Whether or not you approve of a review or not, it’s an incontrovertible fact that people will do as they wish when there are no rules enforced on such things. That said, a review requires a point of view and conditions of judgement, points that the product is effectively scored on. Frequently the points upon which people review things differ, but so long as precisely the points used as the metric are clearly articulated within, then the review has merit. No bomb, no complaints, just one opinion among many.
Now when I review a game, the overall question in my mind is ‘in the state this is in, do I recommend this game to my friends?’. My overall feeling on that score, regarding Darktide, is NO. I would have to make too many excuses and there is too much to wait and see about to be worth a recommendation.
The points I laid out in my negative review all reflect that the game is simply not ready for a full release and it is not a complete product yet. It MIGHT become so in future, but there is no current clear roadmap, promise or even stated intention of Fatshark being willing to work on this until it is made right. The fact that they keep saying “we’re all such Warhammer fanatics here!” says stuff about their hobby time, but is not a commitment to ensuring this game realizes its full potential.
Mine is a negative review and will remain so until it’s in a state where I would be willing to pay money for it and recommend my friends do the same without feeling I would need to explain ‘yeah, I know, but…’ over every other system and mechanic in-game right now.
For full transparency - I refunded the game the day after release. A friend who wanted someone to play with then bought it for me for Christmas. I’ve significant time in the game with my group but really little of it with random groups. That should say quite a lot, really. The game has potential, the bones of something great, but the skin and muscle they’ve put on to move the skeleton around is barely there, doesn’t fit and is hairy in all the wrong places. If I didn’t think there was a chance I wouldn’t be posting here, complaining, highlighting issues, battling the parade of apologists for this release state. And I am happy to say that I suspect the majority of people still posting here feel the same.
I’m loving the game, I left a negative review, it isn’t “review bombing” its an accurate assessment of where the game is. Who told you vermintide players are buying and negatively reviewing the game out of spite? that’s frankly ridiculous.
Ridiculous. I have a tolerance of garbage beyond the average person because I thirst for games and content. Just because I’m ok with continuing to put myself through a crap experience, doesn’t mean I’m ok with selling it to other people.
Reviews are to inform other players of your experience, or your opinion on purchasing the game, not to serve your own needs.
As many have stated. The core gameplay is good (buggy, but acceptable for a new game) but so many things around it are bad and were done much better in their previous games.
The one thing I disagree with people on is the RNG shop. I much prefer it to the RNG loot boxes we had in VT2. Not just by a little. By a lot. The thing is that since we don’t have crafting there is absolutely no way to know how the systems tie together to form a whole. In VT2, the loot boxes were just crafting mats more or less. Annoying crafting mats since you had to sit and open chests and deconstruct weapons (except if you happened to roll the red one you wanted). To me, the shop is much better and just getting money and mats in missions is far superior and a lesser waste of my time.
With that said. I don’t even bother with gear at all since crafting is not there. I cannot tell, nor can anyone else, what the gear situation will be like when the game is actually finished. For now, I play with friends, level alts, and hope that the game will be finished before I tire of the complete lack of end-game content.
I’m also sick and tired of devs releasing unfinished games. I’ve heard that CDPR and Hello Games finally got their act together, but I just can’t be bothered with companies that cannot be bothered with shipping finished games, or with companies that crunch their devs. Darktide is an exception for the time being because I really like the gameplay, and they don’t seem to be crunching their devs (my principles are clearly not absolute).
The game should have had another half year in the oven at least. It never should have shipped, almost everything around the missions in VT2 is better, and this is why I left a negative review.
At the very least, VT2 loot boxes could drop unique cosmetics at launch. The drop rate was atrocious, but at least there were cosmetics earn-able through game-play before okris challenges came in.
It was just hats, they were awful, there where maybe 2 per class on release, it was not really worthwhile. More where added over time, but there was not much of a variety until seasons started.
Full skins that changed character appearance did not come out until much later.
