4/5 ★ – keelekingfisher's review of Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide.

Moving past one of the most ridiculous names for a game I’ve seen, this is a pretty great game. It’s a four-player horde shooter/hack-and-slash set in the apocalypse. And based on that you’re probably thinking ‘oh, like Left 4 Dead?’ Yeah, the game wears its inspiration on its sleeve, this is Left 4 Dead in a fantasy setting and with vastly enhanced melee combat. It is also incredibly immersive and atmospheric and genuinely has some of the best written and acted playable characters I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. In fact, one of my main complaints is that there are five awesomely-written characters with great chemistry but there’s only ever four in a level at once. I think the elephant in the room is that this game’s sequel has been out for four years now and yeah, this game’s multiplayer is pretty much dead. Unless you have some friends to play with, you’ll probably be playing with bots, but the bots aren’t that bad, I played through the whole thing on normal with bots and had some restarts, but it overall felt pretty playable. And I enjoyed going through the story, considering that the base game is set entirely in and around the city of Ubersreik they manage a lot of level variety, added to by the DLCs, which I considered to be pretty good for what they are. I love the hub level of the Red Moon Inn, and while there’s a good variety of weapons available, they’re pretty much entirely RNG dependent on which you get. Overall, I did really enjoy this game, but as I say, the multiplier is pretty much dead, so maybe look out for a sale to pick it up, and check out the base game before going for any DLC, because it really is more of the same.