While I can’t explain the Warhammer lore beyond the Adeptus Astartes like I can for the Star Wars Lore I’m still quite intrigued by the lore that the universe offers. That being said I will still gladly try a game in the universe on the condition that it lets me go deeper into the stories that this world has to tell, especially if it’s free.
I never got a chance to play the first Vermintide since I didn’t think it would fit into my interests but I did hear a lot of good things about it like it’s graphics, it’s proper use of cores, the granularity of the settings it used and so forth so when I got a chance to play the sequel I was ecstatic to say the least especially since a lot of people compared it to Left 4 Dead which I really enjoyed so on with my first impressions of the game.
Do remember that these are just the beta impressions and not a review so while all the parts that make up the standard review are here they do not give or take from the score since there isn’t one.
Story:
Each level has a quick synopsis of why you’re doing what you’re doing but that’s about it. I haven’t really seen anything explaining who you are or what you’re doing but I since it directly continues the previous Vermintide I guess I need to play that.
Sound:
The sound isn’t really worth mentioning since it seems like a very default sound track, I find nothing that really makes it stand out. It’s your standard medieval score and unlike Doom or Hotline Miami’s soundtrack it doesn’t move you, it’s there but it’s so dull you would rather not listen to it.
Even the slashing noise, the box opening sound and most other sounds the game use seems to have come from a Humble Bundle deal on sound effects.
Let’s just call it run of the mill.
Graphics:
HOLY CRAP, the graphics are beautiful! My expression can be summed up to the first time you saw Pamela Anderson in the 90’s.
The world graphics are unreal, it’s the first time I have awed at an engine since the first time I was the X-Ray or Crytek engines. Everything in the world is incredibly detailed even on medium graphics. The grass looks like it has a life of its own, the sun and solar lights boggle the mind. Everything in the world looks amazing if you take the effort to look at it.
The characters too are really well detailed, you can see moving fur on the opposing enemy rats. The swords gets covered in blood and when you are moving fast there is a partial motion blur which is just perfect. My favorite is the blood splatter on the camera as you play which looks like it comes from the last the cut up enemy.
The main problem is that the graphics show off this pure amazing skill but then cut everything to brown because the AAA industry doesn’t like other colors but sometimes they are nice enough to use black and white which helps even less.
Gameplay:
I’m not impressed by the gameplay. This is because it feels like a zombie horde game with different looking zombies.
There are multiple classes in Vermintide 2 and each class offers a unique passive ability such as more ammo and an ability that you can activate like invisibility when a special bar is full but the problem is that they don’t offer vastly different gameplay styles, you will still find yourself running at the hordes of vermin with your sword and that is a pure let down. The game boils down to rapidly hitting the left mouse button to hit your sword and that is what you will spend most of your time doing. Each game is 4 of the 5 classes playing together to try to finish the level and I want to ask is what did the last class do to be banned from this playthrough?
The A.I. Director in Left 4 Dead used to make the levels different on each play through but in Vermintide 2 I find myself expecting the horde at set intervals and finding that I’m usually right. It seems that the only thing that changes occasionally are the rare enemies but you will still be chased by the horde at the same places which makes the game a pattern so you can plan out attacks. The bosses too are at the same intervals.
While there are cool things like your sword bouncing off the shields of enemies it doesn’t really add much since most of the time you leap into the middle of a fight and just slash till they are all dead. Even the “see other players through walls” mechanic is ripped straight from Left 4 Dead along with locations of health and specials like bombs.
The levels while looking incredibly open are actually very linear, they look like they could have 10 routes but only have one.
Conclusion:
All in all: while I would like to say good things about Vermintide 2 I just can’t help that it is trying to fill a gap that solely exists because Valve doesn’t like the number 3 and hasn’t given us Left 4 Dead 3. To add to confusion I don’t know if Vermintide 2 is going to let us host our own servers since it has loot boxes and leveling so it could be shut down whenever the developer/publisher wants and that makes me uneasy.
I probably won’t buy it unless I can buy 4 copies for a good price within a year of its release so that me and 3 friends can play COOP but if that’s the case I would rather get 4 copies of Left 4 Dead 2.
Screenshots are in a massive gallery this time, lower resolution than normal since the game hates my RX 480 and I can’t get rid of the debug info and FPS:
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