Warhammer: Vermintide 2 washes in on March 8th

The Vermintide will be coming in on March 8th, developers Fatshark have announced, giving us less than a month with which to sharpen our axes, re-string our longbows, and generally mentally prepare to carve up hordes of 'orrible ratmen in Warhammer: Vermintide 2. We've not covered the co-op FPS since its announcement last year, but since then it's been made clear that the ratty Skaven have teamed up with those jerks from the Chaos army, meaning we'll be fighting humans as well as rodents this time.

Vermintide 2's Big Thing is its customisable heroes, the game allowing you to take its five champions down 15 differing "career paths", including Manager, Area Manager, and Assistant to the Regional Area Manager. (Alternatively, some stabbier ones that haven't been detailed yet.) The other Big Thing is the Heroic Deeds system, a pile of "consumable" quests that will take the game's maps and "dramatically alter enemy composition, level settings, weapon use and mission objectives." Fatshark want you to keep playing this forever, basically.

The developers revealed the release date as part of a recent livestream, during which they also showed off a few minutes of hectic footage. See our brave heroes slice up some humans and a disgusting 'bile troll' in an otherwise lovely sun-dappled forest:

If you want to wallow in all that bile before March 8th, there's a beta starting February 28th. You'll need to pre-order to gain access to it, however.

The Steam page is worth perusing if you want to bone up on the game before release, as it contains plenty of titbits and attractive screenshots of Fatshark's sequel.