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Darksiders Review

By Jason - January 3, 2010 - 23:00 UTC

I’ll be the first to say that when I went into the preview event for Darksiders way back when, I was only a little aware of the game.  I’d been tracking it’s progress, as I do for many games, but I was still flying relatively blind.  After the event though, my eyes were opened to something wonderful which I wasn’t fully expecting.  How does the full release of Darksiders actually pull up then?  Does it belong in gaming heaven, or will it fall into the dark side…rs…of my gaming shelf?

Well, the game is fantastic.  End of review.

I suppose you might want a little bit more than that though, won’t you?  Greedy buggers.  I won’t go into the story too much (again), it’s based loosely around the latter parts of the Bible, specifically around the End of Days, where man is wiped out, and angels and demons try and beat the hell out of the other Battle Royale style.  In comes War (he’s not keen on sides) who beats the hell (and heaven) out of all and sundry.  He eventually works out that his brothers and sister aren’t around (the other three riders) and that the last seal hasn’t been broken, so he really shouldn’t be around.  He gets punished like a bad boy, and goes to sleep for a century.  The Charred Council, who are a group of middle-men specialising in the Apocalypse (they also make a mean Devonshire tea and scones) sent War back to work out what is going on, and so the game re-begins.

War is about as badass as they get.  When he’s not swinging his sword around in a number of increasingly painful combos, he’s transforming into a giant demon to lay the smack down, or playing around with one of his many tools of death.  In a very Legend of Zeldalike move, each dungeon will be based around a tool that  War collects.  Whether this is the hookshot (sorry, Abyssal Chain), boomerang (sorry again, Crossblade) or the Portal Gun (sorry, Voidwalker) to name a few.  Again, in typical style, these will also be used a lot to take out the bosses.

With the addition of these tools brings something that is a pain in most games it’s in, backtracking.  Suddenly you’ll find yourself able to access chests you couldn’t before, which means you’ll be walking over the entire world (if you’re a completionist like the game wants you to be), searching for those elusive chests you could see but not access long before.  Whilst the world, isn’t huge, you’ll be taking good 30 minute trips to walk all over it and examine places you’ve missed.

One thing in the game that really did annoy the heck out of me happens all the way through, but you likely won’t notice it until the end of the game; treasure chests.  Some of them require you to destroy the entire environment in an area for, and it’s just a pain in the butt.  It’s an annoying enough thing to go backtracking, but one thing I just cannot stand, in any way, is knowing something is somewhere, seeing it, but not being able to access it.  It’s one reason I kept a notepad with me for my play through of the game, so I could jot down all of those chests and then go back to them.   But, when you bring in chests that you can’t see until you destroy the environment, it takes all the skill and perception out of finding the chests, and really relies solely on luck on persistence to find them.  And that’s just a pain.

The combat, however, is a gem.  It feels great, looks great, and the more souls you spend, the more interesting combinations you’ll unlock.  These combos are very varied between three weapons: the sword, Chaoseater, the scythe, and the tremor fist.  The scythe and tremor fist must be toggled between (with the d-pad), whilst the chaoseater always retains its spot as the X button.  The more you use these weapons the more they level, do better damage and give you access to better combinations.  Add on top of this the use of your gear, not to mention the addition of augments to add extra effects on your weapons, and you’ve got a recipe for fun combat.

The puzzles are interesting and varied.  Whilst the game does hold your hand through most of them, much like it does in other games, there are one or two puzzles that will have you scratching your head for some time to work them out.  This is an applaud-worthy move, and hell, it’s good to see a game that will actually stump you a bit.  These puzzles never come as an annoyance, more as a distraction from the God of War-esque combat.

Darksiders suffers in a few places, on of them (and again, it’s a minor gripe) is frame-rate.  Whilst it does keep its cool quite a lot, in the heat of battle you may notice a little slowdown or tearing.  It’s not enough to break the game, or the flow of the battle itself, but it is enough to note.  Also, I did suffer a few glitches, most of which required me to save and reload as to ‘no-clip’ out of walls I was stuck in.

Overview:

Darksiders is a fantastic game.  My run-through took me around 16 hours on Normal difficulty, with around 5 hours added for 100% completion.  It borrows heavily from some amazing games from gaming history, and this makes it something really special, without losing any of its own personality.  The game looks great, handles like a dream, and there won’t be many times you’ll be playing it without a smile on your face.  If you haven’t picked it up already, go do so, it’s something you’ll remember for quite some time.

Score: 8.5 – Fantastic