Dark Link is Dark, but still fun.

If you know anything about the game Darksiders, you know that it’s earned its reputation for being a darker “mature” version of Legend of Zelda. After playing the game I have no problem saying that the comparison is entirely apt, and what parts of the game aren’t from Zelda are from God of War or Devil May Cry. In addition there are a few pepperings of Panzer Dragoon and even some Portal. But you know what? Lack of originality in those regards doesn’t really matter all that much because the combination of these inspirations still make Darksiders a fun game.

The story centers around War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The universe is governed by The Council, a neutral party that keeps Heaven and Hell in check. It’s decided that at the time of the Apocalypse, Heaven, Hell and the Kingdom of Man will battle and the ultimate victor will be decided. Turns out, someone couldn’t wait for the Apocalypse and it starts prematurely, but for some reason only War is summoned with the other three nowhere in sight. Thus it’s assumed that War jumped the gun and caused all this chaos, and The Council seeks to punish him, but allows War to return to Earth in order to find out who was really responsible. When he gets back to Earth a century has passed, and the world has been fallen into ruin with nothing but demons roaming the streets. War is accompanied by The Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamill) who is kind of like a demonic Navi from Ocarina of Time.

Because of its inspirations (calling it a ripoff or homage is strictly up to you) Darksiders is simultaneously difficult and quite easy to talk about. On one hand it’s easy because if I tell you the things it takes from other games you’ll know right away what playing the game is like. By the same token it’s kind of difficult to talk about because there doesn’t seem much left to talk about after explaining what it plays like.

All right, to simplify let’s go through everything that Darksiders takes from Legend of Zelda. The game centers around going to a number of different dungeons, each of which will give you a new item that you’re going to use to defeat the boss with after hitting him three times. That item then opens up other regions of the world where you couldn’t go to before. When you solve puzzles there’s a music cue, but in the form of an all men’s choir. In combat you hold the left trigger to target specific enemies which also letterboxes the window. You push blocks, ride a horse, throw boomerangs, use a hookshot, use bomb plants, collect four pieces of each new health container and see into a shadow world. When you fall into a pit, you respawn with some life depleted. All of these things from Zelda exist in Darksiders, except they’re, you know… darker.

What Darksiders doesn’t take from Zelda is inspired by the God of War and Devil May Cry games. It’s not terribly difficult to button mash your way through the game, and with all combos using only the X button it’s not even as deep as God of War. The combat system comes with a few weapons, upgrades, special abilities and magic. When you kill enemies you receive souls which you use to buy health items, new combos, magic skills and other upgrades. A ”Rage” meter slowly fills up while fighting and can be used to do some high powered cleanup. The game mostly draws the line at quick time events, but enemies can be finished off with a B-button prompt once they’re weak enough.

The game is mostly combat focused, but the dungeons break up the pacing with long sections of puzzle solving. The puzzles are more involved than you’d find in God of War, but I didn’t always have the moments of immense satisfaction usually associated with solving complicated puzzles like in a Zelda game. Usually my moments of confusion during the game were related to where to go to next. The camera would often show me the way when I didn’t want to know what to do next, and when I was confused there was no help at all.

The art style is very spikey with a good variety of hideous creatures and environments. War himself is incredibly wide and has numerous attachments added to his very spikey gauntlets. The settings are befitting of a post apocalyptic urban environment, and most of the boss battles are quite huge and epic in scope. Some bosses more than others echo Shadow of the Colossus, but in all fairness, Link has been fighting monsters many times his size for a while.

While the art does a good job of realizing the world, I had trouble any of it too seriously, and the game does take itself very seriously. Just about every voice in the game is a deep baritone if not lower and sometimes, but not always involves some voice processing to make it even more rumbly. Items have very silly names like “Chaoseater”, “Tremor Gauntlet” and “Armageddon Blade.” There are some fleeting moments when the game reveals a sense of humor, but they’re usually unrelated to the main storyline which is always deathly serious. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it might be that a game with this art style and tone is very difficult to take.

The collection system is fun because there are rewards for everything that you collect. Items you collect will increase your health, magic, give you money and also reward you with the special “Abyssal Armor.” Thankfully the game has several items that reveal the location of collectible items, so getting 100% of all the items is mostly painless. The only frustration I had while doing my collecting was the game’s save system didn’t seem to always save my collecting progress. While games like Assassin’s Creed quicksave after every collectible, Darksiders for some reason doesn’t save everything even after a hard save. As a result one artifact I was sure I collected had been lost in a save. I’m not sure what the 100% reliable way of saving was, but just in case I would go past several checkpoints in hopes the multiple save points would work.

There are a few technical hitches in the game. When there are a lot of enemies and a lot of fire effects the framerate can choke, but they’re not game breaking. There’re very few load screens in the game because the game disguises its loading with transitional stages that you have to walk through in between regions. Every now and then the game will freeze for a moment when going from one area to another, but again nothing that really affects gameplay.

I enjoyed Darksiders despite my misgivings about the tone and problems I had sometimes understanding the story. Like Zelda it’s much more gameplay focused of a game with infrequent cutscenes that usually come at the beginning and end of dungeon areas. Because of this it doesn’t make the most entertaining game to watch someone play, but the mix of combat and puzzle solving still made it a fun game. Right now Darksiders is $20 or less so if you’re looking for a 16-20 hour adventure game then Darksiders should work for you.