Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Review
There are few things quite as satisfying as the feeling of popping a ratman’s head like a grape with a giant war hammer. Or cutting that head clean off with an ax, or possibly unloading a full revolver clip into it, or just burning the whole thing to a crisp. The truth is, just about every one of the multitude of ways Warhammer Vermintide 2 gives you and your co-op team to kill your enemies is punchy, powerful, and a whole lot of fun.
Vermintide 2 (and its
predecessor) wears its Left 4 Dead inspiration on its sleeve, but it’s
by no means a carbon copy of Valve’s co-op zombie FPS. It’s a similar
structure: four players fight their way through a linear level filled
with hordes of rat-like skaven and decomposing Chaos soldiers, with some
variety coming from some Elite enemies that will grab your allies with
hooks, throw poison smoke, or even fire machine guns. But Vermintide 2
has out-of-match progression with levels to earn, skill points to
assign, and lots of new loot to collect - even if that loot is largely
boring.
When you make contact with a mace or a
sword and an enemy’s face, you can practically feel it reverberate in
your bones - especially with the slow and heavy two-handed hammers
available. But nearly every melee weapon hits hard, with tons of
feedback in the form of forceful sound effects and staggered reactions
from your enemy. If its a killing blow, blunt weapons send the now-limp
body flying, while bladed options instead slice through heads, limbs,
torsos, and tails - it’s a display that’s even more spectacular when
cutting through groups of skaven with wide-cleaving weapons.
Calling in the Exterminators
The
dozens of weapons available are varied and balanced enough that each
one feels different. The flail is a favorite of mine because it’s faster
than most other blunt weapons and still has a cleave effect, but I
rarely use hammers because of their slower swing – but both can be
effective in the right hands. Picking one weapon over another feels like
a matter of preference, not the temptation of raw power.
That
said, the combat tactics in Vermintide 2 aren’t quite as deep as its
weapon pool. You can aim for the head to deal more damage, use a slower
but stronger heavy attack, block, and dodge a short distance, but that’s
about all the nuance there is. Most fights are matter of circling
hordes of baddies, swinging at the head and avoiding hits. The higher
difficulty levels can be extremely challenging and do require tight,
coordinated teamwork to survive, but it’s still simple, hack-n-slash fun
at its core. That’s perfectly okay as long as you aren’t expecting the
strategic nuance of something like Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.
The Elite enemies also shake things up a
bit, and there are a surprising number of different ones you can
encounter. Many of them, like the Hook Rat, Assassin, and Leech, can
single out isolated allies, forcing you to stick together. Others, like
the Rattling Gunner or poison-throwing Globadiers can deal out tons of
damage in a large area, pushing you to move around the battlefield. The
scariest of all are the enormous Elites, like the Rat Ogre and the Spawn
of Chaos, which act as smaller boss fights in the middle of a level and
demand your full team’s attention. Even though all of these Elites are
still killed by pouring damage into them, they are fun (and often
frighteningly difficult) hurdles between hacking at the weaker hordes
Related Article: https://gotypicks.blogspot.com/2017/09/2017-game-of-year.html
Comments
Post a Comment