Out of the Vault: Darksiders

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I picked up Darksiders the same day I preordered Mass Effect 2 (BestBuy didn’t give me the limited edition print the flyer said I would get with DS – make sure you ask for it if you pick it up). Darksiders was supposed to be a interim game that I’d play while I waited until ME2 came out. I figured I wouldn’t play any more than a couple of hours tops, here and there. I was wrong – Darksiders has taken over my soul.

In Darksiders, you play as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. You’ve been falsely summoned to Eart to stop demons and angels fighting over the kingdom of man. Normally when summoned, War rides with this three other brothers (Conquest, Famine, and Death). When War arrived he was alone. At the end of the opening scene, War is accused of having not been summoned, but having come to earth to cause trouble and upset the balance of… yada yada yada.

The game operates like a cross between God of War and any 3D zelda game you’ve ever played, right down to the roll away dodges and assigning of weapons and items. Your main weapon can have a modifier to it that lets you increase damage, steal souls from the things in the environment (souls are the game’s currency), like other games. Even the puzzles in dungeons are similar (so are the items – the boomerang cross that can hit up to five targets on each throw and event the skull fragments – collect four, get another health container).

As you play it (or as you read this review), you can’t help but notice similarities between Darksiders and other games. Those elements are part of what make the “source material” great and timeless – and Darksider’s use of those mechanics is no different here. War’s moves are fluid and crisp. In 3D action adventure games, one of my least favourite things to do is climbing and traversing ropes. I find that in God of War, Kratos moves too slowly and I spend too much time kicking guys off the line before I can continue and it gets on my nerves. In Darksiders, this is not the case. Someone had the genius idea to make it so that War can jump up a climbable wall, and even across a climbable ceiling. This makes you move twice as fast and doesn’t make you wait forever to get anywhere. War can also slide along outcroppings instead of hand of hand like Nathan Drake or the Prince of Persia (does that guy have a name?).

Taking the reins

At first, I thought the fighting was going to be boring. The onscreen controls say to “Press X to attack”. Sounds button mashy if there was ever buttons to mash. And that is the case, but lasts until you can start purchasing powers from the game’s vendor. X becomes X+stick movement, combo presses, and more. And that’s just for War’s sword (which is called Chaoseater, btw. How absolutely epic is that?). War can also use a scythe as a weapon that can be tossed, buzz-saw style into opponents and can be used to clear some enemies out of the way how are surrounding you. Moves are purchasable from the vendor for this weapon as well. The button system isn’t as difficult to fathom as something like Blazeblue, but I like that. It’s pretty simple and easy to get into.

The ugly side of War

There is only one real issue I have with the game and that’s the camera. If you’re climbing a wall, you can’t turn the camera around to see behind War. Sometimes goodies are floating behind him and require a couple of tries to get because you couldn’t check your jump before you did it. War’s camera is only 180°. People also complain about screen tearing – which is when as you move, the image stutters for a bit like it’s being torn off in the middle. I’m not saying that it’s not there, but I was having such a good time with Darksiders that I overlooked it and only really noticed it when I was looking for it. Despite being annoying, the camera is not a deal-breaker.

Puzzles aren’t too tough to figure out and work in much the same way as a Zelda-style game would. Hit the switch, make something else in the level happen so you can continue. Only one of them had me scratching my head, but only for about 10mins. Once I figured out how to solve it I thought it got even more excited about possibilities.

The graphics

I haven’t even touched on the art style. I would say that Vigil (the creators of this game, published by THQ) did an amazing job of designing War to be a pretty wicked bad ass. He out bad-asses Kratos IMO, likely because of my love of heavy metal album covers. War feels like he just stepped off such a cover with red cowl, flowing hair, robes, and a giant sword that can slice, dice, and combo its way through hordes of enemies like KFC through the human digestive tract. Visually everything reminds me a bit of World of Warcraft in its characters, shapes, and colours. For me, this isn’t a bad thing at all. Even though War gets stripped of his powers at the start of the game (someone needs to come up with a better way to start a game than that), you still feel like you’re able to send your enemies back to hell (or heaven).

This is the type of game I can see myself working through pretty quickly. I’m playing it on normal difficulty and have died only twice, both times caught up in the battle and not seeing my life metre going down.

Final thoughts

Highly recommended if you like 3D action games like Zelda or God of War. Kudos to Vigil – I think their first offering is a strong one. Can’t wait to finish Darksiders and see what the future holds for the series (a second was announced at E3 2010). Definitely worth putting in your collection.

This is one case where War is good for absolutely everything.