Developed by Vigil Games and published by THQ in North America, Darksiders is an action adventure title released in January 2010. Considering it came out at the same time as Bayonetta, it seems fighting angels may be all the rage this year!
Reviews and responses to the game are very quick to point out how similar the action aspect of the game is to God of War, and the adventure aspects similar to Zelda games. This is accurate but it doesn’t tell the whole story, and it ignores how well Vigil has crafted an original title out of numerous familiar gaming elements.
The game’s backstory involves war between the armies of Heaven and Hell. In order to maintain balance, the Creator of the universe left a Council to mediate between the powers. This Charred Council realizes the potential of mankind to eventually be a third force in the conflict, so it uses the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse as vengeful agents of balance to preserve order until the appointed time when the world of humans is ready for the final battle.
You play as War, one of the Four Horsemen, and at the start of the game you find that the apocalypse has already begun and Hell’s forces are taking over Earth. The other three Horsemen are conspicuously absent, and when you encounter the angels of the Hellguard, you discover that the Seventh Seal has not been broken, which means you were summoned to Earth prematurely.
The game takes this time to introduce you to the basics of combat; it is mostly these elements that draw comparison to God of War. The protagonist War wields a gigantic sword named Chaoseater; you have only basic moves at first but are able to upgrade your abilities through souls gained by defeating enemies. Blue souls act as the game’s currency, yellow souls give Wrath, which is like magic, and green souls restore health. Damaging enemies grants weapon-specific XP, with each weapon having 4 levels and each level increasing damage dealt. When near death, enemies display a big icon which lets you know
you can get close and hit B to finish them off quickly.
Your main form of defense is a quick ground dash. You gain the ability to block and counter after progressing through the story. War also has a Chaos meter that is filled by damaging enemies with his sword. When it is full, you can activate Chaos Mode which temporarily transforms you into a big demon that is invulnerable and does heavy damage.
You can purchase your first secondary weapon, the scythe, from the game’s merchant, Vulgrim. He also allows you to exchange found artifacts for more blue souls and spend them on upgrades, Wrath powers and consumables. His locations act as quick-travel nodes later in the game.
The rest of the game’s secondary weapons and special abilities all come from either progressing in the story or opening certain chests. The major weapons are your sword, the scythe, and a gauntlet you get later--each has a slot which can be filled with discs you find. Slottable bonuses include increased weapon damage, health leeching, added elemental effects or greater amounts of souls gained from defeated foes. The best part of this is that the enhancement discs can be moved around freely and slotting isn’t permanent.
There are 4 Wrath powers in the game. You begin with Blade Geyser which is a strong area-of-effect attack, and you can later purchase Stoneskin which adds a major bonus to defense and a minor bonus to offense, Immolation which sets nearby enemies afire, and an Affliction Plague which does strong damage over time. You can also spend blue souls to upgrade these multiple times, but they are surprisingly effective even at level 1.
There is also a collection of other weapons and items you will use both to fight and to get around the world. There is a gun for juggling monsters, a crossblade that can be locked-on to ricochet between multiple enemies, and a hooked chain that you can use to pull small monsters towards you or grapple into larger foes. Later in the game, you even get a portal-launching glove. Yes, like that Portal: two at a time, one’s blue and one’s orange. Finally, there’s a set of advanced armor that is split in to 10 pieces you collect as you go. The final piece is only available during the end portion of the game, but if you collect the entire set you can take it in to a New Game+.
Game and story progression are mostly linear at first, but once you have explored an area you can return at any time and use new-found items or abilities to access things you could see but not get to before. You make your way through different areas via a combination of combat, exploration, and light puzzle solving. It is this “overworld/dungeon” system, along with some of the specific items and weapons, that draw comparisons to Legend of Zelda games. Being that you’re a Horseman of the Apocalypse, you even get a horsey, although not until about 2/3 through the game. Your horse, Ruin, is not only a fun way to get around, but it lets you take massive sword swipes at enemies for huge amounts of damage. Mounted combat even plays a role in some major boss battles.
Visually, Darksiders gets high marks. The graphics are sharp and surprisingly colourful. Characters are big and bulky thanks to Joe Madureira’s art style. There is a good variety of scrub monsters, angels and demons, although some later grunts are only a notch above palette-swaps, and most of the bosses are huge and well-animated. Some of the environments and architecture are bland while others are beautiful, but overall there is a great assortment between the ruined cityscapes, murky dungeons, baroque cathedrals, waterlogged swamps and even a sprawling desert. The game’s framerate is solid, and the severe screen tearing has been completely fixed via a patch.
Sound-wise, Darksiders contains some excellent voice work from most of the cast, including Mark Hamill and Phil LaMarr, but I found Liam O’Brien’s voice work as War to be a little bit irritating, though not enough to detract from the experience. I especially like the heavy brogue of the character Ulthane. Sound effects are adequate (I really like the schinkt! of the scythe), and the musical score is really good and atmospheric but almost too subdued most of the time.
Gameplay is where rough edges start to show. The block move only works with smaller, weaker monsters, and the timing window for the counter is very slight, so you are left with only the dash for effective defense. The problem is that there is a brief startup animation and an even longer cooldown, so it takes a lot of time and practice to get the hang of dodging attacks effectively. Most of the time you are better off dashing forward to go past a monster’s attack, rather than back away from it as many foes can catch you easily. The dash also doesn’t move you very far, there is a huge delay when you try to do
multiple dashes in a row, and if you happen to run in to a big monster or a piece of architecture, you are usually knocked straight back and sometimes even brought to a dead stop.
This is all very bad news on higher difficulties as enemies do absurd amounts of damage and, as with 99% of third person games out there, you have to fight with the camera during intense combat. The enemy lock-on feature can hinder as much as it helps.
My other problem is with the way the inventory is handled. You only have 4 assignable buttons that have to be shared between Wrath powers, secondary weapons, and consumable items. It doesn’t help that restorative items are vastly overpriced and usually don’t return when you reload after dying. You only ‘respawn’ with about half of your maximum health, so there will be times when you have to bite the bullet and consume an expensive Life Essence to avoid restarting a long sequence.
There are 2 very specific gameplay elements that I really, really liked. First, the 'Chaos Mode' transformation is very useful and happens pretty frequently. Most games I play that have a 'super mode' you can unleash either don't make it super enough, or else it's too infrequent to actually be helpful. War's does supreme damage, and you can easily refill your meter in a pinch by using hit-and-run tactics with Chaoseater. Second, this game actually has a hurry the #@$% up button for when you're climbing & shimmying! Yep, you can use your dash to speed up the usually slow sections that require you to go hand-over-hand on a rope, shimmy past a narrow ledge or climb a tall section.
There are 3 difficulties, all selectable from the outset: Easy, Normal, and Apocalyptic. Most reviewers have clocked the game at about 15 hours for a single playthrough, presumably on Normal. I started on Apocalyptic and my final save file was just over 19 hours, but I also took the time to do a little grinding. Unless you are in a big hurry, I don’t recommend starting on Apocalyptic. Instead, play on Easy or Normal first to get the hang of combat and collect all the pieces of the Abyssal Armor, which you can then take in to your new game on a higher difficulty.
Achievements in the game are almost all story- and progress-related. Completion of each difficulty does stack with lower ones. Easy is worth 10Gs, and Normal and Apocalyptic are each worth 100Gs. Getting the full 1000G from Darksiders won’t be too difficult but it will take time as you’ll have to find all Lifeshards and Wrathshards and completely upgrade every weapon and ability.
Overall, I give Darksiders an 8/10.
Its strengths lie in the varied mix of action and adventure, the clever nature of most of the puzzles, and the sense of progression that comes with frequently obtaining new items and methods of getting around.
Its weakness lies mainly in the fundamentally repetitive nature of the combat, but the amount of time it takes to obtain full power and abilities is also a factor.
I definitely recommend this as a rental to fans of action games, adventure games, and even just folks that want an original character with an interesting story in a game that presents a great variety of stuff to do between fighting. As for purchase/replay factor, that really depends on if you are willing to play through it twice and find everything in every level which becomes almost a meta-game once you have reached the climax of the story.
