What to say about Darksiders. I was always looking forward to playing this game. Unfortunately though, the more I heard about it, the more I was kinda scared to play it since the word wasn't always so positive.
Darksiders is about the apocalypse beginning early and one of the four horsemen, War, being blamed for it. Instead of War being sent into Oblivion, he is sent back to Earth and given a chance to prove his innocence. Then the game really starts off.
Gameplay
+ Explodey Gun! I had one really great moment in Darksiders when I picked up this one gun on an enemy that explodes enemies. You aim at enemies, shoot at them with harpoons, and then you press another button to make the harpoons explode. I just felt really cool taking on all of these huge demons that would take forever to kill without this little weapon. Too bad you could only use it in one level...
= What is this? I don't even... Devil May Cry, Prince of Persia, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Soul Reaver, Zelda, God of War, they're all in this game in some way or another. Darksiders takes elements from all of the above and tries to put it all into one good game. It's one of those ideas that are much better on paper than in practice. They successfully copied aspects of those games but it didn't necessarily make a better game because of it. All of the attack moves and weapons were completely ripped off, animations as well. It was the same with the platforming too. War could use his gauntlet to slide down certain walls he could climb on like Prince. You ride a horse with the same mechanics as Epona from Zelda: Ocarina of Time and War can attack just like Altair from Assassin's Creed. Almost EVERYTHING came from another game.
- I should go play some... The problem about copying something from another game and then implementing it in a less than stellar way is that I'm gonna want to go play those games you copied. There was not a time where I wasn't thinking I should go play Zelda or Prince of Persia with the reasoning that it wouldn't feel like a waste of time.
- Just like weekend chores. Yay... It's not good when everything in your game begins to feel like a chore. Towards the middle of the game, I wanted it to just end. Every battle and puzzle that I had to go through was bothersome to the N'th degree. It wasn't challenging and it wasn't fun. And then, when I finally thought I was at the end of the game, I had to go through 3-4 more levels and then backtrack through the entire game to collect stuff... LIKE ZELDA: WINDWAKER! It just wasn't worth it. If I wasn't writing reviews I would've stopped playing a lot earlier...
- Do what now? May God have mercy on you if you forget what you were doing or missed a cutscene showing you what you should be doing. Darksiders will not help or remind you. There were a few times where I was solving a puzzle and I happened to daydream while it was showing me what to do next. I felt screwed as I went back through the dungeon to find out what I changed. Also, after having completed a certain task, I would forget where I was headed so I had to go everywhere to find out if that was the right location or not. Darksiders is a terrible game to play in small pieces if you happen to forget what you were doing when you stopped.
- What does this do? The control scheme was SO CONVOLUTED. The controls barely made any sense. I just couldn't understand why they made things so confusing when it's pretty easy to simplify what they had.
- One more time. Every enemy was essentially the same. It was rare to treat one enemy differently from another. The strategy for everything you came across was just to keep attacking it until it died. It's funny how I can totally enjoy the repetitive nature of Dynasty Warriors but I can't stand this.
- Who's there? You think Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry had terrible cameras. Darksiders copied the "Z-targeting" system from Zelda and it sucks. The enemy AI isn't built like other action games where you can predict when they're going to attack. They don't work in a certain order. If you can't see them, it's a big problem because you'll start getting hit by invisible enemies. This will happen a lot since the targeting will zoom in and only show the enemies in front of you.
- I think you're broken. This could just be me but one of the bosses was terribly broken. When you dodge in this game, you're not invincible, you just become incredibly immobilized. Since boss attacks normally take two dodges to get away from, you're going to get hit if you start right when you see the attack animation. And on the one boss I was facing, she would attack with her fist and I couldn't dodge that in time so I thought to go behind her. What she did instead was immediately cancel her punching animation to hit me with her tail. And then she has a very large range attack that you normally get just enough warning for. For me though, she would just do it. It normally involves her getting ready to jump in the air and then come slamming down. For me, she would just disappear and she'd just be crashing down instantly, no animations or start-up time to speak of.
- Like a snail... Everything felt slow; The attacks, recovery from your dodge, walking, response to pressing the jump button, getting your horse's butt in gear. I messed up a puzzle one time. It took me 5-10 mins to mess up and it took me 10 mins to fix. I do not want to spend 15-20 mins on a puzzle so easy a 2nd grader could solve just because the camera confused me! And you know why it took so long? Because War is slow and everything he does is slow. Kinda reminds me of the worst puzzles in Zelda.
- But I don't want to walk! There are these portals you can enter to quick travel around the overworld. I can not, for the life of me, understand why it is that when you enter one of these portals you have to walk around in an empty dimension to pop out the other end. I went into the portal because I didn't want to waste time walking to my destination, not because I wanted to waste slightly less time than ACTUALLY walking there. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a cool concept to go into these portals and travel through a world of nothing where I have to get to another portal to come out where I wanted to go. It just doesn't belong in a game and it was completely pointless.
- But wait, there's more! There's a little bit more I could go on about but it would just feel like excessive nitpicking. I feel I've already said enough to help you make up your mind about whether this gameplay is for you or not.
Story and Presentation
+ It's like a comic! From the story to the aesthetic, Darksiders played out like an American comic book filled with troubled heroes and grit. All of the characters were visually stimulating and the voice-acting was enticing. I enjoyed listening to and looking at everything in the game.
+ Uriel. Because her allure makes her a plus.
+ In theory... I personally enjoy the concept of the story. I find it fresh and intriguing. I wanted to know why the apocalypse started early, why one of the horsemen was blamed and how he could prove his innocence. For me, it was just interesting from the get-go.
= Once upon a time, the end. The overall story was ok, although, It felt like the story almost wasn't even there being that they never really showed any development of the characters or fleshed out what their true motivations were. In Mario, all you're doing is saving a princess story-wise but the game's so fun, it doesn't really matter. In Zelda, you're saving a princess but you feel close to the people you help out or rally against which gives the world some feeling so that pushes the gameplay forward as well as some solid gameplay mechanics. What I'm trying to say is that Darksiders' story feels one dimensional, and with some slightly shallow gameplay, you'd expect more from it. Unfortunately, they don't give you much to work with so you tend to ask yourself why you're playing.
- It's like a comic book... Sometimes comic stories and art work for a game. I enjoyed the Darkness a lot and I felt that the game stood apart from the comic very well. When it comes to Darksiders, the story could have been so much more if it was a comic or an animation. Because the story was so secondary and was provided so little focus, it's concept was completely wasted. All the depth of characters and the deeper effects of certain events were completely lost and I find that to be a shame.
- Do I know you from somewhere? Why did War use all of his weapons like Dante from Devil May Cry and platform like Prince from Prince of Persia? They even went as far as blatantly copy the textures pf things Prince climbs on in his game. Aside from character designs and some environments (which I still feel like I've seen somewhere else) there was just a lot of originality lost in the making of this game. Next time THQ makes a game, I hope their thought isn't to make a game by solely using ideas from other games. It's not flattering and it isn't fun.
- Needed more Uriel. It seems they realized this at the end of the game but, alas, they realized it too late.
Graphics
= Not bad, rookie. There wasn't anything really special about the way Darksiders looked but it wasn't an ugly game either. Some effects really popped and some characters looked to have great detail. Another visually pleasing game.
Sound
+ I ain't no slouch. All of the voice work in Darksiders was wonderful. I recognized many of the actors and felt that they lent a good bit of themselves to each character. No grating dialogue to speak of. Very exceptional performances
- What was that? The sound effects in the cutscenes were odd at times where you would expect something to make an extremely gutteral "BOOM" and then it'll make with a mousy "pimff". It's like seeing a lion roar and hearing it mew like a kitten. Just not right. It also does this outside of cutscenes, just not as often.
Should you buy it?
No, I say rent it. I'm aware that some people really enjoyed this game, although I don't know why, so I don't want to flat out say pass it up. Just don't buy it before you try it. It only lasts a meager 8-10 hours and there's very little reason to replay it. Save your money and buy something cool like Mass Effect 2, No More Heroes 2, Bioshock 2 or Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (Maybe even one of the games Darksiders copied! Those are all great games). You're money would serve you better with one of those titles.
Darksiders was developed by Vigil Games and published by THQ. Played and completed Normal difficulty in 10 hours. Review is based on the PS3 version.
