The Cheap-Ass Gaming Garbage Man Reviews: Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide
I push the lot of the fucking rats back with my shield, their stunned shrieks drowning out my struggled grunt. I swing my hammer back and forth and over the top, crushing the vermins' skulls as they wrestle to get up.
A sharp sound alerts me to the trouble my teammate is in. A gutter runner has pinned him down and is eviscerating him to death. I switch to my double barrel gun, blow two holes through the wretched skaven, and go to help revive my fallen friend.
A horn blares and the roar of the coming tide overwhelms my senses and I instinctively bring my shield back up to my chest. The vermintide has come.
Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide is a four-player co-op FPS in the vein of Left 4 Dead. You select between five different heroes and embark on select or random missions, all of which further the war against the Vermintide in the city of Ubersreik, which is as cramped and middle-agey as its hardcore German name infers.
I always picked the dwarf because I enjoyed his stature and demeanor. Plus he sings a really cool dwarven song when you drink at your hub, the Red Moon inn and its purveyor, Franz Lohner, who delves out the missions you need to conquer.
Now gameplay is mix of shooting, thrusting your weapon, and blocking attacks. It becomes almost rhythmic, the block, swing, swing, block that seems to push and thin the countless hordes of Skaven that you must push through. A gun or bow evens out killing distant vermin.
As you complete missions, you unlock more and progress through the Skaven siege on Ubersreik, taking you through its grimy streets, out to the fields, and under the tepid sewers.
Through it all, two things are constant. The never-ending droves of rat enemies and the four players than make up your team. Though they are both constant, only one is consistent.
As is usual in multiplayer games, the most fun and annoying thing is the other players you are fated to play with.Some are like an extension of your soul. Common spirits united for a common goal, to liberate skaven scum of their lives.
Other players are like if your 3-year-old got a hold of the controller. They go to far ahead, fall too far behind, just stand there and die, don’t help you when you die because you were trying to help their retarded ass, and are just generally selfish assholes.
The missions themselves are the true stars of this game. They go on and on and weave around and under and all over the fucking place! Though some are just run and gun, others have certain requirements to fulfill before the mission is complete, such as moving grain to the cart or black powder barrels to their respective places for detonation.
Yet they were all different and colorful while still drab, an overall delight to slaughter through, a variable Rat fuck and the Chocolate factory for the visual senses. I enjoyed wandering the level when the time permitted to find that random lore book page or some health potions to stock up on.
The RPG element is mostly transforming, exchanging, and upgrading the various weapons and trinkets you’ll earn from completed missions and the random ice toss with increased odds of getting rare loot from items found through the map.
You do level up, but that only seemed to affect slots available for trinkets and the level requirement for weapons; I didn’t notice any change to my kills or health as a result of my level.
Rating: 3 out of 5. I did enjoy the 20+ hours I spent in this game, but I didn’t think there was enough there to keep me playing any longer than that. While the action is brisk and tense, the overall structure and matchmaking keeps this game from being any better than above average.
While I recommend it for a week or weekend, don’t pay anything more than the current price of free in the Xbox Gold member games for December 2017. With Vermintide 2 on the horizon and looking to be a greatly expanded sequel, now is the perfect time to get your feet wet in this co-op trenched in rich lore and play Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide on the Xbox One!