe reading a book or two I suspect I will it's actually one of the things I'm most excited about when it comes to dark type because fat shark have made really clear that they're going all in on the storytelling and law front here and they've pulled in the right people to help out 40K people will know the name Dan Abner since he's one of the most prolific authors in the Warhammer space and he played a central role in dark Tides since he's written most of the law for it going so far as to create an entirely new planet on which these events transpire all new but still deeply connected to the broader 40K law this planet called atoma Prime is overrun by what are essentially zombies but they have a much cooler 40K name that I can't remember now they're just the fodder though as you'll also encounter turn coat ex-military types and War Dog things and giant mutant ogres and all sorts of crazy [ __ ] oh and these dudes who are rocking the bulwark of azanoth I love it speaking of the fat shark developers they really wanted me to know how committed they were to the story and the lore they talked about the fact that you begin your story as an absolute nobody Cannon foto whose sole purpose is to become ground beef for the emperor's war machine but bit by bit you fight your way up the ranks and the story is really two stories it's what's going on on atoma Prime but it's also the story of your rise from lowly skidmark to valued respected combat veteran the story will be told in a few different ways some of which fat shark aren't sharing quite yet what they are talking about is the banter between different characters since that will be the primary tool that fat shark will use to tell their story brief back and forth between the characters during missions will reveal information about their mission the major factional players behind it the locations they're exploring the backstories of each playable characters and more that dialogue will in fact evolve as you become more known and more respected and in an interview with Edge magazine fatshark told them that this dialogue between characters already has over 75 000 lines written and more are coming as there's plans to evolve this story over time got talking to one of the centuries did you know Moro was in the middle of that's the other thing that's interesting about this fat shark are really aiming to deliver an evolving narrative they didn't use the word live service with me because I don't think that's quite what they're aiming for but the story of what's going on on atoma Prime is definitely the intention that that story unfolds over the span of months and potentially years and similarly your own story of rising through the ranks will continue to evolve as you Notch more exploits to deepen that connection to your own Story dark type includes something vermintide never did a character creator so sadly I can't show you this because it was still under construction but I did use the tool to create a few characters and I can tell you that it was good it wasn't Korean MMO good where you can place the individual freckles on someone's face but it was solid enough that it let me create distinct characters that look notably different from the base character models skin was actually really good which is a strange call out I know but it looked really detailed and leathery and when you put tattoos on it they just look fantastic you can select a backstory for your character but this is more of an RP thing and you can name them and then they're yours so like I said it's not the best character creation tool I've ever used but I'm pretty sure people will be happy with them after I created my character I was dropped into the Hub now I have a very small amount of footage on this since it also is under construction and I had to kind of plead with fat shock to be able to show any of it so this was all I could Wrangle out of them but this is the central chamber which houses the computer with the missions on it when you boot it up you get a sort of map and you can choose from a variety of different missions and these will rotateregularly both in terms of their locations and objectives but also the modifiers that might affect them outside of this chamber there are a lot of empty rooms where stuff would eventually go stuff like a cosmetic shop and an Armory and a place to tweak your talents it was a big space so I expect there will be lots of stuff there eventually but for now it was pretty empty progression and unlocks are a big feature of dark tie just as they were with vermintide again I don't have footage but I've been assured that each character will have a talent tree with various stuff to unlock there'll be weapons and armor and other wearable items Each of which Buffs stats in a variety of ways there'll be unlockable Cosmetics but there will also be paid Cosmetics I'm not sure if there's going to be any gameplay affecting in-game purchases I certainly hope not and that's something I'll take a close look at when it comes time to review the final product so that's all the setup stuff let's head down to the hive I only got to play through one level during these Hands-On sessions it was one set in the lower levels of the great Hive City home to 9 billion souls and as soon as I got boots on the ground I was like damn this looks this looks pretty good it's probably intellectually lazy to immediately think of Doom 3 whenever I encounter Darkness plus flashlight plus industrial sci-fi that's just how my brain works and as soon as the mission began I was immediately thinking like hey this is giving me Doom 3 Vibes that's a compliment more than anything else though since to this day few games have better mastered lighting and in particular contrast between light and Shadow dark chart isn't trying to compete with that since it's far more interested in giving you enough light to see what's charging at you but in between the major combat spaces when the game is trying to slow things down and let you sink into the ambience of the hive the use of dark space lit only by your Torchlight was a bit of a go-to for fat shark and I think it works super well the closer nature of the level design makes for environments that are naturally very responsive to lighting changes this example here where I throw a grenade is a really good showcase so the lighting is fantastic I think the environment design is really solid as well the sense of scale that dark tide is able to achieve can be overwhelming at times The Hub area really Nails this but I can't show you that sadly this section here is probably the next best example the combination of megalomania and Gothic and industria that is the Hallmark of the 40K Universe it just looks awesome foreign I've definitely seen some concern about the sort of environment diversity that dark tide might deliver since most of what we've seen to this point has all been set in this underbelly of the hive obviously I don't know what to expect on this front but I do note a line in that edge preview that spoke about the likelihood of us visiting the more opulent upper levels of the hive city which would be awesome because certainly whenever I've engaged 40K it usually looked like this and I'm definitely down for some variety as for the actual level design how it was laid out and how it was played it was really good it started in these sewer looking things then there was this Bridge Crossing where things got totally wild then we headed through some back streets and fought a mini bus then we got to this sick looking outdoor area we had to hold down this other area while we waited for a terminal to get hacked and someone had to do the actual hacking when it got stuck so everyone else would have to hold off the waves after that we got to this Junction point where waves of enemies were coming down every aisle and it got totally crazy and then we ended up in this I don't even know how to describe it it was just this big series of Chambers but this is where things got the most nuts with more enemies on screen at once than in any other point of the mission after that we made our way through a slum which was built on an abandoned rail line then we fall through the control center of the docks and then we're on the docks where the objective was to collect some heavy duty explosives and transport them away sadly this did bug out but we did get the gist of what we were supposed to be doing and had it worked it would have been great so that's a single mission that has by my count around 10 different major combat areas each of them grounded in that under Hive setting but each of them quite distinct from one another so a fat shark can deliver us I don't know 10 to 15 missions as good as that and they can vary the settings so it doesn't all look like it's set in a Foundry then I think they'd be onto a good thing one of the other really interesting things that fat shark told Edge magazine was that not only will levels change in terms of enemies and bosses that spawn but they're modular in their design so they can be combined together in different ways quote designers produce chunks of levels then join five or six together to create a mission chunks can intersect each other creating a bigger overall zone so that several missions can crisscross a single zone end quote Isn't that cool it very much reminds me of warframe's procedural generation where tiles can be combined dynamically to create unique feeling levels I don't expect it'll be quite as free form as what Warframe does but it is cool to know that this sort of thing is on the table as it's surely going to reduce that feeling of repair goodness that these Co-op Shooters can quickly suffer from given that their mission layouts are almost always entirely static dark tide will offer at least four classes at launch there's plenty of speculation that there will be more over time it's a pretty safe bet but for day one you're talking the veteran who's focused on Precision damage the Zealot who seems to be focused on automatic Weaponry there's a psycho who's kind of the Caster of the group and then there's the ogreen who is the big boy I'll shout into the lead designer Magnuson about this and he was telling me that the ogre is so large that it really [ __ ] their level design process because when you make a character that big you then need to make sure that every doorway is both wide and high enough for him to fit through and fat shark went through all sorts of ideation on this like having him kind of duck down when he went through smaller doorways but eventually they just scrap that and made sure that everything was big enough to fit him so the mountain really came to mohabbat on that one class identity is a combination of a bunch of stuff there's obviously the law for each class where each one represents a different role within 40k's messed up Society it impacts class mechanics like their shield for example where the veteran Shield bar denotes his light arm but the zealots denotes her faith in the emperor one of the more notable impacts of your class decision is the activatable ability you gain access to the ogren for example will charge forward like an offensive linemanclearing a path for his quarterback while the veteran will gain enhanced Vision highlighting priority targets and dealing bonus damage to armor the most meaningful impact of your class decision though is that it determines which weapons you can bring into the field I'm told to expect a lot of variations for each weapon type but I got to play with the veterans semi-automatic rifle and chainsawed the zealots automatic rifle and her Mallet and the ogreens kit which is comprised of a sword that looks like a butter knife in his hand as well as you know I actually don't know what this is called but it's really [ __ ] cool what I learned is that each weapon melee and range has an alt-fire mode that's engaged in different ways so for the ogren's pellet gun the default firing mode is this sort of single shot that makes it function like a shotgun but if you activate the secondary fire that's when it becomes this kind of cheese grater minigun thing the melee weapons for both the Zealot and the veteran can be activated which electrifies it or turns on the Chain part of the Chainsaw sadly I don't have any good footage of that but if you recall Gears of War chainsaw kills then you're most away

there jump earlier I mentioned that there were two reasons I didn't quite click with vermintide the first was that I didn't love the fantasy Warhammer stuff but the second was that I don't love games that are focused on first person melee combat and to be clear vermintide is pretty much the best first person melee combat you can get it's really good but it's just I don't love that style of play and it's always stopped me from gelling with vermintide the way many others did now to be clear vermintide has ranged combat lots of it in fact but it's not the focus your ranged weapon was either a backup or it had a very deliberate single use kind of purpose where it was intended that most of the time you'd be swinging its stuff with something heavy or stabbing stuff with something pointy so this is why I'm Keen for dark tide because it essentially flips that formula your ranged weapon is the go-to here that is the weapon that you'll be most reliant on switching to your melee weapon when you need to this hasn't resulted in melee combat feeling any less meaningful or satisfying all of the things that made melee combat great in vermintite are here including blocking and pushing and the responsiveness of enemies who will Ragdoll in really convincing ways when you hit different parts of their body

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in dark type melee is not this strictly optional thing you might do for fun it's essential the veteran for example is very much about Precision damage to his automatic rifle is great at range but when enemies are up in your face then you're going to need to switch because the range weapon just loses most of its Effectiveness in that setting so I guess this brings us to Gunplay and I know that more than a few people will worry that fat shark wouldn't do this well since it hasn't been a part of their wheelhouse to this point at least not in this way I'm here to tell you that these weapons handle super well and feel great to use the ogren's cheese grater thing feels super satisfying the zealots Auto rifle has plenty of kick on it without feeling unwieldy and the veterans battle rifle was my personal favorite since it felt so precise and produced such satisfying feedback every time I pull the trigger that was something I noticed actually the size of enemy hitboxes was really big it was very easy to land headshots and I asked Magnuson about this and he said yeah we purposefully made them larger because we want the player to feel powerful and have fun that's a design philosophy that's quite Central to the way fat shark are designing dark tide one of the most interesting sting reveals from The Edge preview was this bit I read it out because it's really insightful quote we anchor it in the purpose of wanting players to have a good time balancing it is about checking with players and quantifying how they're doing not how the horde is doing so enemies politely ask is it a good time for me to try and shoot you and you're like no I have just been shot three times and I have a pox Walker trying to hit me and so they'll shoot someone else we need that level of balance because if we unleash 50 guys all trying to kill you at the same time you're dead pretty much end quote now as I was playing it I kept thinking to myself that the pacing here was really good I never felt frustrated I mean we were playing on a lower difficulty Shore but there weren't any moments where I felt unfairly reamed or that [ __ ] was going down and I was like Ugh that's lame having read that quote from Edge I can see that lack of frustration was a deliberate design Choice supported by this sophisticated game system and it's one that actually underpinned left for dead which is one of the reasons why that game worked as well as it did this is in control is something like back for blood where I think the defining characteristic of that game was how badly it managed its difficulty scaling and pacing and how it would just relentlessly flood you with high level enemies no matter what was going on that game really fell apart above the base difficulty and hey maybe dark tide makes the same mistakes at higher difficulties I don't know but the fact that fat shark are talking about this stuff and that they've designed this specific system to handle game pacing I think that's a really good thing oh everybody so on that note this is probably a good time to remind everyone that this is a preview and that while I really enjoyed what I played it doesn't mean that the final product will be good it's possible that it lacks content or it's full of bugs or it's got some shitty pay to win [ __ ] or I don't know anything point is don't pre-order don't get over hyped but personally I'm moderately hyped for this because yeah I had a really great time with it and it's just ticking a lot of boxes for me I've been flirting with the 40K Universe for a while and if dark tide launches well I can really see this as kind of a gateway drug into more 40K that whole evolving storyline thing really intrigues me as well since I'd love it if I could dip back into this world every three to six months as new content rolls out that's something that I'm really enjoying about Destiny right now and I know talking about Destiny is always complicated but the reality is that narrative is steadily building both the destiny universe and the characters that inhabit it and it's awesome to periodically return to that game and see that slow build happening if dark tide can give us a 40K storyline that evolves and expands over time that would be awesome and that's setting aside the fact that this is probably going to be a really fun Co-op shooter and it's going to be on Game Pass which I think is huge from an engagement perspective since Co-op Shooters tend to be pretty boring unless you're playing them with your mates so the low barrier to entry for this one is going to make it so much easier to enjoy so that's dark time dollars it's out on September 13th on Steam it's on Xbox where it's day one game pass I'm sure it's coming to PlayStation 5 at some point hopefully that exclusive window isn't long because this one is looking pretty great so one of the things I mentioned during this preview is the dark tide is exclusive to both PC and Xbox at least for a little while a real bummer for anyone with a PlayStation or a switch or mobile Gamers they're Gamers too the good news is that you don't have to have an Xbox or a high-end PC to enjoy dark tide because it's going to be available day one on Nvidia GeForce now powered by pentanet what is GeForce now you ask it's a cloud gaming platform that lets you experience PC games running on high-end Hardware without having to front the thousands of dollars for that hardware and you can play those games on your TV your old outdated PC and your Apple devices this is possible because GeForce now does all the graphical processing in the cloud and just beams you an image similar to something like Netflix so if you have an internet connection at 15 megabits per second or higher you can start playing games through the cloud on almost any device through either a dedicated app or through a web browser like Apple Safari so for example this is me playing Watchdogs Legion 1080p 60fps with Ray tracing enabled on my phone pretty good huh but what if I don't want to use a phone that's fine this is footage of me playing Guardians of the Galaxy on my PC through the handy GeForce now PC client I just browse through the list of games I own I boot it up and within seconds I'm playing Guardians of the Galaxy with Ray tracing enabled that is awesome because it means I don't have to spend thousands of dollars on a next-gen GPU to enjoy a game like this at Max settings with Ray tracing you can just play it through GeForce now and save yourself the cash GeForce now powered by Pence net is getting new games added all the time for example just last week it got one of the biggest games on the market genshin impact now yes you can play the mobile Port of this already but now instead of running a scaled back mobile version you can play the PC port at Max settings in the palm of your hand that's a nice upgrade you can even use the Nvidia Shield to access your genshin accounts through GeForce now allowing you to play on a big screen TV with your gameplay upscale to 4K the thing I love most about this service and the reason I'm recommending it to you is that GeForce now powered by pentanet respects your existing game libraries you don't have to buy your games twice with GeForce now there's over 1 000 compatible games and more being added every week and if you own those games on Steam epic or Ubisoft connect then you can play them on either your local hardware or through GeForce now it's entirely up to you here's the craziest part internet are currently selling a Founder's plan for GeForce now where if you subscribe it locks in the discount for the lifetime of your subscription so when the price goes up in the future you'll be laughing and you can spend those extra dollars on bulking out your game Library give it a try and see for yourself how many games are available how easy it is to load up and start playing games in your library how smooth and reliable the connection is all of it I would love it if you guys did me a solid click the link signed up and checked it out but only because it would make Papa Nvidia very happy but also because I really think there is value in this for you if you want to play games on the go if you want to be able to keep playing when you're rudely kicked off the TV if you want to play PC exclusive games but don't want to Shell out the dosh for a PC you can try it for free or you can sign up for a priority subscription to secure your Founder's price and like I said your Founder's price will be locked in for the full lifetime of your subscription so it's a great time to sign up the link is below like I said it's free nothing to lose so give it a click sign up thanks GeForce now powered by pentanet for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it

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