PETER HOSKIN reviews Warhammer 40k- Darktide and The Callisto Protocol

2022-12-02

Call your mates, it’s time for a chainsword massacre! PETER HOSKIN reviews Warhammer 40,000 – Darktide and The Callisto Protocol

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (PC, with an Xbox version coming soon, £32.99 or included with Xbox Game Pass)

Verdict: Friends forever

Rating: ****

Can’t talk, gotta run — my mates and I are meeting up to… purge a demonic infestation from the scummier levels of a decaying, future megacity?

Welcome to Darktide. It’s the latest video game to be set in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe, which began — and still thrives — as paintable miniature models on people’s tabletops.

Like its setting, this game is pretty unrelenting in its ferocity. It dispatches you, a space convict with a point to prove, down to the planet of Atoma Prime, where you’ll use guns, mind-powers and even a chainsword — yes, a sword crossed with a chainsaw — to cut through a bunch of plague-ridden monsters.

Welcome to Darktide. It’s the latest video game to be set in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 universe

But, really, it’s all about spending some quality time with your friends. Much like the developer’s previous Vermintide games — which were set in the medieval-fantasy part of Games Workshop’s portfolio — Darktide unites you with three other players so you can do your chainswordin’ as a team. They could be people you know in real life. Or they might be randoms off the internet.

Either way, it’s tremendous fun, completing missions in this way. Each player occupies different roles — from the hulking enforcer to the nippy sharpshooter — and they all make a difference in battle. You’ll form bonds for life with people you’ll never meet, all because they healed you at just the right time.

It’s true that, at the moment, Darktide can feel a bit limited — eventually, its story, its mission types and its battlefield roles are going to expand. But I’m happy not to wait. There are, after all, friendships to be forged, and beasts to be slain, right now.

The Callisto Protocol (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £54.99)

Verdict: Bloody spectacle

Rating: ****

Yuk. And, indeed, eww. One of the features of The Callisto Protocol, promoted vigorously in the advance marketing, is its horribly gory dismemberment system. You can thwack each of the limbs off an advancing zombie and then thwack him in the head to seal the deal. Like I say, yuk.

And also: eek! The Callisto Protocol, if you hadn’t guessed it already, is a shockingly full-blooded horror game. You are a space convict with a point to prove — alongside Darktide, that’s something of a theme this week — who is trapped in a facility where dark things have taken place. Experiments. Madness. Carnage. Your mission is to survive.

Don’t be scared off just yet, though. I am a certified coward who couldn’t thwack the limbs off a Teletubby — actually, maybe I could manage a Teletubby — and yet I still pressed on through The Callisto Protocol and found much to admire. There’s a lot of spectacle in each sticky step of this game.

Yuk. And, indeed, eww. One of the features of The Callisto Protocol, promoted vigorously in the advance marketing, is its horribly gory dismemberment system

And also: eek! The Callisto Protocol, if you hadn’t guessed it already, is a shockingly full-blooded horror game

And spectacle really is the word. There’s something deeply cinematic about The Callisto Protocol — and not just because the main roles are occupied by digitised versions of recognisable, real-life actors.

It’s one of the most stunning-looking games that has ever taxed my PC setup. The sound design, all the gurgles and groans that you can hear in the background, is thrillingly realistic. Even the way your controller buzzes and palpitates in your hands is more impressive than 99 percent of other games manage.

Ironically, all this cutting-edge artistry results in a fairly old-fashioned experience. The Callisto Protocol is so cinematic, such a crafted experience, that it sometimes feels as though you’re not much more than a spectator, being guided from one wild set-piece to another. That’s great if you’re in the mood for it. Less so if you’re eager for intricate gameplay.

As for me? I was mostly in the mood. I’ve bludgeoned my way through hundreds of zombies — and worse — over the past week. Now bring on the Teletubbies.

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