Recenzii recente de Katangen

If playing sci-fi, third-person shooters that feature dodge-rolling and exploiting elemental weaknesses in enemies as their central combat mechanics, published by Prime Matter over the past year, pocketed me a quarter every time it happened, I’d have exactly two quarters. It wouldn’t exactly make me rich, but it’s weird that it happened twice!

From the minds over at Mad Head Games comes Scars Above—an ambitious and promising departure by a developer best known for hidden object point & clicks. Sadly, what was no doubt conceived as a bold and fresh vision for the team, and is made up of some great concepts and ideas, takes a tad too long to get going and lets the stale parts take up a sizable chunk of the whole.


With Scars Above being a budget title, it’s best to temper expectations, even if it manages to avoid some common hazards that AA releases—those that go for a cinematic, “photo-realistic” look, at least—consistently slam into.

For starters, none of the environments will give off that air of a cheap movie set, trying to sell you on the illusion with cardboard walls and poorly matte-painted skies. A holdover from the studio’s days spent working on hidden object games, I’m sure, there is a lot of detail put into your surroundings, which can be frequently interacted with and inspected.

The spacecraft you start the game on is filled to the brim with little chunks of the characters’ personalities; feel free to rummage through their stuff, turn and flip it around to reminisce about the past. Hold it dear, for you’ll be soon stepping foot on a desolate alien planet, where fog descends onto the soaked swamps, an ominous geometric shape of dubious intent hangs in the distant sky, and glowy-bitted, uninspiredly-designed creatures roam free. It’s an elusive atmosphere to pull off, and here it manages to click.

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The gameplay, while not without issues, is quite functional. Dodging enemy attacks actually works, maybe even too well, and the guns have ample kick. But, is there some clunkiness to the way the game controls? Are there stiff animations? Is the storyline something you’d find airing on the Syfy channel? Absolutely and unfortunately—the game looks good and plays well enough, but its presentation is a parade of played-out trends.

The environments too, no matter how much weight there is to them, become stale; was there a law passed while I wasn’t looking? One mandating that fleshy goop and blocky, granite-like alien architecture must appear in every up-and-coming sci-fi setting? Must be the same one that defines aliens as “ethereal, hairless humanoids, with a vibrant skin tone”.

The story isn’t as offensive of a cliché, but sadly unremarkable and without a strong emotional core. The endpoint of the journey is a hopeful, science-positive message. The game has this optimistic, wide-eyed view of our place in the universe and you’ll need that same outlook on the game itself to get the most out of it. If anything, it'll warm your heart a little bit if you don’t roll your eyes at such moments.

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A breath of fresh air is the likeable protagonist, Kate, thanks to whose background as a scientist, exposition never feels unnatural. Coming across certain lifeforms or technology will let you inspect them up close in a hidden-object-like minigame, allowing Kate to surmise her findings at the end. What you’ll learn isn’t all that interesting, but at least the learning is fun! Kate’s frequent remarks are also welcome—it all makes perfect sense and ends up as an immersive way of presenting the science in this science fiction.

I also greatly appreciate the minimalistic UI. It seems so thought out that, since Kate’s capable of explaining a lot herself, I can’t help but wonder what’s up with those holographic tutorials that came barging in ever so often, transporting me to an alternate world of flickering blues, as if the Animus from Assassin’s Creed reared its ugly head.



What Scars Above lacks in originality, it tries to make up for with a solid gameplay loop, lurking underneath the fluff. I say “lurking”, as it’ll take roughly half of the game for the training wheels to start coming off, being shed completely only in the final stages.

You get four different guns, each corresponding to a different element. These can interact with each other, but also with the environment. Throw in the additional fire modes, the consumables and tools, a skill tree, a “crafting system” and an inventory, and you'll find yourself spoiled for choice when looking for ways to deal with what the game has in store for you.

Unfortunately, it’s painfully clear that there’s just not enough room within its scope to warrant it all, as it messes with the pacing and leaves other "mechanics" feeling like placeholders. Don't feel bad for not experimenting, because the blame is on the game. It doesn’t let you play around with any of its options; rather, it just showcases how everything works, sort of like a tech demo.

When a new idea is introduced, the next hour or so is a gauntlet of all its potential applications. You unlock a gun that freezes things, so here’s 45 minutes of ponds you have to turn solid to get across. When do I get a say in this interactive experience? Why is there no dynamic between any of these features?

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You do get a glimpse of what could have been in the final few hours, when the game is out of tricks and starts throwing at you the greatest hits of everything that’s been an obstacle up until that point. For the first time, experimentation won’t feel trivial. You’ll actually have to figure out the best way to go about things as you won’t know what to expect next. It’s a blast to play, albeit a humble one, as the ending is right around the corner.

As for the rest? The “crafting” isn’t crafting in the way pretty much everyone out there understands it. Kate will “craft” a new gun or gadget when you come across it as an in-universe explanation of her acquiring it. While she won’t do it unless you hold E to fill up a bar, there’s no actual mechanic behind it.

The same goes for the inventory—there’s no management, just a tally of what you’re carrying. Both these and the barely exciting skill tree—which offers meagre stat boosts and "Personal Skills" in the same sense that Doom Guy has the personal skill to shoot a gun—are neat, ludonarrative ways of introducing what your protagonist is capable of, though having actual mechanics in a video game where combat takes so long to come together would have been nice.


It’s easy to write positively about a game you enjoyed, and even easier to trash one you didn’t. To write mediocrely on one you're on the fence about is a skill I haven’t mastered yet, as all my writing is mediocre! So, how can I expect you to tell that I didn’t hate my time with Scars Above after everything you’ve read?

Having that wide-eyed view towards it, I enjoyed picking at its neat bits. However, all the missed opportunities and trite design make the rating more so a guarantee that you won't get burned too badly if you have an undying interest to check it out, rather than a recommendation.

Of course, if you want to avoid being complicit in another goop-filled title, you can do that, too. Whichever your decision, you can take this review as an endorsement of it.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

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A review copy of the game was provided by the publisher.

Loretta. Loretta. As that one dude famously wrote: "Who cares what the flower’s called! It’d still smell all the same!”, or something along those lines—I don’t actually read books, unlike the developers of Loretta; they’ll use every opportunity to namedrop their favourite writers.

But it is a powerful tool. When one work invokes another, it’s as if you’re being offered a key to understanding it better. God knows I’ve needed it, for what is certainly a thought-out and compelling narrative adventure, Loretta could have benefited from some restructuring and restraint.

Its name also irks me. Somehow, it’s too tacky. Too aggressively “early 20th century America”. Too catchy. Too easily remembered. Too iconic for the game it is now attached to. Probably most games, for that matter. Any game, really. If we didn’t get a definitive Loretta to end all Lorettas all these years, then we’ve missed our chance. We should have continued as a Lorettaless society. You pull something like this, and it’s as if you’re trying to earn a place among the classics you’re drawing inspiration from, retroactively loaning out their credibility and hoping to blend right in.

"But it’s a love letter!”. You know what? Their inboxes are full!

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Loretta is a noir narrative adventure, slash thriller, taking place against the backdrop of a post-World War II United States, a setting that’s prime target for mystery and suspense. You’re not playing a gruff detective type, trying to finally catch the serial killer, or some writer down on his luck and out of his depth, but exploring the motive of a woman trying to take back at least some control over her life from the times she finds herself in.

It’s the latter I wish was expanded upon more, as Loretta is a rather short game, with multiple endings and branching paths, some of which count as fail states. Actually, I wish that a lot of things were handled differently writing-wise.

First on the chopping block is the overall tone. It’s pulpy. Perhaps too pulpy, to the point of predictability. Characters talk as you’d expect them to talk: snappy dialogue filled with inflection and jargon of the era. In addition, a lot of the locations and plot points are pulled straight from the crime story playbook. A smokey bar? Check. A motel amidst a downpour? Check. Here’s your writer, here’s your detective. Occasionally, we’ll even change whose perspective you’re playing from.

To be fair, Loretta is a crime story, so there’s nothing wrong with using said tropes on their own. They’re a tested and true method of communicating specific information to your audience. Even here, where the trope-to-originality ratio is a bit lopsided, they manage to set the scene and create that great, moody atmosphere film noir and classic point & click adventure games are known for. Some changes in perspective also work well for setting up a reveal that wouldn’t have been as effective otherwise, from the heroine’s eyes.

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Heavy-handedness would be second; the immature, constant namedropping and dramatic monologues that are sometimes just a tad too good, nonetheless, coming from a character who is written as ungracious as possible but is then also able to tell you what exactly a scene from some niche German playwright would entail. I can’t make up my mind on whether or not it’s self-indulgent or meant to showcase Loretta’s “stupidity” as a perception enforced upon her by the surrounding culture.

It is, at least, impressive how the game doesn’t entirely miss the mark even when its themes are out of focus. The tale it tells is a gripping one, the pieces falling nicely into place if you’re able to get over some hurdles. Well, a hurdle: replaying the game, as Loretta requires you to explore all possible outcomes for the full picture.

A single playthrough is an okay one, with a weak ending that might make it seem an incomplete, contradictory, or, at worst, surface-level experience. On subsequent runs, however, it becomes tiresome, despite some of the length being cut off and the game maintaining a fast pace throughout, with puzzles that are, for better or worse, either more of a visual or a quickly discernable order of what to click first. It's repetitive, yet the narrative always gains something new for you to appreciate. Having beaten the game twice, one ending left me with a poor understanding of Loretta’s character, while another made up for it at the cost of closure.

It's a rough duality. From a design perspective, it’s not a bad decision to make in a game that features player choice, but Loretta is one of those that flow strictly “scene by scene”; one might be replaced by another due to different decisions being made—mainly revolving around whom to kill, when, and how (while at other times being a thinly-veiled illusion)—but will quickly put you back on the main path. That path, on which everything gets equal setup but not equal payoff, remains unchangeable. Something will always be left out; not left to interpretation.

Loretta as a character is also impacted, as she is hard to take seriously. It’s as if there was a glass wall between the two of us at every step of the way. The alteration between player choice and lack thereof felt too arbitrary for a successful allegory of her reclaiming agency, both from the player and the world, and comes across as just more awkward design.


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While the writing isn’t as sharp all the way through, other aspects of Loretta are. Erm, maybe not the visuals, as I find the art style, overall, kind of rudimentary, but it’s the use of colour and creative scenography that got under my skin.

When I said the game plays out “scene by scene”, I meant that in a literal sense. You’re not just moving from location to location, but also going back in past and exploring alternate (fail state) outcomes. In fact, most of the game takes place in a single house, yet every passage of time or change in environment is accompanied by one of these abstract transitions, some of which are slightly annoying minigames, though very striking nonetheless, abrasive or contemplative as the scene in question calls for.

When the sheriff is looking around your house, moments after you’ve killed someone, you don’t get a mere animation of him walking up the stairs or searching the rooms; you get red, block text, flashing before your eyes, accompanied by roaring bass strings that hint at all the horror and nastiness that just may hide behind the next door. Loretta’s sound design is tremendous. It knows exactly when to surprise you with an ice-cold sting or turn up the soundtrack. And everything else? I gave its choice of locales flack earlier, but I’ll be damned if the atmosphere across all of them isn’t shoulder-to-shoulder with the very classics Loretta would so eagerly love to stand beside.

There is also a noir mode that turns the visuals black and white, if you’re after that specific feeling or flavour, but listen to what the game tells you and play through it at least once beforehand; those transitions are worth seeing in their full technicolor glory.



Sadly falling short of its ambition, Loretta is a narrative adventure that will keep you at the edge of your seat throughout its short runtime, but hides its heart of darkness behind tedious replaying. I genuinely hope it gives wings to the talented team behind it. After all, they’ve got a debt to repay.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

Even with the revelation of what good, co-op shooting is all about, brought under the spotlight by Left 4 Dead, developers and publishers stuck to mechanics that didn't quite get it. After all, why shouldn’t they? It’s not like following in the great zombie-killing marathon's footsteps is the only way of making a decent co-op shooter, and it's not like everyone can just keep killing zombies endlessly, only pausing when the formula gets iterated on, despite many creating a lifestyle out of it. And so, many titles in that intermezzo have been deservedly met with a positive reception.

PERISH, the debut of developer ITEM42, isn’t a co-op horde shooter, nor did I go into it expecting anything similar—other than decent co-op. With how many such titles there have been over the past few years, and us being in a somewhat golden age for the genre, I’m afraid that the well of forgiveness has long run dry, and PERISH, as it desperately wants you to take it seriously, doesn’t do enough to compensate despite its visual and worldbuilding mastery.


If there’s one pet peeve that keeps bugging me more and more as time goes by, then it has to be just how annoyed I am by lore. Not in the sense of a thought-out background that uplifts an otherwise meaningful story, but rather a perverse overfocusing on meaningless detail, peddled as depth and used as an excuse for a lack of substance. Dig into it deep enough, and you’ll be shocked just by how frequently artists don’t understand their creations.

Some genres are ill-suited for plot or character-driven storytelling, making a reliance on worldbuilding much more appropriate; it’s a genuine disadvantage narrative designers are put at, yet frequently used as a crutch. As a roguelite, PERISH could have easily opted for such an approach—doubly so, being inspired by Greek mythology, bearing in mind all the intricacy and context that implies. It could have easily expected you to read up an article or two before jumping in. Yet, by treating the player as a being that can, in fact, read and surmise information from the things they’ve read, and the subject matter at hand with the respect it deserves, it firmly takes a stand on the opposite end of the spectrum: this isn’t just an aesthetic or a resource with which to fill out countless lore collectibles, but ideas—more specifically, Orphism—that were once reality for part of a civilization. Ideas that a vision for a game has been built around, rather than appropriated in search of inspiration. Ideas that organically contextualize the journey you’ve embarked upon. For better or worse, you are uncovering the mysteries of the afterlife—not out of pure curiosity, but a necessity to succeed at the task at hand.

I respect such commitment greatly, but can’t help but feel a hint of betrayal when certain aspects of it appear watered down. Throwing in some inspiration from Roman mythology and Christianity is jumping the shark; these are things that came about later in time, after all. You can’t just pluck what you need without trying to make it fit at least a little bit, or it’ll seem off. This might come across as empty criticism in a game where a 14-barrelled shotgun and an assault rifle with a laser beam secondary attack make up a part of the arsenal, but their appearance fits right in with the core of the design. If Hephaestus had gotten particularly creative one day, I could definitely see these as the guns he’d make.

The same goes for the soundtrack. You’ve got me on board when the heavy riffs are accompanied by the plucks of a lyre—it’s the same mixture of antiquity and modernity that gave us those pseudo-Greek guns—but once I’m fighting bosses to full-blown breakdowns and guitar solos, I want to jump right off. It’s grotesque, and not in a good way. And then to say it reminds you of DOOM? Is that all it is now? DOOM music?


The player in PERISH is one of the amyetri, those uninitiated into Orphic practices and beliefs, who must now earn their place in the afterlife by battling their way through purgatory. Fail, and you’ll be reincarnated, sentenced to an endless cycle of death and rebirth until you’ve absolved your being of its bodily needs and limitations.

You have to re-live the suffering of a god—this is why you’re here. The reality of what Orphism was informs PERISH’s gameplay loop almost perfectly. Each failed attempt at ascending into Elysium is one run, and since leading an ascetic lifestyle to prove yourself is something your amyteri didn’t get a note on, you start off with a barebones arsenal, the most reliable part of which is a broken blade. Progressing through stages awards you Danake, a currency that you can spend at the hub for new weapons and upgrades.

It is a torturous predicament that PERISH is quite committed to. Burying your broken sword into the skull of an oncoming enemy is an act accompanied by brutal, crunchy sound design and a satisfying ding, yet your strict health bar that entirely depletes after a mere three hits ensures you’ll be suffering quite a lot in the beginning. There are no checkpoints, not until certain bosses are defeated, when the game will “generously” allow you to skip the stage that preceded the battle, unlocking an item at the hub’s shop that not only takes up an important slot in your inventory but also costs an exorbitant amount of your currency—some 60% of which is lost upon death.

While the game is hyperfocused on this difficulty, none of your extra tools, or the perks you get to choose from after completing an objective, give you interesting ways of overcoming it. Melee is a one-click affair with a complimentary block. You can also kick enemies Dark Messiah-style into environmental hazards, or dash away from oncoming damage. Yet, it’s all so incredibly one note.

New weapons, while all following suit in terms of excellent design, don’t allow for any expression of skill—build variety is painfully limited, beginning and ending with the one you choose. Enemies, likewise, behave as stock video game automatons that mindlessly charge you the moment they spawn, with an obvious dash to the side when first aimed at being the only trick up their sleeve.

Levels in PERISH are open and rich with detail, full of vibrant colour and imposing architecture. Whether it be the lights that reflect off the polished stone that the temples are made of, the gargantuan obelisks and monuments to the deities that make up the mythos it’s founded on, or the raining blood from the otherworldly skies; it is a lavish, if a bit uneven, presentation of the underworld. None of that makes up for how uninteresting getting around it is. Be prepared for lots of walking.


The game’s ultimate sin becomes clear after your first successful run. From a conceptual standpoint, it is a great twist, and serves as the climax for every bit of lore you’ve managed to uncover (another, incredibly dull, needle-in-a-haystack process). I may be insane for thinking so, but I kind of love it.

Do you remember how the first Pathologic was a bit excruciating, and how that tied into the game’s themes? Well, PERISH's twist has a little bit of that, yet it goes in favour of a play style that is so mind-numbing that it may as well have rolled out of an asset store.

It’s “games as art” in its purest form, and I want to wholeheartedly embrace it for that. But it is also a co-op roguelite. A bad roguelite with bad co-op. And if I can’t scrounge up three other weirdos to enjoy it with me for what it is, chances are neither can you.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

Throughout the nineties, survival horror established itself as a genre that challenged players in a rather specific way—by forcing them to face their fears. What made this remarkable wasn’t just the horror designs preying upon and setting off fear’s primal aspects, but specific game design and narrative techniques as well, aimed at making the experience a bit more unwieldy than your average video game.

Isolating the player and moving the story into the background, placing various limitations on how problems can be dealt with, and whether by intention or limitations of the era, controls that just won’t bend the knee; this is all long-established survival horror theory. When your surroundings and their goings-on are designed around requiring extra effort to be fully understood, you’ve got all the more reason to be afraid. In an environment filled with uncertainty, where each mistake and wasted resource might mean a much harder time or outright failure later on, putting yourself in danger to get to the bottom of things and not just save your skin isn’t as easy of a call to make.

Things changed in the early 2010s. Surviving had less to do with careful resource management, fears were faced only so you could run away from them and hide; horror turned ghastly spookies screaming in your face while clipping through headphones. Make no mistake, horror games were popular—survival horror was not; relegated instead to the occasional indie or AA underdog. Still, it lingered in the misty outskirts, and in the spirit of the monsters that inhabit its most well-known titles, it was just waiting for a revival.


With previously acclaimed, beloved, and long-standing franchises falling from grace left and right, calling the period during which The Evil Within released anything less than tumultuous would be an understatement. Dead Space was all but dead, Capcom had come out with arguably the worst entry into the Resident Evil series yet, and the cancellation of Kojima’s Silent Hills was looming on the horizon.

As the latest directorial effort of game designer Shinji Mikami, the man who headed the team that defined the genre some three decades earlier, The Evil Within was supposed to put survival horror back on its feet. Strangely enough, it was those same, genre-shifting trends that have made some denounce the game's survival horror identity; and while, in hindsight, we can’t quite say that it was the crimson head it had been intended as, a question remains: where does it stand today?



Total destruction on a citywide scale, shortly after detective Sebastian Castellanos and his colleagues arrive at the scene of a mass murder at Beacon Mental Hospital—this is how The Evil Within begins. An ambulance ride and a tumble down some cliffs later, the toppling cityscape is exchanged for rustic villages in the middle of nowhere. Other lucrative locations, such as abandoned hospitals, catacombs, and SAW-esque death mazes are closely in tow.

Flashy, dramatic openings aren’t necessarily bad for horror games, but you’ve got to get me the least bit attached to the world of your story for showing me how irreparably messed up it gets to have any effect. Preferably, in subtler ways. Otherwise, it’s spectacular panic and confusion over mystery, which doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the game and some of the heavier themes it tries to convey through its art design. Discovering new information through logs and worldbuilding always falls flat in The Evil Within. Maybe if Castellanos was a stronger character, with more than an afterthought backstory and a set of skills that doesn’t just serve the purpose of getting him to the place where the plot happens, it’d go down easier. As for the supporting cast, they’re better than your average redshirt, and all have their parts to play, but can’t carry the whole thing on their own. I get that I may come across as a bore here who says you can’t have any fun if you want to play things straight, but if you don’t want action to get ahead of your narrative, then you have to keep them close together, with ball and chain.

Speaking of action, I apologize if what I’ve said so far made you think that The Evil Within misses the point completely. Actually, the foundation of the gameplay is textbook for the genre: here are the shambling, barbed-wire-covered zombies, and here is your pistol and its wobbly crosshair. Go get ‘em, tiger! Of course, in sharp contrast to its bombastic opening, the game will make you work hard for your undead-murdering rampage, but will keep it a challenging trek throughout, even when things ramp up. Locations stay cramped most of the time, your resources limited, and control appropriately clumsy. Being armed to the teeth with grenades, numerous guns, or the Agony Crossbow—the star of your arsenal, equipable with bolts of varying effects—is no guarantee you’ll come out on top.

Survival horror thrives on player agency, so ways to progress aren’t just limited to creatively causing undead heads to explode. As much as it tries to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction, The Evil Within is influenced by its contemporaries. So, in addition to the above, you’re frequently given the option to hide under beds or inside lockers, sneak through while avoiding traps, or merely run away. With each of these options being viable in the right circumstances, and neatly fitting with the others, we’re in the presence of near-perfect design, as far as I’m concerned.

The choice of having enemies drop ammo upon death, as well as the inclusion of an extensive upgrade system fueled by green jars of brain goop you find lying around, which can make Sebastian better at pretty much any action he’s capable of, is what I’ve heard some say makes The Evil Within an action game rather than survival horror—but, I think this misses the bigger picture. Not only do these kills award minuscule ammo, you’re also not getting awarded for any kills you fail to score, and that’s rather easy with how much of a pool noodle Sebastian is. Choosing to fight, outside of when it’s mandatory (and those bits exist in pretty much every survival horror game) is always a risk of putting yourself in an unsalvageable position. Should you succeed, the idea that you’re a fully decked-out killing machine by the end, without making encounters trivial, doesn’t go contrary to the genre because survival takes a different meaning at that point—one it’d be incapable of, had the horror not been so effective in the first place.

The way the game juggles its gameplay bits makes for some masterful pacing. There’s no shortage of enemies or big bads, and the game isn’t afraid to bend rules or introduce one-off mechanics to keep you surprised. Sadly, it leads to some cheap deaths, and the last third is exhaustingly filled with payoff. It seems we’ve come just a tad too far from shooting rocket launchers on top of helipads.


More than a nostalgia fest or throwback to the horror media of the 20th century, The Evil Within tries to incorporate modern elements of the time with hallmarks of the genre Mikami helped create. At its best, it is the perfect marriage of action and horror one could ask for. At its worst, a tryst with the trends it claims to want to upset that comes dangerously close to divorcing it from the genre it wants to represent.

It makes for a fine game that, unfortunately, doesn’t reach the place of a genre-reigniting epic it could have had in the survival horror canon, and stands at a somewhat undefined spot in Shinji Mikami’s personal one.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

I’ve been figuring out how to bang out my thoughts on video games for about 6 years now, even longer if you count watching others do it worthy of note. One thing I've learned (just the one) early on is that reviewing a game at launch means assessing the state of that game at launch, for better or worse.

Unfortunately, for all those who’ve been looking to peg Darktide as gaming’s next big disappointment of overpromises, this does not include everything they wanted to be in the game but wasn’t. And it’s not that I don’t sympathize, they're perfectly valid in asking for a refund or calling for those things to be added (If anyone needed to hear it from me), but the things that are actually in, and do they work, is what matters.

Unfortunately, for developer Fatshark, this also doesn’t include everything that’s supposed to be in the game later on. We can talk about that when it gets here. Because Darktide is a bit of a mess. A lovely mess that improves upon the combat and squad-based gameplay of their previous titles, but makes everything else subservient to its unfulfilling premise.


Mechanically, melee combat doesn’t differ much from Vermintide. Weapons have their own combo strings of light and heavy attacks that you can mix and match as the situation calls for it. As different attacks have their own direction and damage values, they excel against a particular type of enemy. However, with the inclusion of a special attack for every weapon as well as a detailed stat sheet (something that in Vermintide was only possible through modding the game), and each weapon now having multiple variants that all come with a different combo string, Darktide potentially has a higher skill ceiling than Vermintide did. Granted, it’s a bit slower, but feels much more deliberate and gratifying, without ever feeling clunky.

Ranged combat is a whole ‘nother beast, and that it fits as neatly as it does is a resounding success. While it was an important part of Vermintide, it’s considerably cranked up here – both for you and your enemies.
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Even when they don’t hit, however, bullets and lasfire, are pretty scary stuff, so it’s only natural that there’s a suppression mechanic at play. Coming under fire will make you slower and less accurate, so you better decide what to do fast.

It all just makes me turn into such a bundle of joy! Oh, how the enemies flail and scream when set on fire for long enough, stumble to the ground when shot in the leg and limp away to cover if not finished off, or are just punted across the room legless, headless, whateverless, from the force of your swing… It’s not the first game to have systems in place that track this stuff, but it is the only one that does it with such pizzazz – like watching fireworks go off with each swing or pull of the trigger announcing the arrival of the New Year.

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Of course, visuals aren’t everything that makes combat such a pleasure to take part in. I mean, have you heard all the sounds a poxwalker’s skull can make when struck by a shovel? What about a chainsword? The sound design team should be commended as much as the folks who did the visuals. But, if there’s one man who deserves special praise, it’s Jesper Kyd, whose soundtrack, to my ears, beats all his previous work.

Bolstering the sound design, It’s as much of a star of the show as the visuals and the combat. Every sizzling plasma shot, every crack of warpfire, every cut of a power sword, they seamlessly accompany Jesper’s chunky bursts of bass or sweeping electronic synths, without drowning each other out. This probably ties him with Scott McNeil for the most important man in 40k’s sonic history—sadly, without a Gundam reference.


Everything else is held hostage by Darktide’s premise.

The narrative experience it tries to deliver just doesn’t measure up to expectations, as character creation is inconsequential. We were promised dynamic arcs and personalities for the characters we make, yet no matter the choices in your backstory, there’s no change in the way characters behave, aside from which ‘voice’ of the three that are available for your class you pick. Having that at release, across 21 different voices, is ambitious, but I really thought Fatshark could pull it off with the way the inclusion of one of 40k's most respected novelists, Dan Abnett, was touted. It seems Fatshark wanted to go all-in, but failed to deliver on their promised narrative approach.

Abnett’s Tertium might be interesting for a forum discussion or lengthy article, but there’s not much tangible in the game. The banter is amusing but rarely meaningful, trading off hefty pre-written characters for pennies of player expression in an unfair trade.


The player characters are so big of a focus that the game’s progression actively encourages you to stick to the first one you created, while the lack of depth in gameplay options makes you want to branch out into the other three. The build variety of the talents for each class has nothing on its competition – even Vermintide 2 offered more on release; and if it’s the crafting system that’s supposed to provide that variety, too bad – only a quarter of it has been implemented so far.

What is in, however, is a rotating weapon shop that isn’t even guaranteed to have at least one type of every unlocked weapon on offer; meaning, you can go many sessions without being offered to try something new. Even worse, the shop rotates hourly, not after every mission played, meaning that meta progression is mostly locked behind RNG rather than the currency completing missions rewards you with.

https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2900300032&fileuploadsuccess=1

It creates this weird instance where my FOMO is being FOMO’d. I would like to buy an item before it refreshes for fear of missing out, but running out of gold might mean I’ll miss out on the next one. I would like to start a mission that looks good, but skip it in case the one I want pops up.




The first week of gameplay was quite agonizing, thanks to Tzeentch always keeping my RTX on despite the option not even being available on Radeon GPUs. After a hotfix, some FSR magic, and a newly found hatred for V-sync, I managed to get Darktide running above 60 FPS on average, on a combination of Medium and High settings, even if certain scenarios felt like playing Vermintide 2 on a 1050 Ti and i5-7400 all over again.


There’ve been few games that ran the “40k FPS” track. Darktide is among the fewer that actually got to the finish line, albeit tripping at every step the second half of the way.

In the end, I feel like a cautious recommendation is more honest than telling you to steer clear while I continue to rack up hours – slower than I’d like, but racking ‘em up nonetheless. If meaty, first-person 40k combat is all you’re after, I'd say go for it. If you’ve got any other aspirations, however, or if the price tag makes you feel queasy, wait a couple of months.

You can play Vermintide 2 while you wait.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

This review has been long overdue.

The reception DOLMEN got at launch was pretty bad. So bad that it sat at a “Mostly Negative” rating for a while, as quietly as it did in my Library. With that, and with what I’ve heard from a friend who played it, I ended up waiting. Amongst other things, I didn’t want to be the guy to kick it while it’s down. Luck would have it that in the few months it took me to get around to it, a couple of patches rolled out. It was time, finally, to go into the game full of enthusiasm, ready to give it its fair shake.

Just think of the possibilities: it would be my review that’d usher in a new wave of appreciation for it! I could take pride in being the one who stayed behind, the one who revisited the game all these months later and say: “Hey everyone! It’s GOOD now!”, and the masses of Steam would flock to me, hoist me on their shoulders, and we’d all sing Kumbaya as we waddle off into the sunset, burdened by carrying my fat ass, newly purchased copies of DOLMEN clutched firmly in our grasps.

But no. This is not the timeline we're in.


I gave it my all to like DOLMEN, but for nearly every feature I would have liked to highlight as something it does well, the game fought me.

As the story goes, you’re an employee of Zoan, a galactic conglomerate in charge of a research facility on Revion Prime – a planet gone AWOL. You’re the, erm, Commander of a rescue team, tasked with beaming down to the planet’s surface and not so much finding out what happened, as recovering samples of a crystal called Dolmen that’s been found on the planet in ample supply. You see, the crystal is valuable because it has reality-bending capabilities, allowing for travel between universes and thus being extremely sought out for space travel and exploration.

It's a great premise, one that the game doesn’t do anything memorable with. Corporate intrigue? A reality-bending mineral? Several universes, all clashing together in one place and creating a chaotic environment for all these parties that are searching for the crystal to duke it out in? All within a sleek sci-fi setting? Sign me right up, we’ve got GOTY material here! But no. DOLMEN uses its Dolmen as nothing more than a McGuffin, and any creative way all these elements could’ve impacted the plot is nowhere to be found.

It’s a souls-like, so it tries to hide the narrative’s most interesting bits off the main path. From time to time, you’ll come across a terminal or tablet on the ground that’s glowing. These can be interacted with to bring up a text log and deliver some of the driest storytelling I’ve ever had the chance to read. They're lore dispensers, plain and simple, that tie into the world in the most basic way imaginable. Even the protagonist, the aforementioned Commander, while completely voiced and showing glimmers of some kind of noble and heroic personality, succumbs to the uninspiredness of it all, as his VA delivers almost every line in the same way.

This blandness crosses over to the art style as well, even if the game looks good on a technical level. I was once told one of the biggest reasons why Dark Souls’s architecture and world were so memorable is because everything had this feeling of being designed independently of the player, ie. they first designed these gargantuan castles and then figured out how to have you get around them. It seems that DOLMEN’s designers took that literally and only made their environments huge while forgetting to make them interesting and add any semblance of direction. Empty hallways, hangars, and server rooms, none of which stick out, with the way to proceed often placed in some obscure corner. I kid you not, at one point, the only way I could tell I was progressing through an area as opposed to going back to its beginning was because a voice-over played.


Now, let's talk about the gameplay. If you didn't find the story intriguing enough, then the combat alone probably won't be able to redeem DOLMEN in your eyes, even if it's where the best-realized ideas lie.

Think Devil May Cry’s combos, built by rapidly switching between melee and ranged weapons, slowed down to a souls-like tempo and you’re on the right path. Holding CTRL will have you swap to a ranged weapon with infinite ammo, limited by the mana pool you also use to heal. The genius idea here is that your mana pool is split into two parts. Healing will use up its maximum capacity, restored by nomming on an Energy Battery, while shooting your gun only diminishes its current value and allows it to refill once you've let your guns cool off for a bit.

New equipment is obtained by crafting, which, while straightforward, is what I’d call a ‘neat addition’. The variety is pretty decent; swords, axes, shield combos, fist weapons, pistols, shotguns, sci-fi black hole guns… Finding secrets and progressing through the game will award you with blueprints to then craft these gizmos from, using the various materials you find, each crafted piece having different stats depending on what materials you imbue it with.

Another important aspect of DOLMEN’s combat are elemental weaknesses all enemies have, fire, ice, and toxin, with each weapon’s damage corresponding to one. The dance is simple: match the element of your ranged weapon to the one your enemy is weak to, then shoot 'em enough to fully inflict the associated debuff. Then, proceed to swoop in with a melee weapon of the same element for a devastating blow. Light attacks, heavy attacks, dodges… you get the picture; though finer examples like backstabs and parries are missing.

Unfortunately, despite having an assortment of ‘okay’ enemies and some memorable bosses to fight, DOLMEN feels like a third-person shooter in disguise; not only because of how effective ranged weapons are, but because of how ineffective melee is.

A lack of animation cancelling and poorly animated enemy attacks is mainly to blame. If I had to list every time I was taken aback by my dodge not registering, we’d be here forever. I’ll give you an example, though: imagine fighting a ranged enemy — if you dodge at any point after the shot has been fired, you’ll get hit, even from a mile away. So, dodge while they’re raising their weapon, even if it goes against common video game logic. Which frame of the windup animation do you have to dodge during? You’ll have to figure it out on your own. I gave up trying to read the animation cues and started relying on counting the seconds from when a symbol signifying an upcoming unblockable attack would appear above the enemies’ heads to when I'd get hit – after getting hit enough times, of course.

As a friend who watched me play put it: “It just seemed like every time you went for a melee attack, it wasn’t worth it.”. And he's right. Even if it takes longer compared to melee, it's better to just stay back and blast away at your problems.


Believe it or not, I was still considering a positive rating after beating the game last night. I thought of a clever conclusion to my review as well, of how I’ll lambast having Steam’s rigid binary of “Recommended” and “Not Recommended” loaded and pointed against the back of my head, and how I’ll lament not being able to hide behind a “57/100” like a true professional.

But no. Typing all this out made me realize that I can’t recommend DOLMEN. I also thought of giving it another playthrough with a different build, but shuddered at the thought of any other jank I might uncover while not levelling up my guns. I accept this defeat, head bowed in shame and boots bloodied.

A curator helmed by veterans of the review scene, Summit regularly provides you with professional quality reviews for all sorts of games.

The Coma is the first title I got my hands on as part of my recently started horror binge. What? A binge can be slow, can't it? Anyways, It wasn't the first title I've been recommended, however, but I figured I should start out small and top it off with something more exciting, you know? Like the upcoming Dead Space remake; or maybe choose a game that's a bit more high-brow and considered a classic of sorts, like SOMA. There are many options!

As for The Coma, it is rather simplistic, but tense, and manages to have an interesting story despite not letting you dig too deep into its characters. The artwork is cute, if a bit inconsistent in its quality, and the ambiance did manage to inflict a few chills on me even if I was left wanting for a richer soundscape.

The technical side of things, as with any good horror game, consists of a control scheme that's intentionally clunky but possible to get a grip of - as you overcome your fears, so will you the control scheme; it's that sort of design philosophy. On an unrelated note, I've run into a couple of sporadic, unexpected stutters when entering new, previously unexplored areas, as well as disobedient key presses that wouldn't listen to my commands, and a clingy music track that would stick around for slightly too long after its visual accompaniment had already left the screen. Also, I wish some of the consumable items had more concrete descriptions. I know "some" is more than "a bit" when talking about health restoration, but how much is "some" and how much is a "bit" and how much more is "more" than "some"?!

And, and... that's it! I don't have anything more to say! I mean, I guess I do, but I'm not finding myself particularly inspired to be perfectly honest. I've had my fun, it was good, and I think you should buy the game (and play it, obviously!). Can't it end at that? Does everything need a lengthy review, bursting at the seams of Steam's text box?

Besides, anything I'd say has already been said, in spectacular fashion, I might add! So, if what I've said here isn't enough for you to make up your mind and you'd like something a some bit more in-depth, allow me to forward you to this review, written by the ever-charming... sigh, St. Diarrhius.

He's a good fellow, I promise (!), and writes a bangin' review, as you can see - even if I think he oversells the gameplay a lil' bit.

Scorn and I, we're off the same soil. I remember having conversations with people back in 2015 about how it'll fall through, "just like everything in this country". To see it succeed would mean a lot to me, as getting something of its calibre off the ground here is incredibly difficult. That isn't to excuse any of its shortcomings, as I understand fresh indie developers struggle almost universally, but more so to let you know where I'm coming from - both literally and figuratively.

So, I am quite surprised by the divisive reception, to say the least. I've read some rather spiteful and silly remarks over this past week, but also negative reviews from people I was sure were going to like it.

Ah well! I'd have liked to take it upon myself to defend the game from the worst of what I've read, but Steam's character limit wouldn't allow me to. Not much of a preamble then; here's the review!


On the store page, Scorn is billed as a lot of things it’s not. An atmospheric, first-person horror adventure? Yes. Even if I never found myself scared. It made me feel uncomfortable or hopeless plenty of times, but I can't say I was ever afraid.

Its non-linearity is also greatly overstated. If I can discover a locked door before I can open it, but still have to go about opening it in the exact same way, every time, we’re still talking about a linear experience. Also, the whole ‘opening up new areas’ bit is a bit bogus, as it implies a certain level of freedom in traversal and exploration. Here, all areas are about getting from point A to point B by following a predetermined path, and the moment you enter a new area, the previous one ceases to exist. There’s no room to spiral out, only to keep going.

The things the game has an absolute grasp of are its visuals, themes, and the ‘lived-in world’. To me, they made up for any aspect it clumsily twiddles with or defeatedly drops to the ground. And as you can see from the wider reception, there’s enough of those to sour the game.

https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2878961237

It is, as many have put it, a visual feast; even if putting the word ‘feast’ anywhere near it is enough to get the stomach to churn. Teeming with mystery and disgust alike, it showcases a highly creative and well-thought-out environment that can't help but invite you to come to your own conclusions. The ‘how’ of everything is right before you; the ‘why’ of it is up to you. It might not be the most satisfying thing out there – if it was, we wouldn’t have stopped delivering the entirety of a game’s story as a foreword to its manual – but anything more would have missed the point. It’s visual storytelling in its entirety, there’s no room for audio logs or journal entries.

I’d say the game’s length plays into its strengths in this regard, as its beginning, a specific part in the middle, and the very ending, are what’s most likely going to stick. What was laden throughout, while still visually impressive and engaging, steadily drops in quality in every other regard. Had it gone on for a bit longer, Scorn would have been a game of mostly lows, instead of a couple of spectacular highs and abundant mids. But why is that? Well…


At the risk of sounding dumb, I’ll admit that I don’t have much against the puzzles. They’re not great, but they were stimulating enough for my feeble mind. A much bigger crime, I’d say, is how immersion-breaking some are. Moving around cranes and other colossal, grotesque bio machinery is one thing, but would an alien civilization, barely comprehensible to our minds, really secure locks with puzzles that have you spin rings around? You could have had me play a game of Sudoku at that point and it wouldn’t have made things any worse. Scorn’s puzzles are great as long as they’re making something interesting happen on screen. On their own, they’re stock gameplay options skinned around the game’s aesthetic.

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I won’t stray too far from what seems to be the prevailing opinion on the combat. Having you 'dodge' or run away through claustrophobic hallways, in which you frequently get stuck on terrain, is not a great solution to fighting hard-hitting, long-ranged enemies. The biggest issue, and why it seems so tacked on, is that there’s no dynamic to it, like being forced to fit square pegs into exclusively square holes.

Before each fight in which the terrible melee weapon isn’t enough, you are given enough ammo and health to scrape by. Land your shots, and you’ll be good. Miss ‘em, and you’ll be forced to run or avoid enemies, which awkwardly grazes against the claustrophobic level design. Your character may as well drop dead the moment you run out of ammo if any enemies are still left standing.

The most egregious example I can think of is when I went out of my way to explore an unimportant hallway to its end and surprisingly found a hidden ammo cache. I was actually proud of myself, even – only for the game to spawn two of the toughest enemies on both ends of the hallway, forcing me to fight as they were blocking the path. Risk VS reward, I get it, but even when hitting every shot, this fight – that wouldn’t have occurred had I not picked up the ammo – took away almost everything I just found, and what was left over wouldn’t have made a difference in any upcoming encounter. So, what exactly was my reward here for the risk I took on?

Inventory management is inconsequential. Everything you pick up has a specific spot where it has to be used. There's no room for creativity. It will never affect the outcome of a situation. The ‘different play styles’ mentioned on the store page do not exist, unless ‘running away’ or ‘shooting with a different gun’ counts. If you expected something like degradable tools that can make a certain puzzle easier at the cost of, say, having an alternate path forward stay blocked, you’re looking at the wrong game.

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But I was still engaged! Even if the combat did its absolute best to break my immersion at its worst points, it couldn’t. Cracks appeared, but it held strong. The design of the equipment you're given definitely helped – the weapons you use are all living, moving things; the medkit is this little creature that you fill up with blood at health stations and jab into your arm to heal up. If you’re fully immersed in a world where combat is terrible, then I guess it just becomes par for the course.


If a game, upfront, tells you it’s going for a primarily visual experience, how outraged can you be when its gameplay disappoints? What would such an experience be worth? Some works of art are considered priceless, so what does it say about us if we insist on ‘getting our money’s worth’ out of every game as a product first? An idealistic point of view, I agree – and I admit full well that even the people who didn’t expect Doom out of Scorn, or something similarly ludicrous, are right in feeling disappointed.

Personally, I expected a smaller Prey or a spooky Portal, but got neither. But that expectation only came after reading the store page. All these years, I expected a visually captivating and imaginative experience – which is what I got, albeit with some bad gameplay tacked on. Could I stomach spending 40€ on something like that? I could. Would I have gotten my money’s worth? Probably not. Is the experience Scorn provides priceless? On some level, sure. Giving blood, keeping faith, y’know?

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Few franchises can boast Doom’s staying power, at least on PC. You’ve got your Doom (1993) and Doom II, both of which feel fun and fresh to play even today. On the other hand, Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal did for boomer shooters what Outlast and Slender: The Eight Pages did for first-person horror walking simulators back in the day – meaning, everyone’s doing it now! Honestly, it seems like in whichever generation a couple of Doom games crop up, they can’t help but be massively influential and universally praised.

Sure, there was a lull in there that lasted for, what, a decade? A bit more? But even Doom 3, as polarizing as it was to cause it, was regarded as a success by critics and, if anything, a decent survival-horror experience by fans. Its departure from the fast, run-and-gun style of gameplay that boomer shooters are known for – and even more so in recent years – was disappointing to many, but honestly? I feel like Id Software did the right thing by not continuing down that road; not until they were prepared for some more innovation, at least.

https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2875814738

Released back in 1997 and developed by the now-defunct Midway Games, Doom 64 wasn’t just a port of the smash hit to Nintendo’s console, but somewhat of a re-imagining as well. Most notable – and this is what you’ll frequently see the game praised for – is the oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere. No, you aren’t blasting demons with heavy metal music playing in the background. Instead, you’ve got an assortment of ambient tracks, made up of spooky-sounding strings, ominous chanting, and crying babies. Yes, really. Paired with a grittier take on Doom’s classic visuals, and gloomy lighting, it allows for the shooter to be played from an entirely different perspective where, in addition to running and gunning, you’ll be carefully crawling through maze-like levels, unnerved to your limits, checking every corner for enemies, where an Imp or a Hell Knight might be lying in wait.

It’s amazing how big of a shift in perspective can be achieved with a different soundtrack and some tweaks to what are, essentially, the same assets from the previous titles in the franchise. Some of the enemies and weapons have gotten their sound effects reworked as well, with the new ones being a lot more appropriate. The Chaingun sounds beefy as all living hell, while the Imps no longer screech like a pissed-off donkey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IE1NmyrbWA
- The track from the level ‘Breakdown’ is the one that undoubtedly left the strongest impression on me. Don’t listen if you’re home alone at night! 😱

So, with it being a re-imagining, you won’t be playing through the original lineup of Doom’s levels. Instead, you’re offered 31 completely new ones (not counting those unlocked through in-game secrets), taking you through both the heavily industrialized sci-fi bases as well as the labyrinthine depths of Hell. The enemy roster includes most of the enemies from the previous two games (as well as a few surprises that I won’t spoil) while excluding a couple from the second one. In all other things, it’s classic Doom to a fault.

When Doom 64’s at its best, you’ll be inching through Hell’s hallways, taking in the ambiance and carefully listening for where danger might lurk; checking corners and bracing yourself every time you open a door. Or, in those areas that are a bit more open (and aren’t under-represented in the game by any means), you’ll be running around, performing the necessary ‘dance’ needed to best each enemy, dodging out of their attacks and swiftly cycling through your arsenal, picking the appropriate weapon from moment to moment as the ever-changing tides of battle force you to mix things up.

Need to deal with a bunch of shotgun-wielding zombies before closing in? Gun ‘em down from afar with your Chaingun. Got a couple of hard hitters, like the Mancubus, thrown in there as well? Quickly get your rocket launcher out and blow ‘em up before they can do the same to you. Did a swarm of Lost Souls just spawn in behind you? Swap to your BFG and obliterate them with a single click. This is Doom as you and I know it and love it, even with the movement being somewhat clunky and getting you occasionally stuck on things.

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The problem is - we’ve been playing Doom for years. We aren’t some kid in the ‘90s who never got a chance to experience it previously because it was not released on their console of choice. We’ve already played the best it has to offer, and I don’t think a change in perspective, a new weapon, and a bunch of fresh, but mostly unremarkable maps are enough to not make Doom 64 a bit redundant. Add on to that the fact of there being no modding support, and you’ve got yourself the most dated, albeit most faithful to the original experience, game in the series.

There are other things that frustrate me, but these might be either unreasonable to hold against a game this old or too much dependent upon personal preference; like the way sprites turn with the camera. What I wouldn’t give for some voxels, as it’d save me from having to look at Imp ass every time a dead one enters my field of view. Or how there’s no way to zoom out on the map, making it useless for finding your way around unless you just want to consult it regarding your immediate surroundings. Sure, you don’t need it to find your way around, but my guess is that I’d have saved plenty of time hunting for door switches if it was actually usable.

And don’t get me started on some of the traps there are that can cause nearly unavoidable, cheap deaths. Pfft! Oh, and the Lost Soul? It’s not okay. It attacks too fast and the time of its pre-attack phase is like half a frame! We can’t keep pretending that it’s this one enemy that’s just annoying to deal with, but still cute in a certain ‘love to hate it’ kind of way. It is not okay!!! And the fact that it can deal damage even when it’s above you, where you can’t hit it, because each entity’s hitbox extends infinitely upwards? Ugh!


I felt like I was done by level 17, which is a bit more than halfway through a game that took me almost 20 hours to beat on the second-highest difficulty, ‘I Own Doom’ (because I do, it says so in my library). The repetitiveness of fighting the same enemies over and over while not changing up the level design philosophy that much had gotten to me. After all, I can’t hunt around forever for door switches, keys, and the doors those switches opened.

It should also be kept in mind that it’s possible to mod the entirety of 64 into Doom II, with all the other quality-of-life benefits modding can provide, such as vertical mouse look (and voxels). So, maybe, unless you’re looking for a curated, “true-to-the-nineties” experience, or just want to showcase some achievements on your profile, then sit this one out? If you just want to play a classic Doom game, or just want more classic Doom, you can get that elsewhere.

I get that muddies my recommendation a little bit – but It’s still a recommendation, more so for the qualities 64 inherits from the previous Doom titles and then the way it applies its own charms to them, than those charms alone.

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Back in October of 2015, Swedish developer Fatshark shared with the online gaming community a realization that we all should have caught on to much, much sooner: that there aren’t nearly enough co-op horde games in the world. And even so, this addicting formula that Fatshark has been perfecting ever since – what with an excellent sequel being released in 2018, and a spiritual successor of sorts (hopefully!) later this year – hasn’t seen itself as a staple of the wider video-game scene until a mere year and a half ago. Sure, you had the titles that started it all – Valve’s Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, the latter of which hit the long-forgotten concept of store shelves all the way back in 2009, but you’d have been hard pressed to find anything that scratches a similar itch before Fatshark dropped its 79/100 metascore hit onto the unsuspecting public – while nowadays, following their success, you’d be spoiled for choice.

It's kind of funny, really. The memories of playing L4D2 in an internet café after school (of course, I hadn’t even known what a ‘steam’ was) are some of the fondest I have of spending time with my former classmates, but I haven’t given Vermintide a spin until picking it up as part of a bundle back in early 2019. And that was the 2nd game mind you, not End Times, so it had taken me even longer than that to properly get around to experiencing this particular gem.

Like any good wannabe critic, I did my due diligence back then and checked out the first game before longingly sinking my teeth into the sequel (a love affair still going strong today, even after more than 1,100 hours); but with more wanting to play the shinier of the two and being pressured by my friends to get it over with so we can “play already”, it didn’t leave me with much of a thought other than: “too clunky, sequel better”.

Of course, times change, and what was worth playing in 2015 might not be worth playing today, even less so if you avoid spending energy and money on something that can be easily replaced by another, though importantly improved and more refined, experience of the same kind – a stance for which I’ve caught flak in the past.

Likewise, what was “too clunky” to be appreciated back in 2019 might not be in 2022; and while End Times was undoubtedly made obsolete by the release of Vermintide 2, what is it, exactly, that makes it recommendable today?


So, what End Times had going for it at the time of its release, other than the idea of trying its hand at the L4D formula, was it being the first proper game under the Warhammer banner to come out in almost a decade. Besides, it’s not like there is an abundance of high-quality titles from this universe jumping at you do be played, even if you include its sci-fi counterpart. Furthermore, the games that weren’t duds were overwhelmingly strategies of some kind. If you wanted a more personal look into the setting, your only other option was an MMO that shut down a year earlier.

But let’s answer another burning question first: what exactly is the ‘L4D formula’?

It’s four players running through a tightly crafted level, fighting huge hordes of enemies, before reaching the end in an explosive finale and barely escaping by the skin of their teeth. Fighting together is imperative, as taking damage tends to be quite unforgiving on harder difficulties, while some enemies can incapacitate players outright through special abilities, without a nearby teammate to help out.

The extra twist End Times goes for is putting melee weapons front and center under the gloomy moonlight, and restricting that gear to specific characters. Guns, crossbows, and other ranged options, while still in the game, are limited – but powerful. Other than that, you have the standard issue of consumables found throughout the levels, such as explosives, heals, or potions that briefly increase either your speed or damage.

Beating one of the 14 levels in the game (with more being available through DLC alongside new weapons) rewards you with a new piece of equipment – be it a weapon, stat-boosting trinket, or cosmetic – making rewards more tangible than in the game it’s so heavily inspired by.

You might be able to smell a neat gameplay loop here; and if that’s all you’re interested in, then I’d say: just move on. Unfortunately, End Times’ clunkiness didn't get better with age. If anything, it’s only further exemplified; and if you’ve played Vermintide 2, there’s no going back.

Hitting enemies in melee feels like slapping bags of jell-o, animations are slow, ranged weapons have poor feedback, and character movement feels stunted and stiff. I get why some people prefer how precise you have to be to preform well in the game over the more ‘combo-based’ style of the sequel, but it’s not something that appeals to me.

What’s indefensible, however, is the sheer randomness of the reward system. Truly, it’s one of the most diabolical and misguided gachas I’ve ever experienced and I’m thoroughly convinced that whomever designed it was directly in league with Tzeentch. I mean, I get that this is one of those things that not even Vermintide 2 was able to fully fix, but at least in that game you can craft any weapon you want to use and are guaranteed to get gear for the character you’re playing. Here, it's almost completely random, and it’s a very real possibility you’ll be stuck with two or three weapon types out of a dozen available for your favourite character, even after almost 50 hours of playtime.


It’s how faithfully the Warhammer setting was realized and the context the whole game provides for Vermintide 2 why you might want to go through it, at least once. I’ve no reservations about recommending the latter because of how exceptionally well it gets cooperative, horde-based carnage, but you’ll be able to enjoy it even more if you familiarize yourself with the story and setting by beating this game first.

The five characters you get to choose from all have their own stakes, worldviews, allegiances, and angles that they comment from on what’s happening in the game – that being that the city of Ubersreik is under attack by a swarm of man-like rats. It’s a straightforward plot, and one the game doesn’t pay much attention to (although it still does) other than using it as a framing device for its levels. But, as those levels are backed up by some remarkable visual direction, atmosphere, and expansive worldbuilding that’s been consistently added onto over the past 35 years… and there’s just nothing that can compare. There’s some quite creative setpieces in there too, that Fatshark has strayed away from when making the sequel.

Skulking through a rain-soaked, dimly lit medieval city, only to be ambushed by a pack of enemies, still has its charms. The party’s Elf might get snatched away by a hook-wielding rat, prompting the otherwise cold and calculating Witch Hunter to fire off an insult or two her way, only for the Fire Mage to quip back in defense of the Elf, who she holds in much higher regard between the two. Moments later, the jolly Dwarf might break into song to try and get everyone back on the same page, although he’ll probably get a cynical line or two thrown his way instead. Things like these happen only in Vermintide.

It’s a great entry point into the setting and the proper one for an even better game, packed into a not half bad, albeit a tad bit dated, co-op experience. I couldn’t recommend it as anything more than that, though I’d be doing it a huge disservice if I didn’t at all.

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