Great surprise
Im riding a horse on fire through a desert with hovering rocks and big drills. I slash at some weak foes on the ground, and see their arms and heads flail through the air as I ride through. What I am I talking about? Darksiders, recently ported to the PC from the consoles.
Darksiders is primarily a hack n slash, with special abilities and complex puzzles thrown in for good measure. The combat is great, and feel fantastic thanks to the great graphics engine, and the big weapons you can wield. I just got a Chillstream controller, which registers as a X360 controller, and definitely would have been the way to go from the start. Controlling with the keyboard took a while to get used to, and felt impercise when in the heat of battle, especially when you need to be blocking and countering your enemies attacks.
There were very few problems I had with the actual game, but they did add up enough to make me rate this down a bit. The game crashed on me a few times, and some enemies got stuck in the game world, mainly near the end. The framewrate dipped countless times as well, primarily in the outdoor areas, it wasnt bad enough to hamper the combat, but when jumping around different areas, it can be the difference between life and death in an instant.
The story in the game is nothing short of epic, and has you being the one man that can save the world from complete Doom. You are cast against huge bosses, and they are usually pretty simplistic to take down, and can be quite entertaining, as a lot of games seem to hold back the blood and gore when dispensing Large bosses.( Im looking at you Wolverine) The game is very long, and has many large, sprawling environments that really come to life,and were very well done. You can tell time and care was taken to making the world seem believable. Unfortunately, there isnt much re-playability in Darksiders, except to collect chests or secret items that you missed. Darksiders is a great game, that has an interesting story, great visuals, solid combat, but suffers from linearity. If you are looking for a story driven, brutal action game, then you owe it to yourself to give Darksiders a try.