Vermintide – First Time Review

Chatting with some friends on Discord I learned of a game that recently went free on Steam for a few days called Warhammer – End Times: Vermintide. Since it was still free at the time I downloaded it, played it with friends, and killed a bunch of rat humanoids in a horde-based survival adventure. And it was awesome! Having loved games such as Left 4 Dead I could definitely see similarities to the former with this new game with its unique hero and enemy classes, huge swarms of enemies, and great use of promoting teamwork.

The Start

Let’s start off this review with the first thing the player gets when they boot up the game: The introduction video. The dark music, the display of all the characters, the feeling of looming destruction the narration and the action brings to the viewer, all combined with great visuals and graphics made it feel enthralling. It made me excited to step into the shoes of these heroes in their stand against the endless masses of Skaven, the rat-like enemies of the game. Again, it reminded me a lot of the intro for Left 4 Dead, one of my favorite coop games of all time. It too had memorable characters, a sense of doom, and dangerous situations combined with great graphics during that time.

Then I walked into the safehouse and it’s pretty cool. It’s a bar, hidden by magic, with a forge, chest inventory, and just the right things to make it look disheveled and abandoned. Then I joined my friend in a lobby and it was the same place. But then came the alcohol. We had our characters each drink a tankard of ale and then the fun began! Before we fought the countless number of Skaven we had our characters get into a drunken brawl. In the end, though I put up a good fight as a Dwarven ranger, I lost to my friend’s tall soldier character. But the fact I could have a drunken fight to pass the time in the hub room was just absolutely hilarious and enjoyable. I knew I was going to have fun with this game.

The First Time

When I got into my first mission I had one friend with me. Another pal was going to join us after the game finished downloading, but this first mission would be just the two of us. My friend had played the game before, but like me had not experienced much of the game. Having played hours upon hours of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 (around 388 hours in total), I had a strong sense to stay back, watch my surroundings, then try to snipe out enemies before engaging them in melee combat. But as I was done with the first area I went ahead a bit and turned around to tell my friend to catch up. As I was doing this I was suddenly hooked by a large rat and jumped in my seat, crying for help into my microphone as I was being dragged away by this frightening creature. I was saved quickly, but with the rat’s hook incapacitating me and with the dramatic, fear-inducing music playing during my moments of helplessness, that incident left my shocked! From then on I kept myself visible and close to my companions as we continued forward.

After that incident the dangers increased. Not only was it my first time doing this mission, but the rest of the special classes began to attack us. Stormvermin, though I found easy to eliminate singly, started to come in groups of six, immediately getting my friend and I to get close for the brawl. The Gutter Runner, which is an assassin class of enemy that can pin a person to the ground and ravage them with huge arm blades, was a terrifying surprise with it’s crazy fast agility and jumping speed. Then came the Tank, I mean the Rat Ogre. We first called this super unit a "Tank" because it reminded us a lot like Left 4 Dead’s Tank zombie miniboss. This one though felt tougher to kill. While it lacks a long range attack it did have faster movement speed and endurance. We were fighting a goliath of a rat and when it finally came crashing down we felt so victorious.

At the very climax of the mission we had to hold out on an attack after sounding an alarm for village below. It was a good fight, with Skaven coming from every possible entrance, though with some very open and long descents that made picking them off or leaving a pool of fire for them to crawl into. Even so there were so many of them it felt like a fight for survival. Once that long battle was done we took an elevator that broke and fell rapidly to the ground half-way through, leading us to the final run to the escape. With the mission done I got my final bit of basic game knowledge of the game with the loot system. With a roll of some dies we both earned loot based on how many dies rolled with a symbol up. The more symbols, the better the loot. I got myself a magical mace with my lame roll, but finding out I could improve my chances next time by finding dice throughout the map was good to hear. And that was the first mission.

Analysis of the Game

The characters felt really alive in this game, constantly chatting and bickering with each other in conversations that felt fitting in whatever situations they’re in. For example, the elf hero talks to the dwarf hero about coming to visit her home when this whole mission to stop the Skaven is done and the dwarf is rather surprised an elf would propose such a suggestion. It’s not a mean or sarcastic suggestion, it felt genuine, but even so they have a few arguments in between. But that’s only between two characters and there are five total classes available and only four player slots, so the conversations I keep getting are enjoyable. Of course they don’t chat about easy stuff during hardcore combat, but they even then they still chat with one another! I love video games that do that, it makes me want to work with/ as these characters even more.

With the enemies players have to face, you got work with these characters well. Not only are there multiple types of normal enemies, but there’s a wide variety of special units. There’s the armored Stormvermin, the big-gun toting Ratling Gunner, the gas bomb throwing Poison Wind Globadier, the stealthy Gutter Runner, the ensnaring Pack Master, and the nightmarishly monstrous Rat Ogre. All of them have abilities that mess with the team and force them to work together. Very often these specials should be top priority on what to kill first, especially when they can bring heavy damage to the team.

The Gutter Runner and Pack Master especially are a threat to loners as the Pack Master can incapacitate a lone player and slowly drag even farther from the group and the Gutter Runner can pin a player to the ground, ravaging them with massive arm blades! If it was just the Gutter Runner I’m sure people wouldn’t be as scared, but with two of these incapacitators there you constantly have to be on your guard and make sure everyone can see one another. This make teamwork even more essential to a successful playthrough.

Now a problem I did have during my playthroughs is that the game is that the optimization is not the best out there. I was warned this by my friends before we started my first mission, but it still surprised me. That probably my overconfidence with my computer since I have a high-grade graphics card, RAM sticks, and power supply, but even with these I experienced a few frame-rate issues, even on normal settings. My computer can handle Overwatch at its highest graphic settings, yet there are frame rate problems with Vermintide? It’s definitely not unplayable-bad, but the fluctuations between 60fps and 30fps in combat can throw one off.

But even with this problem, there are some great visuals in the game. The textures are fitting, the environments creative and full of different ways to proceed through missions, and great quality and animations that are expressive, both for heroes and enemies. It’s been so long since I’ve seen enemies die so… realistically. I mean they don’t just drop dead or fall backwards, you can see them at times grab their throats or wounds as blood seeps out of their bodies and seeing their limits cut off gave a great level of gore and detail to the combat. That level of dying and animation outdoes Left 4 Dead’s deaths, where they just fly backwards a little bit or just drop dead. I can see they really put a lot of effort into making this game feel alive.

On a final note, several missions into this game I learned more about the loot dies and certain collectables that improve the loot drops. Firstly extra loot dice can be in chests found throughout the missions for a role in the end loot drop, but there are also books that increase the chances of successful dice rolls. There are tomes and grimoires, both taking up the health pack slot of a character. While the tomes do nothing beyond that, the grimoires decrease the total amount of health all players have being held, but offer more successful die rolls in the loot drop. So if people want to get better chances at better loot they have to go exploring and sometimes carry items that effect the whole team, making teamwork more important for this game.

Ending Thoughts

I’ve highly enjoyed playing this game and hope to play it more with friends in the near future. The bad optimization does hurt my scoring of it because with all its great features and play-ability the frame rate is just bonkers at times and can remove the emergence of Vermintide. It’s that problem that really makes me just keeps me from giving it a higher score. It still gets a high score for its fun characters, intense action, and great need to work as a team, but the optimization could be better. I know I kept mentioning how it felt similar to Left 4 Dead, but it’s fresh enough to feel new and engaging to gamers. For a first review of the game, I give Warhammer – End Times: Vermintide an 8 out of 10!

Should You Get It?

I would say if you love games such as Left 4 Dead or any horde-based survival game, then definitely get Vermintide when it’s on sale. The chances of another free to play week for this game in the near future is low, but with Christmas soon coming up it’ll definitely return to 75% off. For 30 USD it could be worth it, but getting it on a good sale makes it such a better deal. Be warned though that it’s over 35 GB of space, so be sure to have a big hard drive before purchasing.