Warhammer: Vermintide 2 will add an versus mode, as announced at a PC game show four years ago. This time, however, it's for real: a post on Steam by Fatshark outlines the mission statement for a closed beta test of this mode.

"This is not the first time we are announcing Versus, the first public release was back in 2019. We did some small external testing with select players during that time, but we weren't completely satisfied with how things were running, so we put it on the shelf to mature a bit." Four years isn't "a little"; it's a college degree with change. But sooner or later.

It's going to be similar to Left 4 Dead's versus mode: "The gameplay is based on the Adventure Mode map, but divided into multiple sections. Heroes advance through sections of the map, completing objectives as they go. Each objective awards a certain number of points; Pactsworn's goal is to prevent the hero from earning points by killing or incapacitating them. At the end of a section, everyone switches sides.

It will be interesting to see how Fatshark handles the balancing issues of this damn game; whereas Left 4 Dead has zero progression, Fatshark's take on the horde shooter has a large amount of RPG mechanics. Talents, hero classes, etc. When I played Vermintide, I turned Kerrian into a boss-killing assassin and chipped away chunks of HP with a barrage of backstabs, a design nightmare in PvP.

These tests were actually confirmed in a developer stream last December, and the game's product owner stated that Fatshark had already conducted a small playtest. Nevertheless, given that the last playtest was conducted four years ago, it is not surprising that it is tolerable.

"We aim to take a co-creation approach with our players by opening closed testing to the majority of our registered players, observing them play, analyzing their feedback, and incorporating it into our development process as lessons learned. As of this writing, registration for the versus game is closed, but the studio states that this is "just one step in a multi-step process," and more testing will likely take place in the future.