Vermintide, aka Left 4 Rat

Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide, like the Left 4 Dead series, is a first person shooter with focus on multiplayer, where up to 4 heroes fight horde monsters and a few specialized enemies. It is unfortunate that the Skaven, the rat-men, are not playable unlike the zombies in Left 4 Dead, but fans hope that this will be implemented in the game someday. 

At first, Vermintide feels harder to play than Left 4 Dead. This is perhaps because heroes who do not carry a strong bow or gun will easily fall prey to the Ratling Gunner, a Skaven with a heavy machine gun. Anyone who is exposed to his gun for a few seconds will go down, and he should only be encountered if there is cover nearby. The Ratling Gunner is a unique enemy who has no counterpart in the Left 4 Dead series – because zombies do not carry guns – and his range is absolutely fatal. 

They seek to surround us! Source.

 

An effective way of dealing with the Ratling Gunner is playing as the Wood Elf, who can choose from several hard-hitting bows. Ultimately, every hero can have a far-ranged weapon, but the heroes are different insofar as some have access to weapons that excel in a certain category but in a different category, their weapons will just not be as good as others’. For cutting through great amounts of Skaven, the witch hunter is pretty good, but the Wood Elf’s dagger is even faster. But the Wood Elf hardly gets any heavy melee weapons, which make battles against heavily armoured Stormvermin a lot easier once they and their halberds come close. A way of dealing with them, for example, is playing as the Imperial Soldier, who uses the deadliest shotguns in the game.

However, there is no necessity to strictly confine oneself to a role, and oftentimes two marksmen make a better team than one among a team of melee specialists. For my purposes, the Witch Hunter’s sword is fast enough, and his crossbow makes a perfect addition if the wood elf misses his aim. Once a level is completed, dice are cast and players will receive a random weapon or other item, and the higher the difficulty setting, the better the reward. If you are not happy with your reward, you can for example collect items of the same quality and melt them down to create a new one. At first, the outcome seems to be absolutely random, but you can affect it: Choose three ranged weapons and add two random weapons, and you are likely to get a ranged weapon.

How to beat the Tank, eh, Rat Ogre.

The looting system is one central motivating aspect that will keep you playing. Vermintide is great fun and it looks like Fatshark is determined to keep the game interesting by adding new content every now and again. Vermintide is perfect for Warhammer lovers: The developers have invested a lot of care and detail in the story, which is presented much more palpable than the cryptic hints in Left 4 Dead. The characters, hissing sarcastic comments at the rat-men and each other, seem a lot livelier than Left 4 Dead’s depressive misanthropes. However, I cannot honestly say that it is notoriously better than the Left 4 Dead series, because playing as a zombie is just insanely evil fun. Thanks to the Warhammer franchise, the potential for expanding the game seems endless. A taste of this soon can be discovered in the upcoming second DLC, Schlüsselschloss. It features a new map and maybe, just maybe, Chaos Warriors or undead as a new enemy faction. I feel I need to stress this point: If any of these became playable, (which is not to be expected as of now,) Vermintide would have it all. 

If you like Left 4 Dead but feel you need a change, you should definitely consider traveling to Ubersreik and beating up some rat-men!