Nightmare Fuel / Vermintide II

Sigmar preserve us...

• The Chaos Spawn are creatures who were once followers of Chaos who were given too many gifts from the Chaos Gods until they were mutated into hulking, mindless abominations.
  • Their grab animation has them grabbing one of the player characters, bashing them on the ground before biting on their heads and finally throwing them away.
• You thought the Rat Ogres from the first game were bad? Their upgraded cousins, the Stormfiends, are in the game! Stormfiends are Rat Ogres with slightly more intelligence, equipped with heavy armor and twin warpfire throwers where their hands formerly were.
  • Don’t forget how they get that intelligence; a second smarter Skaven has been surgically (and permanently) fused to the Stormfiend and its nervous system like a Siamese twin. Unlike the ogre itself, this unwilling second brain alternates between cackling and screaming in terror the entire time, especially when you start hacking it apart.
• We get to see what happens in a town that fell to Chaos' marauding armies. Buildings are in ruins, fires are everywhere along with Chaos banners, and we see the townspeople Impaled with Extreme Prejudice on a variety of long spikes, with their bodies set aflame.
• When Chaos Sorcerers spawn, ominous whispers about how your Gods are fake and cannot save you, or how your soul is going to be delivered to Nurgle can be heard. To make matters worse, one Sorcerer type can grab you and pull you towards his gaping mouth with little warning, leading to Paranoia Fuel whenever one is heard.
• Chaos Warriors are absolutely enormous Norscans clad in full plate armor and wielding axes as long as a man, who taunt and threaten their victims while striding towards them. A single swing from their axe can easily flatten a player, making them an absolute terror when faced in close quarters.
• In the very first level, the finale leads you to a Temple of Sigmar that has been trashed by the Dark Pact, yet intact. Ringing a bell to summon the horde leads to the front door being slammed shut, shunting the temple into darkness, with only pitiful amounts of candlelight to reveal the oncoming horde. It's a terrifying and intense finale as you hack away at the shadowy Skaven and frothing Norscans surrounding you. Thankfully, Sigmar's statue ends the event eventually, smiting all of the enemies left while throwing all the windows and doors in the chapel open. While beneficial to the player, it's worth wondering what Sigmar themself was capable of if his statue of his likeness alone can wipe out an entire horde the players were struggling to survive against.
• The level Against the Grain starts innocently enough, with a sunny field of wheat and some abandoned farm buildings with a couple of corpses lying around, and an orchard. Where have most of the farmers gone? Inside a barn about halfway through the level, you find their remains piled knee-deep, with flies and guts everywhere. A single Rat Ogre or Troll always being inside the barn implies that their demise was brutal and messy at its claws.
  • And what of the farmers in the small farmhouses, grain mills and other buildings around the area? The ones that were axed to death where they stood and left dead on the floor, the murderer's weapon still sunk into their torsos, got off relatively lightly. Others appear to have been killed in other, more torturous ways, such as being left half-crushed in a wine press.
• Plague Monks attack in a frenzy, shrieking horribly and dealing tremendous damage unless blocked. Although they are not considered a special enemy, they are perhaps more dangerous than most of the specials.
• The fact that all of the characters can descend to such dark depths is pretty sad and terrifying. Markus can take his grievances with Imperial authority to their endpoint, falling in with bandits as a renegade Huntsman, Bardin can become a deathseeking Slayer, Kerillian can swear fealty to the God of Murder, Khaine, and become a Shade, Victor can become a flagellating, fanatical zealot, and Sienna can become completely unhinged and no longer control her use of fire magic anymore, immolating her foes as well as herself with abandon.
  • Similarly, hearing Bardin, Saltzpyre and Sienna screaming their heads off as they use their abilities in these darker classes is a sobering indicator of how these people have well and truly lost their marbles after fighting Skaven and Chaos for so long (Kruber's and Kerillian's are more subdued).
    Saltzpyre: REPENT! REPENT! REEEEEPEEEEEEEEEEEEENT!!!
    Bardin: GRIIIIIIIIIIMNIIIIIIIIIIIIRRR!!!
    Sienna: ERUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPT!!
• The game's launch trailer is this. It shows the armies of the Dark Pact completely overrunning an Imperial city, with Skaven swarming up from the sewers while Chaos attacks from above. While the Empire's soldiers attempt to fight the Skaven, they're vastly outnumbered and surrounded from all sides.
• The scenery is more grotesque and stomach-churning then ever, especially in levels centered around the Nurgle-worshipping Rotbloods. Puddles of flesh bubbling at the surface, piles of corpses covered in maggots and flies, and fleshy growths covering the walls are common sights wherever the Rotbloods gather.
• About halfway through the level "Hunger in the Dark," you have to escort the minecart with explosives through an underground chamber that's nearly pitch-black. Enemies swarm you from the darkness, and being surrounded by screaming Skaven and frothing marauders is downright terrifying. Heaven help you if the game chooses this moment to spawn a boss on you...
• At the end of the level "Convocation Of Decay" the party finds a ritual to summon a Greater Daemon and have to disrupt it by standing in the ritual circle. When they do the view outside the circle changes from the large natural cavern they're in to the vile landscape of the Realm of Nurgle, a putrid green sky covering a view of bleak cliffs climbed by fleshy growths and spotted with the fortresses of daemons. Thankfully leaving the circle or succeeding in stopping the ritual returns you to the cavern but if it didn't...