A lot of people are going to call this game a is a clone of other games like Zelda or God of War. It’s
true the game does borrow a lot from those types of games but in no way is it a terrible thing. Zelda
for the dungeons and God of War for the hack and slash combat. If a game can pull off the amazing
formula of those two vastly different genres and put them together into a smooth experience, then it
matter if its like anything else (as it's really hard to be new and be successful nowadays). The real
question is if it can pull it off or if it is just a giant sham.
Story:
Some people are going to think that the games storyline is really convoluted or confusing. Its not,
but it doesn't get a lot of points for originality either. The premise is that you are one of the 4
Horsemen of the Apocalypse named War. You are blamed for prematurely starting the "Endwar"
which is the war between Heaven, Hell, and the humans. Starting the apocalypse early has basically
ended the human race and hell triumphed over heaven in the war. During the Apocalypse you go to
earth to help restore order, only you lose all your powers and die from the lack of strength. After
that, the council you work for tell you that you will be punished. You then convince them to send you
back to earth to hunt down the people responsible and clear your name. While this is not a new type
of story, it is told in a compelling way through great cutscenes and epic set pieces.
Presentation:
Darksiders looks really beautiful. The environment is rather stunning for a game about the
apocalypse. Instead of grays, browns, and washed out colors: there are blues, greens, reds (well the
blood at least) and plenty of other colors that normally reserved for other types of games. The
textures and details that is given for the different characters you encounter and enemies that you
slay are beautifully rendered and animated fluidly. At times they reuse the same models for their
monsters that are just different colors and harder in difficulty. Understandably this is used all the
time, there just should of been more variations of demons and angels then 5. Another big downside
is that during the bigger sequences and intense combat, the frame rate can chug to abysmal rates.
Also after long periods of play I noticed a frame rate collapse and at one point even freezing the
game and forcing me to restart my system. Installing the game to the hard drive fixed the chugging
to a extent, and at the time of writing this Vigil (company who made the game) is putting out a
patch to fix said issues. Another thing that was good about the game was the voice acting. During
the course of the game, the voice acting can go from cheesy to downright awesome in no time.
Some of the great gems are Mark Hamill (who has voice the Joker in the Batman Series), who voices
the Watcher who throughout the game is very cynical and twisted but gives you great advice on
what to do. War was a little hit and miss with his lines but all-around he's was a solid character. The
other demons and angels you encounter are again hit and miss but all together average.
Game Play:
The combat system for this game is a very close copy to the God of War with a little Devil May Cry
thrown into the mix. You spam 1 to 2 buttons at a time to beat demons into a pool of blood which is
fine and dandy but the combat system really isn't very deep. Almost every encounter can be finished
by hitting the attack button over and over till the monster is dead as you don't need to worry about
combos or use of magic. Not to say that the combat is all redundant. Almost every monster has an
instant kill button that will gruesomely end the life the person you are attacking but can bee seen as
cheap as you don't take damage while finishing the animation for the kill. This is a very tried and
true system and it’s executed very nicely but feels shallow. The other end of the game which pulls
heavily from the Zelda and Metroid titles, is the dungeon section. You go though the over world map
from dungeon to dungeon to kill the bosses to finish the game. In every dungeon they are filled with
puzzles that range from complex to simple, which is good if every puzzle hadn't been done in other
games already. Almost all of the items you collect during the dungeons are ripped strait from other
games as well like the boomerang and hook shot. Though the puzzles and combat are put together
seamlessly, it feels a little reused but still a lot of fun to play.
Conclusion:
I really did love Darksiders. Though it pulled from a bunch of different games, it was solid. People
that you interact with are believable and feel like they belong there, but very stereotypical: Demons
are all twisted abominations, angels act as though they are doing the greater good from their
perspective, regardless of the evil they are doing. The game has many good plot twists that you
might not expect, simply because they come out of left field. The game play was very solid even
though it did borrow from several good games. Though the ending was a cliffhanger and left it wide
open to a sequel, Darksiders is a fun experience that should be experienced by any dungeon crawler. www.wickedgamereviews.com