After what feels like a very long wait, co-op rat smasher Vermintide 2 now has a PlayStation 4 release date: 18th December. That's just one month away!

Before that, you can try the game on PlayStation 4 via a closed beta if you pre-order Vermintide 2's Ultimate Edition from the PlayStation Store. Doing so will also grant you four days early access to the full game before it launches, alongside some other gubbins.

So far, it seems like the only way to access the closed beta is to put your money down for the game's 45 Ultimate Edition. This also contains extra skins, portrait frames and a keep statue, as well as its two DLCs.

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Co-op rat smasher Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is returning to its roots for Back to Ubersreik, a nostalgia-filled pack of maps fans of the series will likely remember.

Coming in December priced 7/€8/$10, the DLC is meant as a homecoming for our heroes across a trio of Vermintide 1 maps, including fan-favourite Horn of Magnus. There's a "secret surprise" in there too.

Here's a trailer:

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Developer Fatshark's excellent four-player co-operative rat-smasher Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is currently free to play on Steam, and will remain so until Monday, September 3rd.

Vermintide 2, for the uninitiated, plays out a little like Valve's classic Left 4 Dead series, albeit with particularly brutal combat, and a bunch of horrifyingly malevolent rat people to maim instead of zombies.

In Vermintide, teams of four players - choosing from one of five distinct heroes, each offering three possible "career" classes - battle it out in a relentless assault of sword swings, axe plunges, whistling arrows, magic, and bullets. However, careful coordination is required to fend off the Skaven hordes, scour stages for reward-boosting items, and live to see another day.

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The first additional downloadable content for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 has been announced. It's called Shadows over Bogenhafen and will be released 28th August on PC and Xbox One. Vermintide 2 isn't yet available on PS4 but will be at some point later this year.

There's not much known about Shadows over Bogenhafen yet - and the trailer barely reveals anything - except it will apparently, according to a press release, test heroes like never before. The baddie behind the mayhem is Plague Lord Nurgle, also known as Grandfather Nurgle (and a string of other names).

Bogenhafen, in the world of Warhammer, is a market town. Presumably it's now in rather a bad situation you will have to clear up.

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Microsoft has announced some more games coming to Xbox Game Pass - and it's a tidy list of titles.

At E3, Microsoft announced Fallout 4, The Division and The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited would come to Microsoft's Netflix-style subscription service.

Also coming in July are Warhammer: Vermintide 2, DiRT 4 and Zombie Army Trilogy.

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Warhammer: Vermintide 2 will launch for Xbox One on 11th July, developer Fatshark has announced, with an Xbox Insider open beta available from today.

Vermintide 2 will also be an Xbox Game Pass game, so if you pay the 8 monthly sub, or regional equivalent, you'll be able to play the game from 11th July for free.

But what about PlayStation 4? "Yes, the PS4 version is coming," a Fatshark spokesperson told me this morning. "We don't have a date for it yet, but will communicate that soon. We don't expect it to be too far away, but we want to do one system at a time to be able to maintain the highest quality of the releases."

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Video games aren't that good at friends. Oh sure, they can be great for making them. Various multiplayer games have facilitated very real and valid friendships, but the games themselves scarcely contain an ounce of the same stuff in their characters. Bonds of friendship in-game are generally left to barks and grunts of command. Vermintide 2, despite taking place in the grimmest, darkest fantasy land there is, somehow manages the impossible and gives us a party of unlikely heroes whose bond feels terribly sincere.

Vermintide 2 does a great job of forcing players to work together no matter which hero you choose to play as. No weapon or class reigns supreme and only a combination will see you survive the hordes of rat-men. This isn't the first co-op game to, well, encourage cooperation. What makes it special though, what makes it so memorable and pleasant on every visit is the banter between characters.

In the fiction of Warhammer pretty much all these characters should be at odds with each other, forced only by circumstance to work together. The first game saw them working out the kinks in their relationship, but this sequel shows them having bonded, veterans of the perpetual apocalypse. Snarky remarks and in-jokes linger, they rib each other plenty as all good friends do. Equally though, they constantly throw compliments to each other. Hearing "Look at the elf go!" from the party's witch as you tear into a horde of baddies is the sincere encouragement that puts a little smile on your face.

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A sizeable new update for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 has been released by developer Fatshark, aimed at fixing a number of issues with the game's difficulty.

The patch - 1.0.5, for those keeping count - includes buffs for all 15 of the game's career paths, making each playable hero more powerful against the game's Skaven and Chaos enemies. The individual hero tweaks are too numerous to list here, but largely revolve around increasing the percentage outputs of damage buffs, while also boosting abilities aimed at damage reduction.

A few changes have also been made to Vermintide 2's Chaos enemies - Marauders have had their cleave hit mass reduced by 25 per cent, meaning they block less incoming damage to adjacent enemies; Blightstormer and Lifeleech Sorcerers have been given a headshot hitzone; and Blightstormers have had their health pools shrunk down by a third.

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The freshly reviewed - and Recommended - Warhammer: Vermintide 2 has raced out of the gate, selling more than 500,000 copies on PC in less than a week. It was only released Thursday, 8th March.

"We are proud and happy that gamers worldwide have taken Warhammer: Vermintide 2 to their hearts," said Martin Wahlund, CEO of developer Fatshark. "500,000 games sold was a milestone that we had, but not less than a week after release."

Vermintide will come to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and we hope this year, although when exactly hasn't been announced. Betas will be available in the spring, Fatshark said.

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When it comes to tinkering with a game like Vermintide, it's very easy to muddle what made the original work - the video game equivalent of messing with the thermostat rather than putting another jumper on. I remember feeling that way when Left 4 Dead 2 launched; I loved the first game, but there was something about the sequel that felt off. I had issues with the pacing, chiefly, but there was something else about the experience that didn't quite work, like it had lost some essential part of what made it great along the way.

A lot of changes, additions and alterations have been ushered in for Vermintide 2 (the preposterously long name Warhammer: The End Times - Vermintide has been sensibly shortened to Warhammer: Vermintide 2, for one thing) and they combine to make a game that's considerably different in both scope and execution. Crucially, however, these changes do nothing to diminish the fun at Vermintide's chaotic heart. Rather, they build on the legacy of the first game to create a sequel that's simultaneously broader in scope and more streamlined than its predecessor.

For the uninitiated, Vermintide 2 plonks a team of four (out of five playable) characters at the start of a level, challenging them to see their mission through to the end without being torn to pieces along the way. Each of the five characters - Bright Wizard, Waywatcher, Witch Hunter, Dwarf Ranger and Empire Soldier - acts as a separate class rather than just a character skin, offering players roles to specialise in and squabble over. Tucked away in each level are three tomes and two grimoires. Tomes occupy the inventory slot reserved for healing tools, while grimoires take the place of potions. Both improve the quality of gear players receive as a reward for successfully completing a mission, although carrying them is not without risk - each grimoire reduces the players' health pool by a third, significantly narrowing their chances of success.

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