Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Review: A Confident Co-op Shooter That Grew Into Seven Classes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide asks four players to hold a line against a planet that has already lost. Fatshark built it, published it, and shipped it for Microsoft Windows on 30 November 2022, then for Xbox Series X/S on 4 October 2023 and PlayStation 5 on 3 December 2024. Five outlets put the critic aggregate at 7.8/10. That number is close to right, and the reasons it isn’t higher are baked into the structure rather than the shooting.

Trailer, via Fatshark.

Tertium, Atoma Prime, and the Admonition

The setting is the hive city of Tertium on the industrial planet Atoma Prime. A heretical cult called the Admonition wants the planet, and the Inquisition wants it back. You are a Reject — a prisoner conscripted rather than recruited — and the game never lets you forget the arrangement is a stay of execution.

Dan Abnett and Matt Ward wrote the story, and it opens aboard the transport ship Tancred Bastion, carrying the leadership of the traitorous Moebian 6th Regiment. The 6th is corrupted by the Chaos God Nurgle. Elements of the regiment attack the ship, free their commander, Captain Biron Wolfer, and escape.

Your character pulls Explicator Orgustine Zola out of that mess. She spares you the death penalty and conscripts you into the service of her master, Inquisitor Grendyl. From there you work the Rogue Trader Mourningstar, earning trust from Interrogator Iven Rannick, Sergeant Major Vincent “Vin” Morrow, and Hadron Omega 7-7 of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Four Classes, Then Seven

At launch the game gave players four classes instead of Vermintide’s fixed cast: Veteran, Zealot, Ogryn, and Psyker. Sharpshooter and support, melee DPS, tank, ranged DPS. All four run a regenerating shield. You pick class, appearance, and gender yourself.

Fatshark kept adding. The Arbitrator arrived in June 2025 — an active-duty Imperial law enforcer rather than a conscripted prisoner, with a riot shield and a Cyber-Mastiff combat pet. The Hive Scum came in December 2025, representing the Conclave of criminal cartels on Atoma Prime, and it is the only class that dual-wields, including shivs and automatic pistols, and mixes custom combat stimulants. The Skitarii landed in June 2026, cyborg infantry of the Adeptus Mechanicus, carrying Mechanicus-crafted weapons and a Servo-Skull pet.

That is seven classes on a game that launched with four. It is the clearest sign of where Fatshark put its years.

The Formula Holds

Darktide reuses the shape of Warhammer: Vermintide 2. Four players cooperate against waves of AI-controlled enemies. Difficulty splits into two separate dials — one governs enemy count, the other governs damage taken. Progression runs through random rewards. Multiple missions can share one area, and some carry optional secondary objectives that pay out better loot.

The split difficulty is the smartest thing here. It lets a group tune pressure without simply cranking a single slider, and it makes the difference between a swarm problem and a survival problem legible. The optional objectives do quieter work: they turn a straight run into a decision about greed.

A Release Schedule Spread Over Four Years

Read that table as a business plan. PC got the game first, consoles followed at wide intervals, and the class additions kept arriving long after the last platform launch. A PlayStation owner buying in December 2024 received a game two years past its PC debut and still growing.

What the Mole Plot Does

The story does not stop at killing lieutenants. Wolfer has a spy aboard the Mourningstar, and the reports that spy sends cost the Inquisition squads of elite agents planetside. Interrogator Rannick runs the investigation into the mole while tracking your progress.

This is the best material in Darktide. The missions — claiming supply drops, investigating a daemonic plague, assassinating Wolfer’s key lieutenants — are the job. The mole is the reason the job keeps going wrong, and it gives a co-op shooter something most of them lack: a reason for the squad to distrust the room it returns to.

It also suits the fiction. You are a prisoner doing dangerous work for people who may be selling you out. The Admonition is the enemy you can shoot. The traitor on your own ship is the one you cannot.

Where It Falls Short

The four launch classes carry the game, and the three that followed are additions rather than repairs. A player who wants the Arbitrator’s riot shield, the Hive Scum’s dual-wield, or the Skitarii’s Servo-Skull is buying into content that arrived years after the Windows release, on a schedule that made the PlayStation 5 version the last to the table.

The Vermintide 2 formula is a foundation, not a reinvention. Four players, waves, random loot — Darktide executes it cleanly and does not push past it.

The 7.8 is fair. Darktide is a confident, well-built co-op shooter with a story that gives its violence a reason, and a class roster that grew into something genuinely varied. It is not a game that changed the genre, and it never claimed to be. What it does, it does well.

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