Darksiders

Darksiders takes ideas from pretty much every game on the market and never really masters any of them, but a game with this many ideas and a decent amount of variety is a game definetely worth the money. 
 
Story: 
 
You are War, one of the four horsemen. It has been fortold that the horsemen will come when heaven and hell meet in the domain of Man, but War is called prematurely and causes the death and destruction of the entire human race. To make things worse, you are blamed for it all and so need to go on a quest of retribution to find and kill the Destroyer, the ruler of Hell. The story isn't particularly deep but is probably the most original part of this game. It really just acts as a reason to go to 5 distinct dungeons throughout the game. The voice acting isn't particularly memorable, with each character sounding and acting like you think they should. The most memorable performance is by Mark Hamill (ie The Joker from Arkham Asylum), but it sounds exactl.y like The Joker, which was kind of off-putting for me. 
 
Graphics/Sound: 
 
The only thing of note here is some terrible screen-tearing, and Darksiders is the first game where I have noticed it. The framerate also gave me a headache for the firs half-hour, but I got used to it. The design is quite distinctly cartoony and full of gore and mutilation, which I grew to like more and more as I got further into the game. Each dungeon has a distinct design and go from spider web covered buildings to gothic architecture. 
 
Gameplay: 
 
Here is where the ideas meld to create this game. You start with just a sword which is extremely powerful. There aren't many combos, even if you buy the ten or so extra ones. Also, only one button is designated to the sword, which limits the combos and may feel weird to DMC or GOW fans. There are two secondary weapons in the game, the Scythe and the Fists. Both are extremely weak and pale in comparison to the sword, so I never really used these. And then we get to the abilities. There aere 6 passive abilities and 6 gadgets to use. The 6 gadgets include: a horn, a crossblade (boomerang from Zelda), a swingshot (Ratchjet and Clank), a portal gun (Portal, duh), a mask to see into a dark realm and something else that I can't remember. They are all slightly disappointing and are only really used for the dungeon you get it in, except for the horn, which you only have to use twice in the whole game.The combat feels chunkier than GOW and slower than DMC, whilst the puzzling is nowhere near as difficult as Zelda. The Gameplay finds a good balance between the action and the puzzling so you rarely get bored. 
 
Longevity/Replay Value: 
 
The story is about 12 - 15 hours long, and so is much longer than you would expect from this game. It has 3 difficulties, all available from the start, but the main reason you would ever play it again is for collectibles. There are life shards, rage shards and artifacts to go find, as well as some posh British zombies for no apparent reason. The lack of multiplayer obviously limits the replay value of the game. You should be mostly finished with the game in 2 weeks, so a rental is probably advised. 
 
 
Summary: 
+Good, chunky combat 
+Lots of variety and dozens of abilities 
+Good long single-player 
+Good art design 
 
-Crappy secondary weapons 
-Wafer-thin plot 
-Blatantly rips-off other games 
 
Final Score: 8.5/10