Darksiders is an interesting game from new developer Vigil Games. It
takes elements from various popular games and wraps them around a story
loosely based on events from the Bible. The game's graphics even
resembles a certain world-renowned MMORPG. To its credit, Darksiders
mostly succeeds in meshing these various gameplay elements together, but
the best way to approach the game is to think of it as a more violent
version of The Legend of Zelda. If you try to play the game with any
other expectations, you'll be rewarded only with disappointment.
Darksiders begins with Armageddon-always a good way to begin a story,
right? The twist is that the purging of the world occurred a bit too
early, thus upsetting the delicate balance of power between Heaven and
Hell, and leaving both parties broken and battered. The game's
protagonist is one of the Four Horsemen; you play as War, who is framed
for passing judgment when it wasn't called for. War takes it upon
himself to clear his name by finding the real culprit and figuring out
their motive. Along for the ride is The Watcher, whose job is to make
sure that War carries out his objective and doesn't try to rebel against
his masters. The Watcher occasionally serves as a guide, either by
telling you what your next objective is, or by showing you something of
interest. He's essentially the Darksiders version of Navi, except he's
annoying in different ways.
For the first few hours, Darksiders might not seem all that great thanks
to the limited combat, but its strengths become apparent once you reach
the first dungeon. The game's dungeons share more than a little
resemblance to Zelda, but it was Vigil Games' decision to imitate from
the best. Dungeons are a joy to play through, and although they are few
in number, they're quite lengthy, and take up a good chunk of the 15-20
hour quest. Another thing that Darksiders does well is provide
constant rewards; it feels like you can't turn a corner without
acquiring a shiny new item. Items range from new dungeon tools, to
passive skills, to weapon enhancements. There's a shop where you can
purchase new moves for each of the weapons you currently have. You can
also buy wrath abilities, which are essentially magic skills that
require a sufficient amount of wrath meter.
There's plenty of power at War's disposal, but it's a shame that all
that power doesn't need to be used to any great effect. If you're
expecting combat that's on the level of Devil May Cry, then you're
looking at the wrong game. War can hurt his enemies any number of ways,
but Darksiders doesn't do much to encourage using anything other than
your basic weapon techniques and a handy dodge move. The other problem
with combat relates to control; you can lock-on to a target by holding
down the L2 button, but if you want to use a wrath ability, you must
hold down L1, then press any of the face buttons with an assigned skill.
Now, it may be that I'm just not accustomed to using my middle finger
to press a shoulder button, but using a wrath ability while locked on is
more complicated than it should be. There are other scenarios where
the controls could have been simplified, but they are areas of
opportunity for a likely sequel.
The graphics in Darksiders are very pleasing, even if the characters
look like they came from something straight out of a Blizzard Activision
game. The Xbox 360 version of the game apparently suffers from some
heavy screen tearing (which will be fixed according to the developer),
but rest assured that the PlayStation 3 version has no such issues. The
music is standard fare, with ambient tunes and choruses peppered
throughout, but there's actually quite a bit of silence. The lack of
music may just be a design choice, perhaps as a way to illustrate the
aftermath of the end of the world. The voice acting is quite good, with
some recognizable voice actors lending their talents. Mark Hamill in
particular reprises his role as the Joker, now known as the Watcher.
Joking aside, the voice suits the Watcher's character just fine, but
it's a little strange hearing that iconic voice being used for a
character other than the Joker.
Let's be clear here: Darksiders is not an original game in the
slightest. The developers knew what kind of game they wanted to make,
and in that regard, they absolutely succeeded. Not many games can
consist of a mishmash of genres and still be considered good. Vigil
Games has made a solid effort for their first attempt at making a game;
let's see if they can carve out a more unique identity for the
inevitable sequel.
