Whilst its highly unlikely that I will review every game I buy this year, I expect I'll do a lot of them. Darksiders was the first game I bought this year (well, the first game that came out this year that I bought) and, after eagerly anticipating it since October, I figured I'd give my take on it. Enjoy!
Introduction
With Bayonetta coming out on the same day, and the hype for that being off the charts, Darksiders appears to have faded into obscurity somewhat. With the likes of Dante’s Inferno coming out next month, and with the lack of any real advertising for the game, it’s a small wonder that anyone has even bought the game. In the start of a year filled with such promising games, its unsurprising Darksiders has really failed to shine. At first glance, it appears simply to be a cheap fusion of God of War and The Legend of Zelda, with very little to recommend it. So, how close is this to the truth?
Also, on a minor note, there are a lot of comparisons between this game and Bayonetta crawling on the internet. As someone who owns both games, I am just going to make the point that these should be disregarded entirely. With the exception of the fact that they came out on the same day in the PAL region and that they both have Heaven and Hell premises, there is nothing to connect the gameplay of these two games. Darksiders is more of an adventure game, whereas Bayonetta is all-out action. Other than your personal preference, there is no basis for comparison. At all.
Storyline: 5.1/10
Darksiders begins on present-day Earth, in a nice, peaceful city. As you may expect, this peace does not last for long, as meteors begin to rain from the sky. Angels and Demons are using Earth as their battleground, and all hell (if you’ll pardon the pun) has broken loose.
Not long after the first wave strikes, War arrives to start dishing out some mayhem of his own. However, he finds his powers deteriorating steadily as the battle progresses. It would appear that not all is as it seems. This is confirmed once he is defeated by Straga, a henchman of the Destroyer, and sent before his fiery skull masters, the amusingly named Charred Council – nothing helps you to remember a name like alliteration, I suppose.
In any event, they are not pleased with him for having started the Apocalypse prematurely – mankind was, unsurprisingly, completely eradicated, and the Balance has been completely wrecked. Turns out the Seventh Seal wasn’t broken after all, and War was not summoned. However, War insists that he was, and demands that he be sent back to Earth so that he can get to the bottom of this, and exact revenge upon the Destroyer, the target of his wrath. The Council agree, and send him back to Earth with the Watcher bound to him, to kill him if he tries anything funny. His first task is to find Vulgrim, a demon merchant, and discover what he knows.
Thus begins War’s not-so-epic quest for vengeance. Whilst it is nice to see the Four Horsemen making their debut in the world of video-games, they’ve done a very poor job with it. It’s a very loose reference indeed, and the usage of War as the central protagonist is about as far as the originality of this game goes.
The storyline itself is rather bland and linear – you’ll spend the majority of the game killing the Destroyer’s henchmen, wandering around the desolate landscape trying to get to the bottom of all this, making macho threats to creatures bigger than you are, etc. For the first seven or eight hours of the game, you’re not going to find out very much, and it all feels rather random and pointless.
...this is a minor point, and a personal annoyance, but I still do not see the justification for renaming Famine and Pestilence as Strife and Fury, either. What was wrong with their original names?!
Characters: 3.0/10
There aren’t really very many characters to this game, and those that are in it aren’t really developed at all. War’s single-minded quest for vengeance eliminated all aspects of his character, it appears. His character design is rather out-of-place, as well. In a world full of angels in high-tech armour and demons, human-like War just does not look right...
War is really the only character that features in this game for more than five minutes at a time. There are other characters, one-offs who feel a great deal like filler characters, and you’ll go back to see Vulgrim and Sammael a couple of times, but otherwise you’ll see the majority of the cast once and that will be it. The Watcher, your shadowy companion, stays true to his name and says next to nothing throughout the entirety of the game, unless you call upon him deliberately for a hint as to what to do next.
Gameplay: 7.1/10
Darksiders is an action-adventure game, similar to The Legend of Zelda, although it has a combat system similar to the likes of God of War. Throughout the game, you play as War, and are essentially given free rein to do whatever you please, although there is always an objective for you to pursue. The game is fairly expansive in its level design; however you will not be able to access a lot of places until you have acquired a certain item, so the game is fairly restricting and linear in this regard.
The essential pattern to the game is one Zelda fans will recognise – go to dungeon, acquire new item, use new item to beat boss, acquire special item (in this case, the heart of the boss), rinse and repeat. There are four hearts to collect in all, and each one will take you around two hours to get, followed by a few other things that will probably take you another four hours on top of that. The game is fairly short, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll be playing it for longer than 15 hours – although these days, that sort of completion time is standard for a game. There are three levels of difficulty, and even on easy, enemies hit VERY hard. This provides a certain level of challenge, and perhaps some replay value.
The currency of Darksiders is, unsurprisingly, souls. There are three types of souls in the game – green souls restore health, yellow souls restore Wrath, and blue souls act as the game’s currency, allowing you to buy items from Vulgrim’s store.
Combat is another primary element of this game. Quite often, you’ll be forced to fight a horde of enemies, being shut-in a small area by orange mystic barriers. With the exception of some enemies that you’ll come across in dungeons, all of these enemies can be defeated the same way: by hammering the Square or Triangle buttons repeatedly, unleashing a furious stream of combos with your selected weapon. Similar to God of War and Bayonetta, the fighting mechanics of this game are relatively simple to learn, and allow you to fight according to your style: there are plenty of multiple-button combos you can experiment with, or you can simply hammer away at the same button; either strategy is equally effective and flashy. After inflicting a certain amount of damage on an enemy, the infamous giant Circle button hovers over their head, an indication to finish them off in a gory, Mortal-Kombat style super-move. However, unlike every other game that has used this mechanic, Darksiders requires only that you press the circle button once, then sit back and watch War slice heads in a spectacular shower of blood. There are no interactive finishers here that are long, epic and drawn out – these are short and sweet. On one hand, this is a blessing – you can do it to practically every enemy in the game, and it’d be highly aggravating going through it every time, especially considering the enemies in this game hit a lot harder than most. However, you could also argue that eliminates the interactivity factor such finishers have provided in other games, and, as you’ll be using them a lot, they lose their impact after a while.
There are a reasonable number of different types of enemies in this game, although a lot of the time you’ll be encountering the same types in droves. There are also some recoloured enemies as you progress through the game – standard angel soldiers wreathed in red fire that are slightly more powerful than your standard issue angels, but have the same attacks anyway. This feature is present in so many games these days, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of creativity and general laziness to the approach. Bosses are all suitably huge and monstrous, and require a certain strategy to take down – as you may have guessed, with the weapon you acquired in the dungeon they are master of.
War’s arsenal is fairly diverse, but pretty standard – you have the originally named Chaoseater, your standard massive sword that you’ll be using the most to dish out the pain. You also have The Harvester, a scythe, to clear large areas – and, considering this game loves to swarm you with enemies, this is a huge blessing. As you progress through the game, you’ll acquire other items, although none of them are particularly ground-breaking: wings that allow for gliding over chasms, a boomerang for activating switches, the ability to stop time and create portals, etc etc. Most of these new items are used in their respective dungeons to solve extremely simplistic puzzles, and can be used in other areas to discover things you won’t have been able to access this time around – although the backtracking in this game is minimal until the end. Thankfully, the option to travel between places is provided in the form of warrens, which you access by going to see Vulgrim. Considering how big the areas in this game are, this was a very smart move.
Weaponry can be upgraded – the more you use it, the more experience it gains, naturally – and you can also buy upgrades from Vulgrim’s store. Most moves can be upgraded three times, although some are one-off purchases. There are also limited enhancements for weapons you’ll stumble across in the course of the game, which offer neat little bonuses to weapon exp, soul gain, health and damage, etc. Each weapon can only have one of these enhancements on it at a time, but there aren’t many of them anyway, so you won’t be struggling to decide which upgrade to use a lot of the time.
In addition to weaponry, you also have the standard-issue Invincibility Mode in Chaos Form. Kill enough and War will transform into a miniature Balrog, complete with flaming sword, and be complete impervious to damage for about twenty to thirty seconds (unfortunately, none of the enemies shout “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” but you can’t have everything in life, I suppose.), which you can trigger it at any time once your Chaos meter is full. You may think this makes the game easier but, as I’ve said, the enemies all hit hard, and the bigger ones take a lot of punishment before they go down. So it balances out, more or less.
You also have Wrath powers, which are special moves that are, of course, slightly more powerful than regular moves. For example, Stoneskin augments the damage War dishes out, whilst reducing the damage he receives. Immolation sets things on fire. Affliction drains health of enemies over time, and Blade Geyser makes small blades erupt out of the ground around War, knocking everyone in the nearby vicinity away. These are all small bonuses, however.
Dungeons in Darksiders are slightly longer than your average adventure-game dungeons, although they are all pretty linear, and provide little in the way of a challenge. In each you’ll find the new weapon almost immediately, use it to solve a few puzzles, and then challenge the boss with it. Rinse and repeat. It’s a tiring, familiar pattern that, in this game, isn’t as fun as it should be, because there is a complete lack of challenge to any of the puzzles you’ll come across.
There are a few twists to the gameplay, however, which make Darksiders a little more noticeable – early on in the game you’ll be subject to challenges (for example, to kill ten enemies by block-counter alone within a time limit), and there is also a section of the game that is vaguely reminiscent of Lylat Wars, as you ride an angelic mount to the Twilight Cathedral. There are also shooting gauntlets, in which you acquire a gun roughly the same size as you to deal out damage to enemies. The over-the-shoulder camera angle (think Resident Evil 4 and 5) and general size of the weapon makes them clunky and dodging an impossibility, but they aren’t an essential – if you would prefer; you can ignore the giant weapon of mass destruction entirely and plough through the enemies with your standard weapons. War also has a flaming steed that goes by the name of Ruin, who functions in much the same way as Epona does in Twilight Princess: you can mow down enemies with greater speed and efficiency and travel across the larger areas a lot faster. Although Ruin has been extremely poorly implemented in the game – Darksiders has very few wide open spaces for you to ride him. Worse, there is an achievement for riding, which will require a lot of time wasting to obtain...
What adventure game would be complete with collectibles? Darksiders has its fair share – artifacts are scattered across the world for you to find. Most of them are pretty easy to find, however. You can trade your artifacts to Vulgrim for a few additional blue souls (you could probably harvest about double the amount you receive in about five minutes, though...) which is the only real purpose they serve, excluding the completion rate. Scattered around are also wrath shards and lifestone shards, which increase War’s maximum wrath and health respectively, along with ten Abyssal Armour pieces.
Controls: 7.5/10
The controls are relatively simple and easy to learn, as you would expect. However, there are some major issues that make gameplay extremely fiddly and aggravating at times.
Firstly, when using certain sub-weapons, you need to enter an over-the-shoulder camera mode to aim properly. This is extremely awkward, especially when you’re surrounded by enemies and are trying to aim at something in particular. It makes dodging and blocking accurately damn-near impossible, meaning you’ll either block nothing and get nothing done, or dash around with no idea whether you’re going away from an enemy, towards another one you can’t see, or off a cliff.
There is also the fact that some idiot decided it would be a good idea to assign the dash command to the same button as the block command. Blocking is achieved by standing still, whilst if you are in motion you will dash instead. It sounds relatively simple, but it takes a long time to adjust to and, even much later in the game, you’ll be dashing right into an enemy when you meant to block their attack, meaning you’ll promptly get smacked for a ton of damage. More than one accidental death will probably occur as a result. It is highly annoying, and that is putting it mildly.
There is also the fact that they have tried to assign a lot of weapons to two buttons – triangle and R2. You swap them around by assigning them to the D-Pad and tapping the relevant direction in battle to swap them out – however, there are more weapons than there are directions, meaning you’ll have to access the menu to change things around more often than you would like. This seems like a petty complaint, but a lot of games these days use a radial menu when there are more than four items in your inventory. Why Darksiders could not have such a feature is beyond me.
The lack of proper camera control is highly irritating at points, as well. The default position for the camera is behind and slightly below War, as though you’re slightly crouched behind him. This can make for very messy and highly confusing visuals when you’re locked onto flying enemies, and the ability to zoom out and adjust the camera would have made this game a lot easier to play at points. It won’t have a major impact on the way you play this game when it comes to judging jumps, etc, but it may cause minor irritations here and there in combat.
Graphics: 7.4/10
Visuals for this game are, as you would expect, bleak. The apocalypse has been and gone, and you’ll be going through ruined cities, deserts and buildings. For the most parts, it’s all rather drab and grey, although the scenery is highly detailed and exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the current generation. The special effects, which comprise mostly of dark blood splattering across the screen, enemies being dismembered and explosions, are all spectacular.
The art style is an interesting one – it’s not quite cel-shaded, but is all sharp edges. This isn’t to say its polygonal (although at times it lets itself down a little, particularly when characters are talking) but it looks like the characters are all made out of plasticine. In a bleak and rather barren landscape, War in particular manages to look very vibrant and colourful.
The game looks absolutely spectacular on a widescreen HD TV (and the cutscenes were most definitely meant for such a TV, as they take up about half the width of a 16-18 inch TV) and ironically, because of this, I’ve lowered its score. It is, perhaps, too focused on being suitable for wide-screen TVs. On my 16-inch TV, the graphics were fairly unremarkable and a lot of the detail was missed to my eye. It was only when I took it to my friend’s house and played it on his TV, which is twice the size of mine, that I appreciated the graphics of this game. Of course, if you play your games on a huge TV, you needn’t let this point bother you at can put my given score up to 8.1. There are definitely better-looking games out there on the PS3, but that doesn’t detract from the beauty this game occasionally delivers.
There is also the point that lack of variety makes this game rather difficult to rate properly in terms of graphics. Distant buildings, grey pavements, cliffs and the same enemies with a slightly different colour palette isn’t exactly stretching the output of the PS3.
Sound: 7.8/10
Suitably epic and dramatic, the sort of thing you would expect from a game with a post-apocalyptic setting. Ominous vocals, sudden bursts of classical and a creepy undertone are all in full swing here for the entirety of the game. This may or may not be your thing, but it’s perfect for this sort of game. A lot of the time it is extremely quiet, however, and occasionally fairly misleading. As a rule, dramatic vocals in any game tend to be reserved for dramatic moments – imminent attack from an enemy, the title screen, etc etc. Being bombarded by ominous vocals when you’re just walking around, or swimming underwater, is somewhat disconcerting, and really overplays the atmosphere the game is trying to create, making it somewhat ridiculous at points. There isn’t much in the way of variety, either.
Voice acting is tolerable, but somewhat stereotypical, cheesy dialogue aside. A lot of the voices have gruff, distorted undertones that people always seem to give to demons and evil beings these days, and a lot of them sound the same. Liam O’Brien does a fantastic job as War, not sounding too “macho”, and when he does talk, Mark Hamill does a great job as the Watcher, as well. Otherwise, there isn’t anything about the voice acting in this game that particularly stands out. There isn’t a whole lot of it, either.
Unique/Extra Features: 2.0/10
Honestly, I’m probably being too generous here. The only thing about this game that is unique is its chosen protagonist and the names of the weapons, world and characters. You could name every aspect of this game with a Legend of Zelda counterpart (and I am tempted to do just that, to prove my point, but that’d take quite a while, and it’d make this game look far worse than it actually is) and, at the moment, there is no downloadable content. That could change, but it’s unlikely, given the nature of the game.
Replay value: 5.0/10
There is one trophy to be gained for completing the game, and three difficulty settings. To get every trophy will take at least three playthroughs, so if that sort of thing is important to you you’ll be playing the game again at least three times. Otherwise, this game gives you absolutely no incentive to play it again – it’s quite fun, but the novelty of trashing enemies wears off quickly (the aggravating block/dash gimmick I mentioned earlier helps it along even more) and, whilst you may decide to pick it up again some when out of boredom, you may just as easily decide not to. Three playthroughs is fairly good for a game, but not good enough to get it a higher score.
Overall Rating: 6.0/10
War’s wrath turns out to only be War’s minor temper tantrum in this extremely disappointing, action adventure game. A story centred on the Four Horsemen is a very good idea, something we haven’t seen before, and the gameplay is solid, but alas it’s fallen short of its potential by a very wide mark indeed. The story is under- developed and ends up being just another unoriginal heaven-and-hell-war tale as a result, and whilst the game is highly enjoyable, it doesn’t bring anything new to the tables. It meets the minimum expectations people would have of a game of this genre, and that is as far as it goes. It’s fun, but it isn’t satisfying. It gives off a horrible aura of déjà vu, and if you’ve played a Legend of Zelda game before you’ll be wondering is War isn’t actually a more badass version of Link, and when Tingle decided he was a demon, rather than a fairy. Comparisons to The Legend of Zelda are unavoidable, and really Darksiders just cannot compete with the likes of Twilight Princess when it doesn’t have its own unique, properly explored element, and the combat is not even on the same level as the likes of God of War.
However, Darksiders is an enjoyable game nonetheless that will last you for around 12 hours if you stop to collect everything along the way, maybe 14 if you want to max out all of your weapons, and you’ll play it three times at least if you’re a trophy collector. It’s worth a look-in, but not a full-price purchase, unless you enjoy Zelda-style gameplay and like the idea of beating things up with cooler-looking weapons in dazzling style. It’s a brilliant concept, but it feels as though they just gave up with it halfway through and made it into yet another unremarkable action-adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda, with a more “cool” protagonist. Satisfying, but mediocre. Hopefully they’ll do a better job with the inevitable sequel.
If the aftermath of the Apocalypse is anything like this game at all, we can all sleep soundly in our beds, comfortable in the knowledge that we aren’t going to miss very much.
Introduction
With Bayonetta coming out on the same day, and the hype for that being off the charts, Darksiders appears to have faded into obscurity somewhat. With the likes of Dante’s Inferno coming out next month, and with the lack of any real advertising for the game, it’s a small wonder that anyone has even bought the game. In the start of a year filled with such promising games, its unsurprising Darksiders has really failed to shine. At first glance, it appears simply to be a cheap fusion of God of War and The Legend of Zelda, with very little to recommend it. So, how close is this to the truth?
Also, on a minor note, there are a lot of comparisons between this game and Bayonetta crawling on the internet. As someone who owns both games, I am just going to make the point that these should be disregarded entirely. With the exception of the fact that they came out on the same day in the PAL region and that they both have Heaven and Hell premises, there is nothing to connect the gameplay of these two games. Darksiders is more of an adventure game, whereas Bayonetta is all-out action. Other than your personal preference, there is no basis for comparison. At all.
Storyline: 5.1/10
Darksiders begins on present-day Earth, in a nice, peaceful city. As you may expect, this peace does not last for long, as meteors begin to rain from the sky. Angels and Demons are using Earth as their battleground, and all hell (if you’ll pardon the pun) has broken loose.
Not long after the first wave strikes, War arrives to start dishing out some mayhem of his own. However, he finds his powers deteriorating steadily as the battle progresses. It would appear that not all is as it seems. This is confirmed once he is defeated by Straga, a henchman of the Destroyer, and sent before his fiery skull masters, the amusingly named Charred Council – nothing helps you to remember a name like alliteration, I suppose.
In any event, they are not pleased with him for having started the Apocalypse prematurely – mankind was, unsurprisingly, completely eradicated, and the Balance has been completely wrecked. Turns out the Seventh Seal wasn’t broken after all, and War was not summoned. However, War insists that he was, and demands that he be sent back to Earth so that he can get to the bottom of this, and exact revenge upon the Destroyer, the target of his wrath. The Council agree, and send him back to Earth with the Watcher bound to him, to kill him if he tries anything funny. His first task is to find Vulgrim, a demon merchant, and discover what he knows.
Thus begins War’s not-so-epic quest for vengeance. Whilst it is nice to see the Four Horsemen making their debut in the world of video-games, they’ve done a very poor job with it. It’s a very loose reference indeed, and the usage of War as the central protagonist is about as far as the originality of this game goes.
The storyline itself is rather bland and linear – you’ll spend the majority of the game killing the Destroyer’s henchmen, wandering around the desolate landscape trying to get to the bottom of all this, making macho threats to creatures bigger than you are, etc. For the first seven or eight hours of the game, you’re not going to find out very much, and it all feels rather random and pointless.
...this is a minor point, and a personal annoyance, but I still do not see the justification for renaming Famine and Pestilence as Strife and Fury, either. What was wrong with their original names?!
Characters: 3.0/10
There aren’t really very many characters to this game, and those that are in it aren’t really developed at all. War’s single-minded quest for vengeance eliminated all aspects of his character, it appears. His character design is rather out-of-place, as well. In a world full of angels in high-tech armour and demons, human-like War just does not look right...
War is really the only character that features in this game for more than five minutes at a time. There are other characters, one-offs who feel a great deal like filler characters, and you’ll go back to see Vulgrim and Sammael a couple of times, but otherwise you’ll see the majority of the cast once and that will be it. The Watcher, your shadowy companion, stays true to his name and says next to nothing throughout the entirety of the game, unless you call upon him deliberately for a hint as to what to do next.
Gameplay: 7.1/10
Darksiders is an action-adventure game, similar to The Legend of Zelda, although it has a combat system similar to the likes of God of War. Throughout the game, you play as War, and are essentially given free rein to do whatever you please, although there is always an objective for you to pursue. The game is fairly expansive in its level design; however you will not be able to access a lot of places until you have acquired a certain item, so the game is fairly restricting and linear in this regard.
The essential pattern to the game is one Zelda fans will recognise – go to dungeon, acquire new item, use new item to beat boss, acquire special item (in this case, the heart of the boss), rinse and repeat. There are four hearts to collect in all, and each one will take you around two hours to get, followed by a few other things that will probably take you another four hours on top of that. The game is fairly short, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll be playing it for longer than 15 hours – although these days, that sort of completion time is standard for a game. There are three levels of difficulty, and even on easy, enemies hit VERY hard. This provides a certain level of challenge, and perhaps some replay value.
The currency of Darksiders is, unsurprisingly, souls. There are three types of souls in the game – green souls restore health, yellow souls restore Wrath, and blue souls act as the game’s currency, allowing you to buy items from Vulgrim’s store.
Combat is another primary element of this game. Quite often, you’ll be forced to fight a horde of enemies, being shut-in a small area by orange mystic barriers. With the exception of some enemies that you’ll come across in dungeons, all of these enemies can be defeated the same way: by hammering the Square or Triangle buttons repeatedly, unleashing a furious stream of combos with your selected weapon. Similar to God of War and Bayonetta, the fighting mechanics of this game are relatively simple to learn, and allow you to fight according to your style: there are plenty of multiple-button combos you can experiment with, or you can simply hammer away at the same button; either strategy is equally effective and flashy. After inflicting a certain amount of damage on an enemy, the infamous giant Circle button hovers over their head, an indication to finish them off in a gory, Mortal-Kombat style super-move. However, unlike every other game that has used this mechanic, Darksiders requires only that you press the circle button once, then sit back and watch War slice heads in a spectacular shower of blood. There are no interactive finishers here that are long, epic and drawn out – these are short and sweet. On one hand, this is a blessing – you can do it to practically every enemy in the game, and it’d be highly aggravating going through it every time, especially considering the enemies in this game hit a lot harder than most. However, you could also argue that eliminates the interactivity factor such finishers have provided in other games, and, as you’ll be using them a lot, they lose their impact after a while.
There are a reasonable number of different types of enemies in this game, although a lot of the time you’ll be encountering the same types in droves. There are also some recoloured enemies as you progress through the game – standard angel soldiers wreathed in red fire that are slightly more powerful than your standard issue angels, but have the same attacks anyway. This feature is present in so many games these days, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of creativity and general laziness to the approach. Bosses are all suitably huge and monstrous, and require a certain strategy to take down – as you may have guessed, with the weapon you acquired in the dungeon they are master of.
War’s arsenal is fairly diverse, but pretty standard – you have the originally named Chaoseater, your standard massive sword that you’ll be using the most to dish out the pain. You also have The Harvester, a scythe, to clear large areas – and, considering this game loves to swarm you with enemies, this is a huge blessing. As you progress through the game, you’ll acquire other items, although none of them are particularly ground-breaking: wings that allow for gliding over chasms, a boomerang for activating switches, the ability to stop time and create portals, etc etc. Most of these new items are used in their respective dungeons to solve extremely simplistic puzzles, and can be used in other areas to discover things you won’t have been able to access this time around – although the backtracking in this game is minimal until the end. Thankfully, the option to travel between places is provided in the form of warrens, which you access by going to see Vulgrim. Considering how big the areas in this game are, this was a very smart move.
Weaponry can be upgraded – the more you use it, the more experience it gains, naturally – and you can also buy upgrades from Vulgrim’s store. Most moves can be upgraded three times, although some are one-off purchases. There are also limited enhancements for weapons you’ll stumble across in the course of the game, which offer neat little bonuses to weapon exp, soul gain, health and damage, etc. Each weapon can only have one of these enhancements on it at a time, but there aren’t many of them anyway, so you won’t be struggling to decide which upgrade to use a lot of the time.
In addition to weaponry, you also have the standard-issue Invincibility Mode in Chaos Form. Kill enough and War will transform into a miniature Balrog, complete with flaming sword, and be complete impervious to damage for about twenty to thirty seconds (unfortunately, none of the enemies shout “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” but you can’t have everything in life, I suppose.), which you can trigger it at any time once your Chaos meter is full. You may think this makes the game easier but, as I’ve said, the enemies all hit hard, and the bigger ones take a lot of punishment before they go down. So it balances out, more or less.
You also have Wrath powers, which are special moves that are, of course, slightly more powerful than regular moves. For example, Stoneskin augments the damage War dishes out, whilst reducing the damage he receives. Immolation sets things on fire. Affliction drains health of enemies over time, and Blade Geyser makes small blades erupt out of the ground around War, knocking everyone in the nearby vicinity away. These are all small bonuses, however.
Dungeons in Darksiders are slightly longer than your average adventure-game dungeons, although they are all pretty linear, and provide little in the way of a challenge. In each you’ll find the new weapon almost immediately, use it to solve a few puzzles, and then challenge the boss with it. Rinse and repeat. It’s a tiring, familiar pattern that, in this game, isn’t as fun as it should be, because there is a complete lack of challenge to any of the puzzles you’ll come across.
There are a few twists to the gameplay, however, which make Darksiders a little more noticeable – early on in the game you’ll be subject to challenges (for example, to kill ten enemies by block-counter alone within a time limit), and there is also a section of the game that is vaguely reminiscent of Lylat Wars, as you ride an angelic mount to the Twilight Cathedral. There are also shooting gauntlets, in which you acquire a gun roughly the same size as you to deal out damage to enemies. The over-the-shoulder camera angle (think Resident Evil 4 and 5) and general size of the weapon makes them clunky and dodging an impossibility, but they aren’t an essential – if you would prefer; you can ignore the giant weapon of mass destruction entirely and plough through the enemies with your standard weapons. War also has a flaming steed that goes by the name of Ruin, who functions in much the same way as Epona does in Twilight Princess: you can mow down enemies with greater speed and efficiency and travel across the larger areas a lot faster. Although Ruin has been extremely poorly implemented in the game – Darksiders has very few wide open spaces for you to ride him. Worse, there is an achievement for riding, which will require a lot of time wasting to obtain...
What adventure game would be complete with collectibles? Darksiders has its fair share – artifacts are scattered across the world for you to find. Most of them are pretty easy to find, however. You can trade your artifacts to Vulgrim for a few additional blue souls (you could probably harvest about double the amount you receive in about five minutes, though...) which is the only real purpose they serve, excluding the completion rate. Scattered around are also wrath shards and lifestone shards, which increase War’s maximum wrath and health respectively, along with ten Abyssal Armour pieces.
Controls: 7.5/10
The controls are relatively simple and easy to learn, as you would expect. However, there are some major issues that make gameplay extremely fiddly and aggravating at times.
Firstly, when using certain sub-weapons, you need to enter an over-the-shoulder camera mode to aim properly. This is extremely awkward, especially when you’re surrounded by enemies and are trying to aim at something in particular. It makes dodging and blocking accurately damn-near impossible, meaning you’ll either block nothing and get nothing done, or dash around with no idea whether you’re going away from an enemy, towards another one you can’t see, or off a cliff.
There is also the fact that some idiot decided it would be a good idea to assign the dash command to the same button as the block command. Blocking is achieved by standing still, whilst if you are in motion you will dash instead. It sounds relatively simple, but it takes a long time to adjust to and, even much later in the game, you’ll be dashing right into an enemy when you meant to block their attack, meaning you’ll promptly get smacked for a ton of damage. More than one accidental death will probably occur as a result. It is highly annoying, and that is putting it mildly.
There is also the fact that they have tried to assign a lot of weapons to two buttons – triangle and R2. You swap them around by assigning them to the D-Pad and tapping the relevant direction in battle to swap them out – however, there are more weapons than there are directions, meaning you’ll have to access the menu to change things around more often than you would like. This seems like a petty complaint, but a lot of games these days use a radial menu when there are more than four items in your inventory. Why Darksiders could not have such a feature is beyond me.
The lack of proper camera control is highly irritating at points, as well. The default position for the camera is behind and slightly below War, as though you’re slightly crouched behind him. This can make for very messy and highly confusing visuals when you’re locked onto flying enemies, and the ability to zoom out and adjust the camera would have made this game a lot easier to play at points. It won’t have a major impact on the way you play this game when it comes to judging jumps, etc, but it may cause minor irritations here and there in combat.
Graphics: 7.4/10
Visuals for this game are, as you would expect, bleak. The apocalypse has been and gone, and you’ll be going through ruined cities, deserts and buildings. For the most parts, it’s all rather drab and grey, although the scenery is highly detailed and exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the current generation. The special effects, which comprise mostly of dark blood splattering across the screen, enemies being dismembered and explosions, are all spectacular.
The art style is an interesting one – it’s not quite cel-shaded, but is all sharp edges. This isn’t to say its polygonal (although at times it lets itself down a little, particularly when characters are talking) but it looks like the characters are all made out of plasticine. In a bleak and rather barren landscape, War in particular manages to look very vibrant and colourful.
The game looks absolutely spectacular on a widescreen HD TV (and the cutscenes were most definitely meant for such a TV, as they take up about half the width of a 16-18 inch TV) and ironically, because of this, I’ve lowered its score. It is, perhaps, too focused on being suitable for wide-screen TVs. On my 16-inch TV, the graphics were fairly unremarkable and a lot of the detail was missed to my eye. It was only when I took it to my friend’s house and played it on his TV, which is twice the size of mine, that I appreciated the graphics of this game. Of course, if you play your games on a huge TV, you needn’t let this point bother you at can put my given score up to 8.1. There are definitely better-looking games out there on the PS3, but that doesn’t detract from the beauty this game occasionally delivers.
There is also the point that lack of variety makes this game rather difficult to rate properly in terms of graphics. Distant buildings, grey pavements, cliffs and the same enemies with a slightly different colour palette isn’t exactly stretching the output of the PS3.
Sound: 7.8/10
Suitably epic and dramatic, the sort of thing you would expect from a game with a post-apocalyptic setting. Ominous vocals, sudden bursts of classical and a creepy undertone are all in full swing here for the entirety of the game. This may or may not be your thing, but it’s perfect for this sort of game. A lot of the time it is extremely quiet, however, and occasionally fairly misleading. As a rule, dramatic vocals in any game tend to be reserved for dramatic moments – imminent attack from an enemy, the title screen, etc etc. Being bombarded by ominous vocals when you’re just walking around, or swimming underwater, is somewhat disconcerting, and really overplays the atmosphere the game is trying to create, making it somewhat ridiculous at points. There isn’t much in the way of variety, either.
Voice acting is tolerable, but somewhat stereotypical, cheesy dialogue aside. A lot of the voices have gruff, distorted undertones that people always seem to give to demons and evil beings these days, and a lot of them sound the same. Liam O’Brien does a fantastic job as War, not sounding too “macho”, and when he does talk, Mark Hamill does a great job as the Watcher, as well. Otherwise, there isn’t anything about the voice acting in this game that particularly stands out. There isn’t a whole lot of it, either.
Unique/Extra Features: 2.0/10
Honestly, I’m probably being too generous here. The only thing about this game that is unique is its chosen protagonist and the names of the weapons, world and characters. You could name every aspect of this game with a Legend of Zelda counterpart (and I am tempted to do just that, to prove my point, but that’d take quite a while, and it’d make this game look far worse than it actually is) and, at the moment, there is no downloadable content. That could change, but it’s unlikely, given the nature of the game.
Replay value: 5.0/10
There is one trophy to be gained for completing the game, and three difficulty settings. To get every trophy will take at least three playthroughs, so if that sort of thing is important to you you’ll be playing the game again at least three times. Otherwise, this game gives you absolutely no incentive to play it again – it’s quite fun, but the novelty of trashing enemies wears off quickly (the aggravating block/dash gimmick I mentioned earlier helps it along even more) and, whilst you may decide to pick it up again some when out of boredom, you may just as easily decide not to. Three playthroughs is fairly good for a game, but not good enough to get it a higher score.
Overall Rating: 6.0/10
War’s wrath turns out to only be War’s minor temper tantrum in this extremely disappointing, action adventure game. A story centred on the Four Horsemen is a very good idea, something we haven’t seen before, and the gameplay is solid, but alas it’s fallen short of its potential by a very wide mark indeed. The story is under- developed and ends up being just another unoriginal heaven-and-hell-war tale as a result, and whilst the game is highly enjoyable, it doesn’t bring anything new to the tables. It meets the minimum expectations people would have of a game of this genre, and that is as far as it goes. It’s fun, but it isn’t satisfying. It gives off a horrible aura of déjà vu, and if you’ve played a Legend of Zelda game before you’ll be wondering is War isn’t actually a more badass version of Link, and when Tingle decided he was a demon, rather than a fairy. Comparisons to The Legend of Zelda are unavoidable, and really Darksiders just cannot compete with the likes of Twilight Princess when it doesn’t have its own unique, properly explored element, and the combat is not even on the same level as the likes of God of War.
However, Darksiders is an enjoyable game nonetheless that will last you for around 12 hours if you stop to collect everything along the way, maybe 14 if you want to max out all of your weapons, and you’ll play it three times at least if you’re a trophy collector. It’s worth a look-in, but not a full-price purchase, unless you enjoy Zelda-style gameplay and like the idea of beating things up with cooler-looking weapons in dazzling style. It’s a brilliant concept, but it feels as though they just gave up with it halfway through and made it into yet another unremarkable action-adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda, with a more “cool” protagonist. Satisfying, but mediocre. Hopefully they’ll do a better job with the inevitable sequel.
If the aftermath of the Apocalypse is anything like this game at all, we can all sleep soundly in our beds, comfortable in the knowledge that we aren’t going to miss very much.