Darksiders is a tough game to call, It obviously has elements of Zelda, God of War and even Metroid but I'm not sure it does any of the elements particularly well. The God of War like combat is button mashy and has an awkward dash-slide for a dodge move which paralyzes you at the end of it and blocking is only allowed when standing still which causes the combat to lack fluidity. The Zelda like dungeons are hampered by long tedious block pushing and switch puzzles and a large amount of dreaded backtracking around the maps. The Metroid elements are probably the best as if you have a good memory you can find lots of goodies hidden behind obstacles you couldn't deal with previously. That being said Darksiders does have good variety to its gameplay with those three elements and even some 3rd person shooting sections tossed in as well.

The story and setting are pretty neat with the areas taking place in the ruins of human civilization which means a lot of modern buildings all destroyed from the apocalypse. As I was informed by hart704 there was a second set of those BS challenge rooms... I can't believe these things are so important to the main progress of the game... as in: you can't progress in the game unless you can clear these simple but tricky combat challenges. I really don't know what they where thinking with them and I'd suck to be stopped dead in your tracks because you couldn't clear an asinine challenge room.

I think that is about it for today's impressions and I will admit the game grew on me a little bit in the last session. I just cleared the second major boss and just got to the third major area and will probably tackle that later today (Feb 2) after I get some sleep. I will talk to you in a couple of days most likely as we approach a couple of milestones: the 50th edition of NLID (next) and the 700th post in Now Loading history (only 3 to go). Talk to you later. Loading Complete!