Warhammer 40,000: Darktide already enlisted the dregs of the grimdark future’s society to fight back against the forces of Chaos, but the Hive Scum goes a step further by getting into bed with organised crime. It’s honestly a bit like a classic film noir set-up, with the gangsters of Tertium choosing to team up with the law and order of the Inquisitorial Warband to fight back against Chaos. And why? Just because the growing war has been really bad for business.
Put any images I’ve just conjured of Tommy guns, zoot suits and spats out of your mind, because the crime cartels of the 41st Millennium are much more punk rock than that. Literally, they look like old British punk rockers, slathered with full-body tattoos, with mohawks and spiked hair or… uh, just some really long sideburns, and uncomfortable-looking spiked leather outfits.
Darktide captures this look and feel perfectly, and there’s a bunch of new customisation options in the character creator to accommodate this. There’s new Hive Scum exclusive hairstyles, and you can dye hair different colours too, new tattoos, face paint and more besides. You also get to choose from four gangs to be aligned with – the Water Cartel, Iron Riders, Show, and Tread Lightlies. Necromunda fans will have a field day with all of this, or they would if they knew what a field was.
For as distinctive as the Hive Scum are compared to the rest of the Inquisitor’s gang, they play even more differently. It starts with the weaponry, and in true gang runner fashion, there’s absolutely no common sense applied to always running around with twinned blades and twinned automatic pistols. Heck, they even blast away with the guns in side grip half the time. This is very much the rule of cool, and plays into the indiscriminate firing style that the Hive Scum is really all about. It’s spray and pray more than precise aiming, and should be good for dealing with hordes of more basic enemies. For the melee side of things, you can also swap to a vicious looking bone saw, or a crowbar, which you can flip in hand to go from blunt-sided enemy-staggering sweeps to pointy end stabby stuff.
There’s a new Toxins damage type that comes with the Hive Scum. Alongside a concussive grenade and missile launcher, you can pick the chem grenade that is able to make a toxic gas cloud, and there’s also the needle pistol as a main gun option, which has been realised to deal this special type of damage. This actually bleeds through armour to affect tougher enemies, which is a really interesting twist, but it also acts a bit like the classic Virus Outbreak stratagem card from the 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K era. While it won’t be quite so devastating, the Toxin effect is able to spread between enemies, dealing damage over time throughout an onrushing horde.
As with all the other classes in the game, there’s a lengthy skill tree to work through as you level up, building up to playstyle defining ultimate abilities. the Desperado goes all in on Gun Fu-inspired shenanigans, making you impossible to hit with ranged attacks throughout and giving you unlimited ammo. The effect is prolonged by killing marked enemies, so you can keep it going for a good long time, though this time boost diminishes. On the other side is Rampage, which ramps up your melee damage, again prolonging the effect by hitting and killing enemies, making you a bit of a glass cannon.
The most interesting one, though, is the Stimm Supply ability, dropping a box that will spew out a cloud of enhancing drugs for you and your teammates – either a strong effect when within the cloud or to “Huff and Go”a bit reduced but sticking with people who’ve left the smog. This ties in with the Hive Scum’s second talent tree, which can be used to cook up their own custom stimms.
Essentially, this takes all the possibilities from the stimms other characters can find and use and turns them into a mix-and-match skill tree of their own. You add different components and buffs, and can either go all in on one effect category or blend them together. The most powerful aspects are that this is on a cooldown, making it as integral to the character as their weapons and ultimates, and that it’s instantly used right in the middle of the fray, just by hitting the button. The only thing you really need to balance is how strong to make the stimm, because the more powerful the effect, the longer the cooldown will be.
Hive Scum feels like it will be a really fun addition to explore through Darktide, and there’s great potential for this criminal class to interact with some of the more reputable parts of the Inquisitorial Warband when on missions together.
Speaking of which, Hive Scum will launch alongside a free update to Darktide that brings a new mission and narrative arc to the game. The No Man’s Land operation will show how this war against Chaos is evolving yet again, spilling out to the outskirts of the hive city, letting you see the dim grey skies and visit a sprawling trench network. Lovely.
Your mission here is to escort the tank of Knight Commander Dragor through to breach some stronghold walls as you battle down in the trenches. These are really wide and open trenches compared to WWI, but do lead to a rather linear feeling level thanks to the sharp 90º corners. One thing that old 40K fans will appreciate is the scenery around the main channel of battle, as you might see some iconic 3rd Edition plastic ruins rendered in all their polygonal glory in the periphery.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide looks to be going from strength to strength, with Fatshark having settled into a practised groove for producing new characters and meaningfully continuing the narrative of this co-op shooter through new levels and story arcs. As they arrive next week on 2nd December, Hive Scum and No Man’s Land are just the latest examples of this, both great visual and thematic changes of pace that I’m keen to see evolve further.
