Darksiders

 So what happens when the apocalypse comes earlier than expected? You get a nice bloodbath between angels and demons.

War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, finds himself embroiled in the conflict and needs to restore the destroyed Earth as much as possible. Mankind is, of course, very much dead due to apocalypse and War is basically the fall guy for the whole ordeal.

War is suitably bad ass, making Kratos seem like a bit of a puny wuss. The controls are remarkably spot-on. You have a satisfyingly decent list of weapons and not a massive amount of attacks, but more than enough to keep combat fresh. It lacks the issue of Ninja Gaiden which had a combat system that was a bit too deep for its own good. You have vicious but not perversely gory kill moves to finish off enemies and absurdly huge bosses that are truly epic in scale. Throw in a cool horse you get far too late in the game and some major nods to Legend of Zelda and you have a cool little game.

My only beef with the game is that War seems slow. If that is the only actual beef, it is a really good sign. Darksiders is a game in every sense of the word and doesn't seem to want to be more than a game and that's a good thing. Okay, let me back it up...the ending sucked. You have to backtrack the ENTIRE game to seek out some parts of a sword you need to face the end boss I couldn't compete with for shit. That's likely due to me sucking, though. But that long backtrack is just damned tedious.

The game is great. Fun as all hell to play. Surprise of the year thus far.