So, I got into the Darktide closed beta. It BARELY runs on my PC (and by that I mean it runs but I get about 10-15 fps). Doesn't run in Windows 7 so I had to reboot into Windows 10 for the first time in 2 years and then do all kinds of driver updates and whatnot. People with 3080ti cards are also reporting they can't get 60fps, so I'm hoping that as optimization comes, I'll get improvements as well.
Anyway, even at slideshow framerates, the game is fun. As expected, it is basically Vermintide 2 but in Warhammer 40k, with some tweaks. For example, my favorite special ability in Vermintide 2 (gain health when doing damage) is now a basic mechanic for every character. There's 2 kinds of health, health and "toughness" and you only lose health when you run out of toughness. Health is restored by health packs and healing stations as one would expect, but toughness is restored by killing enemies or just being in proximity to your teammates. The upshot here is, if all 4 of you cluster together and start swinging wide with melee weapons, you are a collective force of nature. I like that mechanic - it promotes teamwork and sticking together.
Right now there's only 4 classes (one for each character), but they plan to add more every quarter going forward. That sounds kinda disappointing given that V2 launched with 15 careers, but your class is highly customizable as you level up. There's also selectable origin story elements like home planet, type of childhood, and defining moment of your life but I'm not sure what bearing those have on gameplay, if any.
Grenades got a new interesting mechanic too, you can throw them overhand or underhand depending on whether you left or right click - overhand goes further and staggers if it hits somebody (even before it blows up) but bounces and skids, whereas underhand allows more precise placement. Oh, and the Ogryn just chucks the entire box the grenades come in, but until you unlock a special ability later, he forgets to pull the pins - which means he just does high impact damage to a single target (assuming he gets a direct hit).
I've only played two classes so far, the Veteran Marksman and the Ogryn, and so far I am thinking the Ogryn actually suits my playstyle better (though maybe it's just harder to get headshots at <15 fps). The ogryn can charge through groups of enemies, knocking them to the ground and staggering large enemies on impact. The Veteran can activate a kind of targeting mode for 4 seconds that brightly silhouettes elite enemies so he can more easily shoot/prioritize them - and given the grimdark ambiance, this does indeed make it MUCH easier to shoot them.
So far I haven't found a crafting mechanic, but completing missions and leveling up get you new weapons and cash to spend on buying new weapons.
At first a lot of people had problems with queues 10s of thousands of players long, but I haven't run into that once. There have been a few unfortunate crashes, but this is an early beta, after all.
