Quick Look: Darksiders: Warmastered Edition

Happy Thanksgiving!? ???

Curious if they run into all the bugs I did in mine ><

Happy Thanksgiving, duders

Thanks!

Same to all.

Also, Darksiders.

I remember not liking this when it came out and giving up after a couple of hours. But I've played a Zelda game since then so maybe I'd appreciate it more. It looks pretty rad.

Man, I love this game a lot, but Darksiders 2 Deathinitive was so buggy it was barely playable. After about a month of patches it became stable enough to complete a playthrough, but as far as New Game + or Crucible is concerned it's still pretty much impossible to get through without crashing every few minutes. On PC, anyway. I expect the console versions are a lot better.

Assassins Creed Revelations is probably the best game in that series where all the systems matured allowing for a ton of options during gameplay, and the whole hook arm as dumb as it sounded made traversal a lot more fun and dynamic in several ways. The tombs were a really fun Prince of Persia throwback with some light stealth mixed in and the city presented some of the highest peaks seen to date. Multiplayer was likewise the best the series has ever been. Not sure why people bemoan it so much apart from that dumb tower defense minigame which you had to play literally like a few times. The best part about Revelations though was that Ezio was no longer an insufferable Nathan Drake clone, and had that old-man-I'm-too-tired-for-this-shit swagger about him that I do love so much in my videogame protagonists.

As for these games, I tried Darksiders 2 and it was alright in the beginning, although the PC version was seriously buggy and poorly optimized, but the game quickly turned into this giant open world bother of going from A to B to C across vastly barren, boring landscapes. The dungeons felt more formulaic than clever - you instantly saw what needed to be done and simply needed to get it over with rather than do or experience anything clever. I enjoyed the art design and thought the combat was decent (although the letterboxing during dodging is an incredibly stupid aesthetic choice) but something about the game kind of bored me pretty early on and other games very easily pulled me away from it. Also since the guys liked to harp in the past about "Reaper players" or how lame Reaper was in general - well Darksiders 2 is like an ode to that style of character except it takes itself pretty seriously.

I was never a Zelda fan so maybe thats why these games never really grabbed me. For a Remaster it appears like minimal effort was put into it before they shoved it out onto the shelves.

It came out one year after Brotherhood while offering minimal improvements to that game. The story was also not advancing the series' main plot as much as people would have wanted.

Darksiders was a classic.

That totally is Mark Hamill.

checking in to see if this game is still the western failaids i remember watching video of

yup! mature zelda my ass lol, this was and always will be an inferior god of war clone.

Well, I am a Zelda fan (at least the older ones) and these games never grabbed me, they feel more like God of War or Bayonetta than Zelda. Sure I played more Darksiders 2 than 1 and haven't finished any one them. I get bored by mindlessly running around hacking and slashing everything with these over sized weapons and "cool" looking bosses. Hyrule Warriors seems like a better comparison.

(Also, Z-targeting, dungeons and highlighting certain words (in a narrative text) won't make it a Zelda game. )

DISCLAIMER: Sure, perhaps Darksiders 1 opens up later in the game and starts being more like a Zelda game. In that case, feel free to inform me.

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I'm part of the 'problem', because I buy many of the remasters, either because I want to play a better version of a game I love, or because I had never played the game and wanted to experience it finally. To be honest... This may be another case again. Is this more like Zelda, or Souls Reaver? I've read comparisons to Zelda+God of War, as well as Soul Reaver. I only played a short demo of the original game and thought it was fine back then, but all of those comparisons sound great to me. Hopefully they fix the lip sync.

Wow, that lip sync disconnect is rough.

Yep, Mark Hamill. And I had forgotten Joe Madureira (aka Joe Mad) was involved with this.

It never ceases to annoy me when people call Darksiders a God of War clone (which is another term that I hate), because it's not; it's a Zelda game. It has dungeons and dungeon items and maps and keys and puzzles and shit. Oh, and then it has combat that doesn't look, feel, or control anything like God of War. Granted, the game did itself a disservice by being front loaded with so much combat. It is a completely false representation of what the game will expect of you after the first hour or so.

Anyway, both Darksiders games are pretty cool. The story didn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's a bummer that it'll (probably) never be completed. And that's why cliffhangers are lame.

I really did like both Darksiders 1 and 2. If you're going to play on the hardest level suggest playing through on normal to get yourself the gear and upgrades going into new game plus.

@authenticm: the plot basically ties together AC1 with the modern games and concludes the Ezio plotline entirely - it's pretty substantial.

I thought this already came out awhile ago...

I love Darksiders, but I can't see why it needs a "remaster". Eh, hopefully it's a good one at least.

The first couple hours aren't that great, unfortunately. The game really comes into it's own though, the dungeons and stuff are really really good, it varies the gameplay up nicely over time and it has one of the best video game endings ever IMO :D

Loved Darksiders, super cool game. Shame I never finished 2 but the story took such a backseat in that one.

Deathinitive and Warmastered. I don't know whether to hate these names or to like 'em.

Really weird time for this to come out, considering you can get Darksiders 1&2 on PC for 10 bucks right now. These games are not demanding in terms of hardware, either. You only need a very moderate PC to play this comfortably, same with 2.

@jaypb08 said:

The "Deathinitive Edition" (yes, that really is a dumb name) of "Darksiders II" came out last year, but this version of the first game arrived only this week.

@rocketblast0063: Never played Darksiders 2 but Darksiders 1 definitely deserves the Zelda comparison. It takes a couple hours to get going, but once it does, the format of the game is just blatantly Zelda.

I like me some Zelda, this could be cool, but the art style is just bad in my opinion. Always was.

@rubberchicken: THANK YOU. I don't care how many comic book artists are involved, everything in both these games looks so stupid. This game is great, but boy...the characters look so lame.

2010 was a Jam packed year for hack and slash/action games. We had this, Bayonetta, God of War 3, GoW Ghost of Sparta, and Dante's Inferno.

@doctordonkey: you'd think that and yet I encountered plenty of issues while games like Doom run at a silky smooth 60 FPS. Darksiders 2 on PC ran worse than Witcher 3 for me.

Man Darksiders is a great series. One was great but 2 is still one of my favorite games. Beat them both multiple times each. I really hope Nordic brings 3 around one of these days. ;/

WAR!

I love the idea of THQ Nordic releasing a limited, commemorative run of U-Draw Tablets :)

Still waiting for them to deliver on that HYPE ending.

Also this is the year of shit remasters, I'm convinced the majority are actually worse, you give a piece of art to the cheapest possible labour and ask them to improve it, you get butchered art direction and in a lot of cases awful optimization.

The ablitease (copyright Vinny Caravella) is strong with this game.

For anyone wondering,

The PC version I played back in the days was perfect, and it probably run better then the remaster if you have a mid range pc from 3/4 years ago.

This game is fine on PC. The only thing I don't recall is if it runs at 60 frames or not, but it doesn't really matter. I remember it looking fine, and not having any problems.

The only thing that I felt brings this game down a little is the arena fights (more prominently featured in the originals quick look), and several times in the game the fights can be extremely tedious. The boss fight at the beginning is really the coolest one until the very end which is mostly a shame.

The second game is a sequel, if I recall, picking up where you leave off at the end of this game- only it's many years later (centuries I think) and there was something else I forget.

I would definitely recommend this on PC unless they fix that lip sync issue. Even then- it is cheaper on PC and looks fine so might as well. It'd probably even be easy to get working good considering it came out a few years ago now (so a mid range, or low range PC now might be fine too).

Mark Hamill plays your Navi counterpart (the demon arbitrator or whatever) which means it's worth at least one playthrough because Mark Hamill is great.

Really liked this game at the time, and I'd be into playing it again at some point.

Darksiders II was rough though. I really didn't care for that game. The loot system was half-assed and seemed out of place. I also remember the dungeon design being very weak - boring repetition due to some blatant copy/pasting seemingly just to stick to the classic "rule of three".

Man, it was such a bummer that they ruined Darksiders II. This first one was amazing.

This game has one of BEST opening sequences. The Apocalypse is happening and everyone is screaming about how you fucked up...it's so wonderfully chaotic.

They didn't ruin anything. Was just a different experience from the first, which i was happy about. I didn't want to play a carbon copy of the first one again. So i enjoyed both very much but from different perspectives.

It also doesnt really resemble the rest of the game's gameplay so im kinda sad they chose this part for the quicklook. If I remember correctly the quicklook of the first game was also near the beginning ?

@meierthered: I was not a fan of mmo-style loot system, also every quest was "do something 3 times".

@monkeyman04: Pretty sure Brad coined "abilitease"

This game is like a twist on Zelda with Devil May Cry combat. Played fine on PC IIRC so I'd recommend that version of the game...not sure if they're going to update that ever though.

@mmarsu: It doesn't, but DAMN does it make an impact.

I missed both Darksiders when they were released but I'm willing to toss $10 at the PC versions to give them a go on my fast PC.

I need to see the original and remastered side by side because I'm not seeing a difference.

Maaaaan, I forgot Mark Hamill was your little buddy in this. This game was so rad.

never really got into the first game but I really liked the second one so their luke warm opinion of that game was kind of bizarre since I remember it being way better than the first game (from fans of the series)