This may be short because it’s pretty simple: Darksiders is a gamer’s game. It takes elements of God of War, Zelda, Soul Reaver, Metroid, Panzer Dragoon, Portal, and gives you an enjoyable experience. If you don’t like the game and call yourself a gamer…I just don’t get it. Let me break it down a bit.
The game’s main game-play element is God of War style action. The game world is centered around a hub-like structure, similar to the recent Wolfenstien. What some call dungeons, I call ‘levels’. There’s not a real over-world, so you use various checkpoints to go from level to level. Or travel on your own if you wish. Like Metroid, you gain items that let you progress. Sometimes you can go back to a previous area and get a hidden item that was out of reach. Upgrades are insane, which are allowed for your weapons, your other weapons, your health and armor, and special abilities. Boss battles are big and epic, and you get to ride a flaming horse. This game has it all.
What helps make this game-play fun is the world. The design of the characters are just awesome. I’m not knowledgeable on comic book artists, but Joe Mad is creative director on the game…which shines through more than most games with original IP. I mean, I want some action figures of these badasses! Especially Samael. The story is rather enjoyable as well. It’s a take on Christian mythology, which from the medium, hasn’t really been done much if at all (that’s usually a touchy subject in this age…How do you think the Greeks might have thought of God of War?). Voice-work is awesome too, which helps drive the story. Mark Hamill is in it, so, that’s always a plus.
Now, it isn’t without its faults. The only issues I really had with the game are very minor. The controls feel like they could have been tighter, although this is a development process that may take a few games before being refined. The controls are easy and fluid, but there is something there that sets it apart from, say, the controls of God of War. I also got pissed at jumps. Now, this may be a wireless controller lag issue, but a lot of times jumps would delay and I’d fall to my death. Again, this could be the hardware as I feel Left 4 Dead 2 suffers bad from lag, yet everyone and their Mom writes this game home as the be-all-end-all multiplayer game – that I don’t agree with.
I guess that’s getting beyond the point…but to the point: Any little issues are so minor (and no game is perfect) that this game does deserve a perfect score because it needs to be played. Cool thing is that this is a first time game from Vigil studios. That says a lot and I hope it means more titles in the future. They’re working on an MMO right now, which I don’t play anyway, but I’m sure something else will crop up. I need to add that seeing review scores for this game make me laugh. It’s getting high scores…but this is just a game that, despite any flaws, is just so fun that it needs no less than a perfect score. I would never tell a gamer to avoid this game. Like I said before, this is a gamer’s game. It encompasses everything that makes gaming fun, sets it on fire, slaps your face, and gives you an enema.
Conclusion: Buy it. If strapped of funds, rent or borrow. Stealing might be accepted as long as you’re not stealing it from a gamer playing it.
