Warhammer 40K: Darktide is Finally Out

Fatshark's latest title, Warhammer 40K: Darktide, is finally out, after a long road involving several delays and multiple beta tests, including two closed betas and a final pre-order beta that took place over the last couple of weeks. 

There were some technical issues in the pre-order beta, including crashes and seemingly random disconnects from games, but these gradually improved towards the end of the beta, and Fatshark periodically added new maps and features to the game as the beta progressed too, so hopefully the launch will not have too many issues. 

In spite of a few technical issues, the combat and gameplay that we saw during the beta was very engaging and fun - there is sufficient enemy variety to keep you on your toes at all times, especially on higher difficulties - including huge hordes of poxwalkers, specialist enemies wielding bombs, shotguns, flamethrowers and trapper nets (among other things), and deadly elite enemies and bosses. 

You have to work as a team to survive - trying to go it alone will almost certainly result in your demise - enemies synergize very well together to make the experience challenging, and having a good synergy in your team will help you to counter this. 

While there are currently only four classes in the game (Vermintide 2 had 15 on launch), they all feel interesting and bring something unique to the table. 

Darktide ships with 13 maps , offering a variety of locations with various objectives. For example some levels are Assassination missions where you have to battle your way through the heretic hordes to take down a final boss, whereas other missions task you with retrieving some supplies and carrying them to the extraction point, while under constant attack. 

There are five difficulty settings to work your way through, and missions can also have additional modifiers that make them easier or harder, such as increased enemy numbers or a ventilation purge which makes the entire level foggy. 

It looks pretty clear from the outside that Fatshark was hard pressed for time even after multiple delays, and there is clearly some work to be done post-launch to add new features and iron out any remaining problems. But as long as nothing goes terribly wrong, it seems likely that Darktide's challenging co-op gameplay will keep players entertained while Fatshark works on further expanding the game's horizons. 

If you're one of the new players picking up the game on launch, we've already collated heaps of useful info about the game, including classes, weapons and abilities, as well as a Build Editor. Beta players have already created lots of builds that you can take a look at if you want some ideas. You can find all of this and more on our Darktide Hub, and we'll be continuing to add more over the coming days and weeks. 

We hope you enjoyed this article about Warhammer 40,000: Darktide.