Reviews
[Review] Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a Gloriously Over-the-Top, Sword-Swinging, Spell-Slinging Romp
Has Fatshark created another Warhammer-flavored hit? Find out in our Vermintide 2 review for PS4.
For close to forty years Warhammer has continued to combine horror and fantasy, its now iconic setting becoming more than just a backdrop for the original tabletop wargame. Although heavily inspired by Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, there has always been a darker, more bombacious streak running throughout the Warhammer universe, no doubt due to the flare of its creators. Take one look at some of the artwork being produced for the game back in the 80s and you’d assume they were album covers for a slew of forgotten metal bands.
There’s definitely more of that flare in Vermintide 2 than its predecessor. Where the 2015 co-op slasher had you battling against endless swarms of the rodent-like Skaven, this time they’ve banded together with a Chaos Warband calling themselves the Rotbloods. Where the ratmen attack in droves and harness the destructive powers of Warpstone, these Chaos warriors pose a more physical threat, each one devoted to Nurgle, the dark god of pestilence and disease.
As Warhammer buffs will know, Vermintide is set during a cataclysmic era known as the End Times in which strange alliances are brokered. With large swathes of The Empire either in ruin or on the brink thereof, hope rests on the shoulders of five unlikely heroes. From Bardin the dwarf and the enigmatic wood elf, Kerillian, to Sienna the battle wizard, there are five playable characters as before, each with their own unique loadout of weapons and abilities.
At a glance, it may not look like much has changed since that first game. You’ll still spend most of your time mashing away at the attack buttons, turning dozens of incoming enemies into a motionless pile of bodies. There’s still that dual sense of morbid satisfaction and exhausting repetition in doing so, but at least Vermintide 2 has more gameplay variety on offer.
Buddying up with the Rotbloods means that you’ll be fighting both the nimble Skaven and their bulkier bedfellows across a wide spread of combat scenarios. Vermintide 2 is also more liberal and inventive when it comes to special and elite enemy types, occasionally throwing larger monsters such as Stormfiends, Bile Trolls, and Chaos Spawns into the mix. Bump up the difficulty, strap in with friends, and it becomes a much more engaging multiplayer experience.
The five main characters and how they gradually develop is something developer Fatshark has also improved. Each of them can now specialize in a certain career, unlocking powers and weapon types that hone their individual playstyles. For example, Bardin can either be a veteran ranger, a heavily armored “Ironbreaker”, or become a death-seeking dwarf slayer, each influencing his role in combat. Refinements made to Vermintide’s crafting add even more ways to customize though not everyone will be a fan of the sequel’s new loot system.
There’s now a much stronger link between character progression and the gear you unlock after each mission. Aside from stats such as weapon damage and other bonuses, they each have a power rating that, when combined, gives you a total score indicating which difficulty tiers you are able to run. The tougher the fight, the better your chances are at earning more advanced loot boxes and unlocks. However, their inherently random nature – paired with the slow trickle of experience points – means that progress in Vermintide 2 never comes fast.
Re-running the same missions over and over may not sound like fun yet this grind is a key part of co-op focused games and raid shooters, including Payday 2, Destiny, and just about any MMO you can think of. Fatshark at least tries to spice things up with what it calls “Heroic Deeds” – modified versions of each mission tied to a consumable item. Although these promise some of the best in-game rewards, you only have one shot and typically they’re much more challenging. As in the original game, tomes and grimoires are stashed throughout each stage, collecting them boosting your chances at better loot chests.
With Vermintide 2 having already launched on PC in early 2018, followed by an Xbox One release in summer, PlayStation fans may be late to the party though Fatshark’s work on this version is solid throughout. Even with the sheer number of enemies and effects on screen, Vermintide 2 never chugs while also being the best-looking Warhammer game to date. From sprawling cities and decrepit dungeons to the untamed woodland realm, every locale helps bring this popular fantasy world to life, albeit tinged with the gore and decay one might expect from The End Times.
If grindy loot-fests aren’t your idea of a good time then the Vermintide series really isn’t for you, even if you find its melee-focused combat more appealing than the run n’ gunning of co-op shooters. That said, Vermintide 2 is a great sequel, and although there are still some niggling issues Fatshark has yet to stamp out, it’s a gloriously over-the-top, sword-swinging, spell-slinging romp packed with content and a perfect representation of this much-loved setting.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 review code provided by the publisher for PS4.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is out now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
There’s an air of the improbable in every step of George A. Romero‘s career, something that began when his feature debut accidentally fell into the public domain and, along the way, became the most revered zombie movie of all time. There’s always been a scrappy energy to the way Romero worked, from Night of the Living Dead‘s more amateurish touches to the way he fought tooth and nail to cobble budgets together for much of his career. It makes him a filmmaker worth rooting for, and it’s easy to see why he’s grown so beloved.
The process of restoring Day of the Dead, Romero’s 1985 zombie classic, has that same air of the improbable. When the restorers working on Scream Factory’s beautiful new 4K glow-up of the film first set to work, they were delivered cans of film from the much-maligned 2008 remake of the same name, and had to keep searching to get all of the footage necessary to revive the original. A film initially shaped by budget constraints and Romero’s inventive spirit was once again fighting to stay alive. The restorers kept at it, found the footage they needed, and the result is a new horror essential, a 4K set that proves Romero was always worth rooting for, not just because he was a fighter, but because he had the talent to back it up.
Day of the Dead famously began as an epic, only to grow in intimacy as the budget shrank and Romero found he had to limit his locations and setpieces. Like Night of the Living Dead before it, Day then becomes a study in how to do a lot with a little, and my God does Romero do a lot. The film opens with its most expansive sequence, a helicopter flight over a desolate, zombie-ridden Florida, complete with alligators lurking on street corners and zombies piling out of buildings in states of advanced decay. Its heroes, including intrepid scientist Sarah (Lori Cardille), are looking for survivors, for hope. They find nothing and instead retreat back to their bunker, an underground labyrinth of salt mines and cinder blocks, wondering what to do until the end comes for them too.
If Night is a case study in how people behave in a crisis, Day is a case study in what happens when the crisis grows humdrum, when all that’s left to really squabble over is what the few remaining survivors will do with their time. Some, like the infamous Captain Rhodes (Joseph Pilato), shift into full-blown violent ideation towards others, while Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) throws himself into bloody work. In the middle of it all is Sarah, still clinging to the idea of a future even if she can’t see or feel it, and the film’s chief dramatic tension becomes not who will break first, but who will be left standing when the break eventually comes.
All of this serves to make Day especially bleak, even by Romero zombie film standards, not just because of the death surrounding the characters, but because of the grind of it all. It’s a gritty, dirty, shadowy movie, and I don’t know that I recognized quite how intensely focused a film it is stylistically until I saw this restoration. It’s not just sharpening the lines and correcting the colors after years of degradation; there’s a real texture to this movie that even Night and Dawn don’t really have, a sense of people scrounging around in the dirt for whatever they can find, and this restoration highlights that.
It might be Romero’s most visually developed film and compositionally ambitious movie, from the opening dream sequence to the final collapse of the bunker, and it’s all captured and enlivened by a careful, beautiful 4K upgrade.
If I had my druthers, this set would come with a few more brand-new bells and whistles, but the ones it does come with, including a set of lobby cards in the collector’s edition and new interviews with surviving cast and crew, are quite lovely. The cherry on top, though, is a new commentary track by critic and film historian Drew McWeeny and author Daniel Kraus, who has now completed two unfinished novels of Romero’s, including the epic The Living Dead. Few people working in the horror space right now know more about Romero than Kraus, but more importantly, few people understand Romero as Kraus does. He’s been inside the man’s imagination for so long that he’s imbued with a certain emotional intelligence about the films, and listening to him and McWeeny trade insights for the length of the film is a delight.
But what comes through most from this new restoration of Day of the Dead is just how much we still want to root for George A. Romero. To this day, he remains one of the great titans of independent cinema, a filmmaker who fought for every dollar on the budget, every creative decision, and every story for as long and as hard as he could. Day of the Dead‘s existence is proof of that, but seeing it with this fresh spotlight is a reminder of the artistry behind that independent spirit, and a celebration of one of horror’s greatest storytellers.
Day of the Dead is out now in a new Collector’s Edition 4K from Scream! Factory.
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