- Nov 16, 2006
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As I play through my backlog of games, I've often wondered why I always end up feeling so strongly about the games I play. I either really love them, instant classics, hidden gems, wow where has this been all my life. Or they don't really do anything for me, and I drop them after playing for a few hours.
Darksiders was weird. I played, and ultimately completed the game, clocked about 20 hours in the game all told. 70% achievement completion on one run through. No idea if I had fun or not. Wasn't deeply engaged with the story. Gameplay was just sort of... there. But I didn't stop and I didn't go find something else to play. I kept pushing forward.
Quick premise: You're War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Somehow, the apocalypse was triggered outside of its prophesied time and armagedon has been unleashed on Earth, heaven and hell engage in the ultimate battle. You are implicated in this colossal screw-up, stripped of your powers as punishment, and then sent back to Earth hundreds of years after the apocalypse and the extinction of the human race to discover what went wrong. How a game can start with such an awesome concept and then do basically nothing with it, well, anyhow...
The game is a kind of genre mash-up between a hack n' slash and a Metriodvania, but in my opinion kind of falls short everywhere, although everything is executed competently.
As a hack n' slash, the game is just feels too cooped up and slow, with too many rules and buttons and combos and weapons and etc etc etc piled on top of each other to the point where you eventually just keep pushing the standard attack and the dodge button to essentially win the entire game. Most of the standard combat encounters get absurdly dull after a while, which must be why War's "Chaos form" become invulnerable and get out of combat free ability was included in the game. The boss battles are actually entertaining and reasonably well designed, requiring some thought and movement, and typically requiring you to use the new weapon or ability acquired in their respective dungeon to beat them.
As a Metroidvania, the game is another mixed bag. Some items and abilities very obviously call back to previous sections of the game that make you think "hey now I can go back and access that area" and are reasonably well designed staples of the genre (like the hookshot), while others are absurdly scenario specific and could have really been replaced with just a cutscene (the horn to move the giant stone guys who sadly disappear after the first 3rd of the game, or the ridiculous "soul bridge" that is literally used once in the game to access a mandatory area are two that immediately jump to mind). The game's visual design is extremely cluttered, there are plenty of invisible walls all over the place, and the "treasure hunt" portion of the game is either fairly obvious or obscured beyond reason which makes the "go back and actually find secrets" part of the gameplay tedious and unrewarding.
The game did have some bright moments in terms of some of its staging, showing War wheeling and dealing with both the forces of hell and heaven to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. Unfortunately, however, even many of the side characters were sort of one note and stereotypical with some notable exceptions (Ulfric the Scottish Demon Forgemaster and Samael the demon plotting against the main boss character were better written than most). War himself had all the personality of a brick, there must have been some better way of doing the whole stoic-murder-machine thing than the whole speak in one word sentences kinda thing.
At the end of it all, Darksiders is really a 7/10. Its a well made game, looks good, runs well. The controls work. There is a ton of stuff crammed in there. Someone clearly tried for a plot and story and the whole thing sort of flows logically forward. Collectathon folks should be happy. DmC folks should be happy. Metriodvania people should be happy. But at the end of the day, it was kinda just... meh. Like they had three different teams working on the game and they're all good at what they do, but they just couldn't instill the individual parts that were sewn together to make this game wake up with the spark of life.
As a final note, the game ran well on my laptop (i7 8th gen + GTX 1050) and naturally held up at 1440p144hz on my sig rig with no problems. Only had one minor crash (this was the "Warmastered Edition") but otherwise the game was stable as a rock.
I have DS2 in my library and will get around to it eventually as the game ends on the verge of discovering some sort of larger mystery, but I'm in no rush to fire it right up.
Darksiders was weird. I played, and ultimately completed the game, clocked about 20 hours in the game all told. 70% achievement completion on one run through. No idea if I had fun or not. Wasn't deeply engaged with the story. Gameplay was just sort of... there. But I didn't stop and I didn't go find something else to play. I kept pushing forward.
Quick premise: You're War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Somehow, the apocalypse was triggered outside of its prophesied time and armagedon has been unleashed on Earth, heaven and hell engage in the ultimate battle. You are implicated in this colossal screw-up, stripped of your powers as punishment, and then sent back to Earth hundreds of years after the apocalypse and the extinction of the human race to discover what went wrong. How a game can start with such an awesome concept and then do basically nothing with it, well, anyhow...
The game is a kind of genre mash-up between a hack n' slash and a Metriodvania, but in my opinion kind of falls short everywhere, although everything is executed competently.
As a hack n' slash, the game is just feels too cooped up and slow, with too many rules and buttons and combos and weapons and etc etc etc piled on top of each other to the point where you eventually just keep pushing the standard attack and the dodge button to essentially win the entire game. Most of the standard combat encounters get absurdly dull after a while, which must be why War's "Chaos form" become invulnerable and get out of combat free ability was included in the game. The boss battles are actually entertaining and reasonably well designed, requiring some thought and movement, and typically requiring you to use the new weapon or ability acquired in their respective dungeon to beat them.
As a Metroidvania, the game is another mixed bag. Some items and abilities very obviously call back to previous sections of the game that make you think "hey now I can go back and access that area" and are reasonably well designed staples of the genre (like the hookshot), while others are absurdly scenario specific and could have really been replaced with just a cutscene (the horn to move the giant stone guys who sadly disappear after the first 3rd of the game, or the ridiculous "soul bridge" that is literally used once in the game to access a mandatory area are two that immediately jump to mind). The game's visual design is extremely cluttered, there are plenty of invisible walls all over the place, and the "treasure hunt" portion of the game is either fairly obvious or obscured beyond reason which makes the "go back and actually find secrets" part of the gameplay tedious and unrewarding.
The game did have some bright moments in terms of some of its staging, showing War wheeling and dealing with both the forces of hell and heaven to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. Unfortunately, however, even many of the side characters were sort of one note and stereotypical with some notable exceptions (Ulfric the Scottish Demon Forgemaster and Samael the demon plotting against the main boss character were better written than most). War himself had all the personality of a brick, there must have been some better way of doing the whole stoic-murder-machine thing than the whole speak in one word sentences kinda thing.
At the end of it all, Darksiders is really a 7/10. Its a well made game, looks good, runs well. The controls work. There is a ton of stuff crammed in there. Someone clearly tried for a plot and story and the whole thing sort of flows logically forward. Collectathon folks should be happy. DmC folks should be happy. Metriodvania people should be happy. But at the end of the day, it was kinda just... meh. Like they had three different teams working on the game and they're all good at what they do, but they just couldn't instill the individual parts that were sewn together to make this game wake up with the spark of life.
As a final note, the game ran well on my laptop (i7 8th gen + GTX 1050) and naturally held up at 1440p144hz on my sig rig with no problems. Only had one minor crash (this was the "Warmastered Edition") but otherwise the game was stable as a rock.
I have DS2 in my library and will get around to it eventually as the game ends on the verge of discovering some sort of larger mystery, but I'm in no rush to fire it right up.
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