Warhammer means, without hesitation, role-playing game. Between a few high notes and more than a few off-key songs, the brand almost always means, whether board games or electronic productions, fun mixed with wholesome slaughter. This is why Darktide, Fatshark’s new effort belonging to the Warhammer universe, was a highly anticipated title on Xbox. A frantic and infinite wait given that the PC version was released at the end of 2022. An infinite wait, often on the verge of being more illusory than concrete, given the long silence of the developers on the subject, which then fortunately landed on the current generation consoles from Microsoft. Obviously, the title that arrives on Xbox is very different from the previous one: there have been so many improvements and extensions that, in a way, it would not be wrong to call it version 2.0… and another year later, here it is now on PlayStation 5. In short, Darktide is a first-person shooter, with lively role-playing and action elements, strongly oriented towards online cooperation. As is usual in any Warhammer-branded production, the lowest common denominator is always… blood and darkness! In fact, the game will catapult us into the dark and very violent hive city called Tertium, a dark labyrinth devastated by infinite terror. At the same time, the cities on the lower levels are now consumed by the expansion of chaos-generated corruption, capable of transforming humans into monstrous aberrations hungry for flesh and blood. Naturally, to put an end to what seems about to be unstoppable, the Empire has decided to deploy into the field four very dangerous death row inmates who, as is logical to expect, will each reflect an archetype of a specific role, although with some asterisks of sorts. For any player who has experienced one of the title’s spiritual predecessors, namely the two chapters of the Vermintide saga, Darktide will not be a real novelty: there are many elements of commonality between the two brands, even if there is some differences.
