My Life As A Gamer: Darktide, or "Left 4 Heresy"

Microsoft did their not-E3 event today. Of all the games revealed, this one caught my eye.

Let me sum this up: it's a 40K skin on Left 4 Dead, just like Vermintide is the Fantasy reskin.

You're playing Inquisitorial acolytes sent to investigate a Hive World that went dark. Four man team. Reveal shows an advanced Nurgle incursion, which is how we get the very obvious L4D reskin observation. Fast zombies as base mobs, with Special Undead being various Champion-level units. Those Lasguns you see won't be little more than flashlights; we'll see them pop mobs like balloons as the lore indicates they do, and I expect the plasma gun to be fantastic-but-risky in a way you won't see in Space Marine or Deathwing. Expect grenades to appear, and we'll see if Corruption is a mechanic or not.

We shouldn't be surprised at this. 40K does need a steady tide of videogame releases to act as a funnel into the tabletop hobby and maintain brand awareness outside of the core customer base, just as Fantasy does, and I'm not the only one to have expected something like this since the first Vermintide release. I'm just glad that they did it, and I hope that what they did was focus on execution and polish since they clearly didn't bother to spend time on premise or structure- this is as simple a premise as it gets, and copying L4D's structure is practically free.

I hope we see some gameplay soon, and that the inevitable PC release--XBox, remember--doesn't have punishing requirements.

P.S.: Campaign remains at 45% to goal as of this post. Spread the word, especially the participation Perks, and where you can back it. Remember that catching up is included if you go in for a book; you get "Reavers" digitally automatically. More revealed once we hit the goal.