Darksiders is a regular old adventure hack’n’slash game that came out this week, by Vigil. The game is nothing new as far as the genre is concerned. You get to play as War, one of the horsemen of apocalypse, who gets shafted when someone cries wolf and he shows up to bring the apocalypse to Earth a little too soon. Having screwed up, War goes through a Metroidqsue sequence where he loses all his powers and reverts back to level 1 (Why War would have a level 1 to being with…) And then of course he has to go back and fix his mistake or else…
To help him in this endeavor, War is assigned a cheery little companion called the watcher (voiced by Mark Hamill of Batman fame) who from time to time will chime in with a cheery “hey listen” to get you follow his instructions and also provides helpful tips to solve puzzles and beat bosses. One side point here… In most games that seem to have a notable actor for voice acting (like John Cleese in Jade Empire, Patrick Stewart in Oblivion, and Liam Neeson in Fallout) the game tends to have them for very short time… this game however diverges from this (thankfully I might add).Also to help War along in his quest for redemption is the fallen angel Samael, who basically acts as quest giver and general banter person.
So the basic premise of the game is to go to Dungeon A, solve some simple puzzles (Some of them had me stumped until I saw what I needed to do… and then I felt a little stupid), get special Item A* from it to traverse to the last boss, and then beat the last boss using the Item A*… on the way War also gets to beat the crap out of a lot of demons that try to get in his way. After the dungeon he gets to use the new item found or a new item given by Samael to traverse to the next dungeon and rinse and repeat.
On the way to all this War also locates his horse, Ruin, who can then be rode around to get places faster. Also there is a gun called Mercy… which is useless against enemies, except in the one instance where it is needed for a boss.
So if all of this sounds familiar, that is because it actually is. This game bears a marked similarity to the Zelda series, as far as the game play is concerned at least. But, thankfully there are no Schizophrenic farmer boys who based on a series of dreams set out to save princesses who are apparently genetically programmed to get kidnapped by the villain who is genetically programmed to kidnap them.
Where this game shines is that though it is set in dark, dingy Earth where all humans are dead and demons walk the land having claimed as their own… making for a very gritty setting. But, unlike most of the other games with gritty settings this game diverges from choosing brown, gray, and other brows and grays as the primary basis for all colours in the game. The game is full of colour and this makes it more than eye pleasing. Monsters come in all shapes sizes and colours (though purple seems to be a common theme among them). Landscapes are well drawn and pretty to look at. Even War himself is decked out in red and silver making for a very prominent presence on screen. While this may seem like a minor point, I have had enough of the dark and gritty settings where everything seems to blend into one giant ball of gray or brown or any combination of those two. This makes for a happy diversion from that. Barring a few minor graphical glitches the game has nice graphics. The character design and the setting are a little comic bookish… but the game may not have worked as well as it did with realistic graphics.
Voice acting is nice here (especially the Watcher and Vulgrim), but the one thing that got to me was the fact that War talks with constant pursed lips… which makes it seem like someone had sewn the sides of his mouth.
Controls are easy. One button for attack, one button for dodge. Magic takes two buttons but, not very hard to get used to. Camera angles do screw up from time to time, causing me to plummet to my death or run right in to a monster that I was trying to dodge away from… but these are minor complaints.
It is a decently long game as well. I am about 8 hours into it and I think I nearing the end now (just a guess), but there are enough hidden tidbits in levels that can be used to occupy time (since new powers can be used in older levels to access areas that could not be accessed before).
All and all I am enjoying the game.
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