Warhammer End Times – Vermintide is a first-person Hack & Slash game in where we must fight against an apocalyptic event brought forth by the rat-men known as Skaven. We have five heroes to choose from, each having their own quirks and use different equipment which we can gain from completing missions. It is first and foremost a coop game, so even if we play it solo, we are accompanied by three bots at all times. Before I go on, Vermintide’s inspiration is very much apparent, it borrows heavily from the Left 4 Dead series to the point it can be called a clone. If you’ve played those titles, you should feel relatively right at home here, and there is no need to know anything about the Warhammer universe beforehand.
Starting up the game, we will find ourselves in a quaint little pub that serves as the hub-world where you can select which missions to undertake, change gear, and read whatever lore you may have unlocked to name some of its functions. It is the perfect place to swing around your new weapons to get a feel for them as well so you don’t rush headfirst into battle with a sword you don’t know how to properly use. The main difference between gear will be the range, damage, amount of targets it can hit in one swing, and effects that may be exclusive to it. Each piece of loot is locked to a specific hero character meaning you can’t mix and match. It causes the characters to retain what makes them unique, but on the other hand, it is always a bummer to go through a difficult mission and get gear for a class you don’t use. You can equip a trinket in the pub to improve your chances to get loot for a specific person though it is still far from guaranteed.
What separates it the most from Left 4 Dead is its combat system. It is far more focused on melee fighting and slashing apart your foes. You can block, perform a quick dash back or to the sides, and charge up a heavy attack. Even if you are playing as a range based character you will have to get up close and personal as there is no way to stop the sheer amount of Skaven from reaching you, try as you may. These agile ratmen climb out of sewer grates and can climb over darn near anything. If you walk into an empty area, it can be downright frightening how quickly that can change as you are swarmed from all sides with no end in sight. One Skaven is hardly a threat to your hardened band of adventurers, but they are never alone and are relentless in their suicidal mad sprint towards you as to wear you down. In all that chaos it can be quite the challenge to see what is going and swinging your weapon around like a madman is encouraged at times since you can’t damage your allies with an unfortunately placed blow.
The Skaven come in different shapes and sizes, all containing different ideas as to how to take you down. Aside from the grunt enemies, you will also have a heavily armored rat that will only take significant damage from headshots. These are rather interesting foes to face and fighting them feels more like a duel than mashing the attack button to victory like so many others. A few other variants are the Packmaster which can grab a character and lead him/her away from the group as well as a Gutter Runner that pounces about the place and is capable of pinning down whoever it gets a hold of. Sound familiar? Well once you see the giant, heavy hitting Rat Ogre it becomes nearly comical how much it borrowed from Left 4 Dead’s formula. The only original special enemy they have is the chain-gun wielding Ratling Gunner. I don’t mean to knock Vermintide, but some more creativity in their lineup of Skaven would have gone a long way.
Your character always carries a single melee and ranged weapon of your choosing with three more slots being assigned to healing items, potions, and explosives that you can find later on. Every character can fight from a distance should the need be though it will use up your limited ammo so you can’t rely on it too heavily. The Bright Wizard is unique in that she can cast an unlimited amount of spells, just not in a short period of time. You need to let her fire cool down, or her magic will backfire and scorch her as well as nearby teammates on higher difficulties. If someone does manage to die, it is hardly the end of the world, they will spawn back in very soon, and you need only to untie them to get them back into the fray. Find yourself alone, however, and you will meet your end before long due to all the enemies that can instantly leave you in a defenseless state.
Each level has a different objective be they gathering food supplies then loading them into a wagon, defending a well from being poisoned or destroying a vital Skaven asset. They can range from a couple of minutes to a ludicrously long trek that will take up well over half an hour of your time. There is no way to know the length of a mission aside from asking someone or looking it up which can be slightly annoying. Whatever your objective may be, you can rest assured that you will be fighting for every inch of ground and that the place will soon be covered in the limbs of defeated Skaven. This is not a title where you can stop, heal up and catch your breath. It is imperative that you keep moving since no matter how much you kill, it will not even begin to dent nor deter the number of ratmen repeatedly swarming you. Not to mention you gain nothing for slaying your enemies aside from a brief time to prepare for their next onslaught.
Purchasing the base game will get you a hefty 13 levels to play that are very loosely connected to one another. There is a plot, but it is just a bare-bones excuse to send you on your way to the next mission. One thing I found really interesting about Vermintide is that only the host needs to own the DLC for everyone to play it, so if some of your friends or even a stranger own them, you can hop right in to experience it as well. It’s a smart way to keep the community from fracturing into those who own the DLC and those that merely have the base game. You will find no shortage of people to play with if none of your friends own this title. And that is definitely something to keep in mind; this is a coop game. While you can play it solo the AI are so wonky & unreliable that you may as well not even bother. Having bots on your team is more of a hindrance than anything as their path-finding occasionally goes bonkers, so they are prone to unhelpfully stand in one location as wee as pull some very counter-intuitive actions.
AI do teleport to your location once you get too far from them which does keep it from being game-breaking though it does hamper your fun. I highly suggest getting at least two other players into your game to keep the AI from weighing you down too much. A part of this can be blamed on the level design. It is way too complex for these bots to handle, leading to them either killing themselves or being unable to follow you far too often. With that being said, I’m quite a fan of having intricate levels instead of linear dashes to the finish. I do find the level design here to be a positive but if you are one of those people that enjoy playing Left 4 Dead on their own, you will likely regret purchasing this due to it. After you’ve completed every level, there is some more replay value in Mission Board found inside the pub that guarantees loot or other goodies for completing a task on a specific stage. You are also driven by the quest for ever more weapons to hoard and getting good enough to play on a higher difficulty setting, so you’ll have quite a bit of reasons to keep coming back for more.
Getting unwanted loot is a bummer, but they can be salvaged and turned into something new via the anvil in the pub. That doesn’t fix the annoying RNG which decides what you get, though it is a step in the right direction regardless. Despite how many times you find yourself returning to a level, their vistas never cease to be a feast for the eyes. The creative architecture and its small details to enhance the grim yet magical tone of the world truly gives this title some of the most impressive environments I’ve seen in recent memory. One can accidentally press the screenshot hotkey at any time and you’ll likely have captured something worthy of a wallpaper. Warhammer Vermintide is definitely a bizarre title forged from the ideas of another game but ultimately ends up doing enough of its own thing to be able to stand apart. It has its flaws, no doubt, though if you are in search of an enjoyable coop game, Vermintide may just be what you are looking for.
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