In one word… epic. Darksiders is the newest release from Vigil Games, in which you play as War, one of the horseman of the apocalypse. So you enter the game and the apocalypse has started and as War you are doing your duty of killing humans, angels and demons alike. Unfortunately you find that the apocalypse started early and the higher-ups blame you; because of this you have your powers stripped and are forced to try to get things back to normal.
Darksiders gets inspiration from a few different games, the major two being God of War and Zelda. The main fighting system is a lot like God of War, beat your enemies down using a handful of weapons and equipment then hit a hot key if you want to see a shiny finishing move. You also need to complete puzzles in order to advance throughout the story line; these range in difficulty from hitting some buttons within a certain amount of time, to throwing a “Sticky Grenade Plant” clear across a room through a portal to hopefully blow up an obstacle in your path. Although some fights seem much harder than others, the difficulty curve progresses nicely. There isn’t much in terms of loading times, but if you move from one area to another too quickly or between some rooms the game can sometimes pause for up to a few seconds to load; this only happened to me about five time during my entire play through.
- Look at my shiny Metal Glove. It makes me look Strong.
Darksiders is a very beautiful game; Joe Madureira (comic artist) seems to have had a good effect on the entire visual style of the game. Unlike most post-apocalyptic games which seem to focus on greys and browns; Darksiders avoids this and uses a lot of colours which seem to help the look of the game. The characters themselves look great, it is easy to tell the differences between enemies you can fight hordes of and others you would prefer to fight one-on-one, if the game lets you. Although you can sometimes see some screen tearing, the majority of the time the game runs perfectly.
- Have you ever heard of Mentos?
The sound matches the look and feel of the game, all ambient noise helps pull the player into the game and the voice acting fits the characters nicely. Although it can get annoying if one of the characters keeps repeating the same line over and over again as you are trying to complete a puzzle to move on.
Darksiders will give you a decent amount of gameplay, there are a few different weapons, all of which level up and become stronger as you use them. You can also buy different attacks for the different weapons and even equip “Enhancements” to these weapons in order to make them more powerful or to give them extra abilities. There are also quite a few collectibles hidden throughout the game and you can also increase your Health and “Wrath” by collecting shards of each. There is also an Armour set which you can collect which can carry over to a new game if you so wish.
- The Watcher is voiced by The Joker/Luke Skywalker/Mark Hamill
If you have played and enjoyed any God of War or Zelda game I think it’s probably safe to say that you would enjoy Darksiders. Unfortunately there isn’t much in terms of replayability, other than if you want to collect everything or if you want to beat the game on a different difficulty or if you just want some more hack-and-slashy goodness. There isn’t really anything ground-breaking about Darksiders, it has all basically been done before, but it is a good game, definitely check it out if you are looking for a new game.
Darksiders – Game Detail Page
*Originally written by Morgan Pretty (aka Cyro 349), reposted by OzBoxLive*
