Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Review - My First Few Hours.

Release: 8th March 2018

Pricing €27.99/£23.79

TL:DR - Left 4 Dead gameplay mashed into the Warhammer Universe, with a hint of RPG elements, such as ongoing character progression and loot/equipment system. A definite buy if you enjoyed the co-op and team play of L4D, or if you’re someone who prefers playing with other players vs the AI as opposed to vs. just other players (PvE vs PvP). Worth the current cost in my opinion, so if you see a sizable discount in a sale I say it is well worth it.

Played on Ildathe, 1440p @ Max settings

Offical Site

Wiki with more detailed info.

And so we begin.

My First few Hours involved playing a bit of co-op with friends; next I tried my hand at a solo game with bots, and finally, I tried out the matchmaking for a few games. First impressions are good, albeit there are a few minor issues that I will discuss later and the odd graphical glitches, the kind you laugh at and nothing that impacts game play. For me this is essentially like Left4Dead (L4D) met an action RPG and had a baby. Just like L4D, this is a PVE (Player versus environment) style game with much the same mechanics - 4 player co-op where team work is a must; you can get knocked down or disabled by an enemy and need a teammate to revive/rescue you, there are numerous health packs and other pickups scattered along the map to keep you going, and you have hordes of basic enemies, the stronger special enemies which each encompass a unique trait or ability, and then of course a much larger boss style enemy. The main difference bar the games setting is the RPG elements, the ongoing character progression and loot/equipment system. Having only put in just over 4 hours I’ve yet to play all the maps offered and so far I’ve only tried out one character, so there is still plenty for me to get my teeth into, and I sure as hell am looking forward to doing so!

When you first boot up the game, after you are greeted with the typical logos and splash screens, you are treated to a cut scene outlining the plot which brings you up to speed with the events of the first game, which admittedly I never played, but sure that didn't stop me enjoying this . After that you delve right into the thick of things with a single-player prologue which lasts about ten minutes and helps to teach you the basic mechanics/controls of the game, whilst it also wraps up the story line to leave you off at your base of operations Taal’s Horn Keep.

From your base you are free to select a new mission, party up with friends, change characters, manage your equipment, pick your talents, engage in crafting, and of course as with any modern game, customise your cosmetics. Least we not forget the most important part - getting dug into your spoils of war and opening your reward chests for tasty new loot. Compared to L4D where you pick a campaign and play it, this adds a nice bit of continuity and progress to strive towards.

Teamwork makes the dream work; A Truly Righteous Stand

As I mentioned, I started off my adventure playing with friends, me and 3 others partied up, got on VOIP (Voice over IP - think a gaming conference call) and battled though a few missions. For me this is the best way to play, yourself and a few mates on Team Speak/Discord battling unrelenting hordes of evil. You can talk and discuss tactics, have a much easier time directing your allies to health pickups or quickly shout for help if one of those damn special enemies get you pinned down or manage to incapacitate you. Best of all you’re all on the same page, nobody is going to run-on solo or lag behind searching for pickups, which in a game like this is the best way to get yourself killed. In this game searching and exploring is a must in my opinion as it turns out there are special pickups scattered around the map in the form of books, either tombs or grimoires which admittedly don’t help you during the mission but nevertheless greatly reward you at the end by powering up your reward chest.

One mission stands out in my head as being particularly fun: “Righteous Stand”. We started off high up in a mountain before moving into the devastated city located there. After making our way though the ruined streets we ended up in a massive open planned temple and were required to ring a bell and wait, wait and survive as seemly unending hordes of both Skaven and Rotblood suddenly swarmed us from every direction, and to say we were ill prepared was an understatement. One team mate on low hp was downed, and as the other two worked together to revive him I somehow got surrounded, barley managing to stay alive with a combination of blocking, luck and my career skill, a smoke bomb that conceals me from enemies for a short time. Good for me but bad for the team as the enemies who couldn’t see me moved on to less evasive targets. Right as the smoke bomb ended our fallen team mate was up and fighting again, and I had managed to get out of my former predicament but into another - I was no longer surrounded but separated from the rest of my team. As my hp dropped lower I felt the end was near until suddenly I head a shout both on VOIP and in game, my friend playing Markus Kruber had managed to get near enough to use his Career Skill – Morale Boost, bestowing me with a temporary heath boost and staggering nearby enemies; using this to our advantage he and I managed to cleave a path though the hordes to get to each other, and together we had enough about us to cut our way towards our other team mates, and just in time too as Kerillian the wood elf who moments ago pulled Kruber to his feet, was down and in need of a revive, not to mention that Sienna the Wizard was only just keeping the vermintide (see what I did there?!) at bay and couldn’t spare the time to do the task. As Kruber repaid the favour and got the elf up, myself and the Wizard held the latest wave off. With the four of us back to our feet we moved to higher and easier defended ground, this offered me time to not only use a heath kit but also to knock back a speed potion. However, the fight wasn’t over as what we thought was a great location proved to be anything but, as packs of the ratmen scampered down from the roof and up the walls to flank us, and if that wasn’t bad enough a few special enemies had also joined the fray, one of which lobs vials of poison gas, and just so happened to hit the bulls eye with his latest shot, which exploded in a green mist all around us. In a concentrated team effort we all pushed and fought in the same direction ignoring the gathering numbers to our back, and somehow managed to escape the gas cloud while fighting back to back, and right as I thought we weren’t going to make it the moment we were waiting for came - the windows of the temple shot open and illumined the scene before us. Only a few stragglers that remained got quickly dispatched, and before the forces of evil could gather more we received word to make our way to the portal home, which luckily for our battered and bruised characters was located at the bottom of a stairwell bang smack in the middle of the temple. Vermintide 2 is full of moments like this, where you feel like the lead in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Myself and one other had started that night, whilst the other two had a few more hours under their belt, which perhaps made it a bit easier than it could have been considering they already had a few levels and gear on them, but regardless of this, we all had a blast. I’m really looking forward to catching up in levels and really testing our teamwork on a higher difficulty, not only will the game be more challenging but the fact that we will have access to more weapons and talents as well as the sub-classes means we can be suitably prepared for the task at hand

🎶🎶🎶Allllll byyy my selffffffff.....🎶🎶🎶

Next up I played a few rounds with bot team mates, which was relatively straight forward and for the most part the bots did a good job of not ruining the experience as they always stuck near you and tried to help out any ally who got downed or incapacitated. Of course, they are not quite as fun as playing with other humans, albeit easier to predict. Mind you, I only played on the easiest difficulty so maybe at harder levels they might not prove as adequate. There was one glaring issues with bots and the tomes that I will mention later.

Finally, I tried out the matchmaking, and to be fair it did a decent job of keeping the levels close to each other. I can't imagine it being too much fun for a low powered player if they are matched with someone who runs around one-shotting everything. The glaring problem with matchmaking is a similar one to what L4D faced and that is a mismatch of play styles. On one hand you have the players who seem to only want to end the level, run though as quick as possible and get to that sweet sweet loot early, then at the other end of the spectrum are the type that want to not only collect every tome, grimoires and potion they can, but also want to take time to stop and smell the roses and appreciate the scenery, and then there is everyone inbetween. In a game like this, if you run off ahead alone or lag behind and get caught in an area where your team can’t get back to you, you’re done for , and possible your whole team too. Although I’ll happily admit that I’ve yet to run into any toxicity that normally comes with online games, I’m hoping the PvE nature of the game helps in that regard, although I imagine once you get to higher levels of difficulties this may change.

Health Points? Damage? Crit chance? Could a real stat page please stand up.

I feel the RPG elements add a great deal of depth to the game but perhaps could have been done a lot better, especially in regards to the info you have available and the loot/equipment. I understand why they might want to limit the item slots to the 5 they have included but I have no idea why they leave so much information out, alas the inventory screen is pretty poor and has a severe lack of useful info. I’m talking about even having access to basic info on your character like damage, stamina and heath. As you progress you get better weapons with useful stats like + attack speed, increased crit chance, or + damage vs. a certain type of enemy, so the game has all this underlying math/stats/calculations but there is nowhere to see your characters total. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not expecting a full on stats run down similar to a full on ARPG like Path of Exile or Diablo 3 has, but having access to the basics would be nice.

Crash, Thump, Wallop, Screech, incomprehensible ratty wispier behind me when I'm alone......

The sound design in the game is great. The heroes have great banter with each other and the effects are pretty spot on too, from the twang of a bow to the solid thump of a hammer, not forgetting how intense the music/effects makes the larger battles; the sound of a war-horn and scampering of enemies all around you as they pour over walls and out of hidden spots really sets the scene. Lastly, the sound of special enemies in the darkness nearly taunting you can set you on edge, but also equips you vital info as to their position.

Roundup.

Overall I am very happy with my purchase and have very little to complain about, although I do have plenty of ideas I feel would improve the game. Admittedly, I am a tiny bit let down by the RPG side of things but I’m sure there is good reasons for their game design. I myself can’t think of many reasons as to why they don’t have a way to see basic info on your character though, but nevertheless taking everything into consideration, I feel It is a very well made and rounded game. Have a look at the trailer and if this type of game appeals to you then I severely doubt you will be let down.

I will check in next month with an update if I have any more thoughts, or to see if I am still playing it.

The Good the bad and the Ugly

Great game-play, enhanced with friends or voice communication. Teamwork makes the dream work!
Looks great, with lots of graphics options to tweak to get the best performance even out of less powerful machines.
Awesome use of sound.
Regular updates and patches from the developers
Scaling difficulties lets you ease your way in and gives you something to aim for.
AI director keeps the game fresh, but could have been better.
Solid combat mechanics, easy to learn and difficult to master.
Plenty of playstyles to find the one to suit you.
RPG elements adds a lot to the game while still leaving a lot to be desired.
Peer to peer connection can leave some people with high pings/lag.
Modding support.

Other rambling thoughts on the game

A great way the game keeps you playing and stops the same 13 levels being too repetitive is the use of an AI director; this AI director chooses where and when to spawn all enemies, both hordes of your basic type and special units and even bosses. So, you might play though a level and have a hard fight vs a bile troll or a spot where a team mate or two got picked off by a special enemy, only for your next play though to have the same area, except an eerie quiet with little or no action. This keeps the same level refreshing though multiple play thoughs, and keeps you on edge as you’re never entirely sure when the next wave of enemies will be upon you.

On the previous point I feel they missed a great opportunity for the AI director to have even more power by perhaps having the ability to change the level. I’m not talking procedural/random generation of whole levels, but rather at certain points in the map have for example 3 pathways to get from point “A” to point “B”. Let the AI director choose which path ways will be open and which will result in dead-end. I had this thought when playing a level located in tight mining tunnels, while being franticly chased by a massive Chaos Spawn, it was dark and I couldn’t see anything in front of me, but luckily for me I had played this level before so knew at that point to follow the mine cart tracks; now imagine this situation where I think I know where I’m going only to get cut off by a dead-end – now that would be utterly horrifying. If the AI had the power to mix the levels up like this it would prevent memorising the map and having planned escape routes. It would also make for some epic fights back peddling though a horde to get to the exit.

Another thing that piqued my interest is the difficulty levels; the game starts you at the easiest of 4 and places a power requirement on the higher levels, which forces low powered characters to play at their designed level and not (either by accident or design) be a dead weight in a more challenging setting, preventing “boosting” of lower power levels. Also, it gives you something to strive towards, and personally I’m relishing the challenge of trying the higher difficulties out with a group of friends.

There are 5 characters each with 3 sub classes, and then each sub class has an opportunity to pick one of three talents for every 5th level up to 25. These choices can be changed at any time in the game so there is a lot of potential to mix your gameplay up, and if playing with friends, to mix and match your team to find your perfect composition.

For me the combat mechanics are good, nice and simple controls but which still offer a lot of depth, especially with the differences introduced with the varying weapon types - easy to learn and difficult to master. Melee weapons have a light/quick attack (L-Click) then a charged/power attack (Hold L-Click) and a block, (R-Click) which depending on the weapon type will have a set amount of blocks. Some will cleave, hitting large groups, some will high damage but hit less; find the style that suits you. Ranged weapons have a standard fire (L-Click) and alternate fire (R-Click) and with choices ranging from a close range flamethrower to a sniper-esque crossbow, you have plenty of options to choose from. Add in the ability to dodge and parry attacks and you have a simple but robust combat system.

Bots could do with a wee bit of refinement, the glaring problem I mentioned is the fact they value HP items over the tomes which occupy the same slot, meaning you can carry one or the other. Every-time the bots will drop a tomb to pick up a HP pot. This makes solo runs extremely frustrating when your trying to collect all the tombs and grimoires, I had to resort to trying to damage myself so they would use the health items on me then go back and get the tomb. I wouldn't mind some way to order them about. A simple one button radial menu with simple commands would suffice, "move", "defend", "attack" "pickup"

The game has or will have modding support, I haven't took the time to investigate, but I imagine this will add a whole new depth to the game as well hopefully implement some of the more common requests *cough* stats screen*cough*.

Expanding on the RPG elements, I would have loved to see the loot be part of the missions and not confined to a chest at the end of the game. I’m thinking along the lines of having enemies drop items or maybe having loot stashed in the chests scattered around the map. I know they wanted the game to be fast paced and getting people to stop and evaluate that new weapon mid mission would slow things down, but how rewarding would It be to be the last man standing going toe to toe with a Rat Orge to finally land that final hit and see a rare drop fall to the ground that you gleefully gather up before going to revive your teammates. Heck, even have them unusable until your back at base and identify them. As for people hording it, Diablo 3 and Path of exile handle this issue pretty well.