Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is a hit, and it’s no surprise that players are having fun stomping and gunning through a horde of hungry Tyranids as one of the Emperor’s Angels. What I didn’t expect was to see the setting of Warhammer 40K through the eyes of people unfamiliar with the universe. Things that are very status quo to me, as a long-time fan of the franchise, are fascinating and engaging to new players. Take, for example, the tens of thousands of candles stacked around religious sites, or the biomechanical babies flying around on angel wings.
If you are one of those players who experience the Empire as Lieutenant Titus, I can recommend another game that really takes the unique gothic industrial horror of the far future to the extreme. No game captures the mood of 40K better than Dark Flooda cooperative horde shooter set in the Hive City Tertium, the capital of Atoma Prime.
In Dark Floodyou play as the Reject, a convict released from a penal colony and put to work as a laborer. The group consists of Ogryn, veterans of the Guard, fanatics, and psykers. Most of the Rejects’ backstories highlight the casual cruelty of the Imperium of Man. Some of the offenses for which people are imprisoned and sent to a penal colony are relatively understandable, such as arson. Others are shockingly mundane, such as giving someone a dirty look or saying something that comes across as mild criticism of the God-Emperor.
The Rejects become a necessary source of recruitment when the Moebian Sixth, a group of Imperial guards, go rogue and succumb to the influence of the plague god Nurgle. In Dark FloodGroups of four are sent out as task forces around Tertium with the task of achieving objectives and slowly driving the heretics out of the city.
I can’t praise developer Fatshark enough for the amount of time they put into making the hive city feel authentic. Each level is lovingly crafted, from the lower industrial levels of the city to the markets and apartment blocks to the noble quarters. The game is also played from the perspective of ordinary mortals. Titus can slash through obstacles and throw himself into hordes of enemies, but the Rejects are comparatively small and vulnerable.
As icing on the cake Jesper Kyd’s soundtrack is a jam-packed smasher that mixes classical and choral music with electronic and industrial beats. There’s nothing quite like the roar and recoil of a bolter, or shooting lightning from your fingers like Palpatine while pipe organs play wildly in the background. If you want to see the Empire up close, right down to lobotomized amputees built into computer equipment to serve as health stations, there’s no better way to see this world than a few rounds of Dark Flood.
