Darksiders

If Craytos from God of War raised an adopted child with his partner Link from the Nintendo 64 Releases of Zelda - but that child's father was really Dante from Devil May Cry - that child would have gone on to inspire Vigil Games' newest release Darksiders.

Darksiders Review : from a famousblueraincoat
Played 20+ hours on Xbox360
Available for XBox360 & PS3 - ESRB: M
"Revelation of Over-Production"

Darksiders is a third-person action-adventure akin to games like God of War, Zelda or Devil May Cry. After a millennium-old truce, Angels and Demons wage war for the Kingdom of Man in the battle of Armageddon which would see the Kingdom of Men fall to either side. You play as War, the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who has been summoned to bring balance between these two powers in an attempt to prolong Man's ultimate demise.

Beginning in present day, War arrives on earth amidst an intense battle raging between Heaven and Hell. In a major skirmish between Abaddon (a Leader of the Heavenly Army) and Straga (a 'Chosen' demon of the Destroyer), Abaddon is killed. War, with the intent to maintain a balance of power, confronts Straga and is also defeated. Battered, War returns to the council stripped of his powers and accused of instigating Armageddon prematurely. The story follows War's return to a desolate Earth a full century later to vindicate himself and search for answers of why he has been summoned in the first place.

Darksiders is surprisingly enjoyable, regardless of how lame everything I've just said might seem. Although slow to start with a generic battle system and generic character development, the further I played this game the more enjoyment I seemed to be getting from it.

Granted, if it weren't for my perspective of having to review it, I might not have stuck with it. However, if you are the kind of person that enjoys environmental puzzle games and well-designed dungeons a la Zelda 64, this review is entirely a recommendation to you. This is not something you will discover in even the first few hours of playing this game, but it is by far the reason to be playing it.

It's not often that you have that puzzle-exploration feeling from a game that you find
In a dungeon, you might find a series of obstacles that seem impossible to traverse, but in your fumbling through that dungeon you discover a weapon or device that adds or alters your gameplay in such a drastic way that it becomes impossible to play the game without it. Think of the hook-shot in Ocarina of Time for N64, or the ball-form in Super Metroid on SNES.

It is the kind of game design that grants you abilities that always keep you interested by backtracking through environments, challenging you to look at them in different ways. All of this described is only found several hours in to play, and it's a somewhat slow-going process of play if you aren't the kind of person that might want to continue playing for review instead of fun.

The largest hurdle is that Darksiders is painfully generic despite its obvious care to detail in art-style. It's as though Vigil Games had one of its artists dig out their embarrassing highschool drawings and make a game out of it. Unlike so many other games out these days, in so many aspects Darksiders is OVER-produced. Making it ultimately lame, but worth a look at if you're curious.