Darksiders

Darksiders seemed like a bit of a Dark Horse releasing in a busy first quarter full of delayed winter titles. It’s a good thing it came out early, since it is a surprisingly decent game that is worth a rental. It won’t take long to figure out that Darksiders is a game strongly inspired by other games. Most notably, it plays like a mature Zelda game. Many of its game mechanics seem to be a direct homage to Zelda, with little additions inspired by other games as well. Because of this, Darksiders is far from an original experience, yet all the borrowed components never feel cheap, and they are well thought out and realized through the duration of the game.

You’ll start the game with all your available powers and abilities, and through a story event, will then have all your powers removed and you’ll have to reacquire them while playing through the campaign. You play as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who is framed for being responsible for essentially causing a war to break out between heaven and hell. You are granted the opportunity to return to Earth and attempt to investigate who framed you, with the catch that you’ll have a wise-cracking companion attached to you to make sure you stay in line. All the characters are voiced surprisingly well, and as War you are appropriately “badass”. Though the writing is a little shaky and predictable, it is still a decent tale of redemption and revenge.

Like Zelda, the game splits pretty evenly between combat and platforming/puzzle solving. Though the combat could have used more depth, the platforming and puzzles are very well done. I enjoyed the puzzles, since the solution wasn’t immediately obvious, yet not hard enough to really stop your momentum. As I said, combat is on the shallow side. There are only 3 weapons, the main weapon being the most useful in virtually every situation. You can unlock combos and other abilities from the “merchant” Vulgrim when you exchange the souls you have acquired, but there just isn’t enough to lend much variety to the combat. Even though you are treated to a decent variety in enemies, it doesn’t take too long to figure out when they are about to attack.

Combat can also be incredibly frustrating when facing tougher enemies. Some enemy attacks do an insane amount of damage and are infuriatingly difficult to avoid. A lot of more powerful enemy attacks can’t be blocked, so you are forced to dodge. However, the controls aren’t tight enough to support your need to perform quick dodges. Also, a dodge is essentially a dash in your desired location, which is problematic since the enemies seem to follow you quite well with their desired attack. The finisher attacks can be quite satisfying however, especially after a brutal encounter. Despite that, the game is generally quite easy. With the exception of a few battles earlier in the game, I found as you progressed getting new abilities the enemies didn’t get too much harder. I even found the bosses to get easier as the game went on, culminating in a disgustingly easy final boss battle. That said, I was also playing on the hardest difficulty.

Though loud clanging of blades and shields amassed most of the sound during Darksiders, there is a nice soundtrack in there. Despite having the music maxed out, I still found it a little hard to hear, and would have liked to hear it better. That’s not to say the combat sounds got annoying, I was just really impressed with the way the music sounded.

If you play or have played World of Warcraft before, Darksiders’ visual style may look familiar. That’s another aspect that seemed to have been inspired by another game, as it looks like a more futuristic and next-gen take on the WoW style. Although the visuals had lots of polish and looked great, I encountered an obscene amount of screen tearing when exploring. Especially when I spun the camera around to get a look at the environment, I noticed a large amount of tearing that was a little distracting. Other than that though, Darksiders is a good dirty looking game.

I won’t spoil anything else borrowed from other games, but as you play, you will certainly notice items that seem to be directly inspired by other popular games.

An adventure clocking in at around 15-20 hours, it is certainly not a short quest, but doesn’t offer up much replay incentive. Although there is an annoying back tracking quest before the end of the game, it is brief enough not to completely sour the experience. Even though Darksiders lacks combat depth and originality, the homage it pays to the games that it borrows ideas from is done with polish. If you enjoy adventure games with a mature twist, Darksiders is definitely worth the rental.