Darksiders is an action adventure game developed by Vigil Games. Putting you in the shoes of 'War', one of the four hoursemen of the apocalypse, players must unravel the mystery of why War was wrongly sent down to Earth. Does this ambitious title really kick off the year with a bang, or fall flat?
The story of the game revolves around War. The apocalypse takes place before its time, with the humans being far too weak to fight back resulting in their extinction. War is wrongly called in to provide the balance, however his 3 horsemen companions are not. This therefore causes him to fall on his knees in front of the council who point the blame at him. After being stripped of his powers and abilities, War of course refuses to take this lying down and offers to seek out the one who caused this premature apocalypse.
The game kicks off with a very good first impression. Fighting Demons and Angels through the city streets whilst destruction takes place all around is a pretty interesting spectacle in itself. Straight away the game does away with the usual good guy bad guy conventions and, as previously stated, you not only fight Demons... but Angels too. This is because War takes no sides, and as a result ends up with quite an interesting experience in the variety of enemies in the game. That said, Vigil do repeat enemies a few times throughout the game with tougher versions. The story in Darksiders is interesting and certainly keeps the experience flowing throughout it's generous 15-18 hour experience, however never really comes into it's own until the final hours.
The game's combat is extremely simple yet relatively deep. With the X button being used as your standard sword attack, Y for your secondary weapon, A to jump, B to do a grapple finisher and RB for dodging/blocking. The system ends up being instantly familiar and also extremely fun when you chain together a series of attacks only to end things with a brutal finisher. That said, I did encounter a few issues with the game not being as intuitive as I'd liked with it quite simply not registering my command to block, causing some frustration. As you travel through the game you'll gain Blue souls from killing enemies. These can then be used as currency to purchase new moves, weapon upgrades and abilities. Collect enough Yellow souls and unleash a powerful Fury move. Do enough damage to raise your Chaos meter and unleash your Chaos form at the touch of a button, to lay waste to any enemies in your way. By the end of the game, with some skill, you'll end up being a complete lean mean killing machine.
The game's progression is extremely familiar to that of Metroid/Castlevania with a dash of Zelda thrown in. As you progress through the game you'll come across combat zones, puzzle areas and overworlds. War will constantly be gaining his equipment and abilities back as you go through the game, opening up new paths within old areas and allowing you to solve some interesting puzzles. At the end of each of the areas you'll be faced with some pretty tough boss battles which will almost certainly require a few tries before you understand the routine and how to beat it. Satisfyingly Vigil have thrown in some absolutely awesome finishers. Doing away with silly quicktime events, you simply hit the B button upon being prompted and sit back to watch the gruesome yet truly fantastic finishing moves. It's all wonderfully designed.
Graphically the game looks reasonably pretty. There are some noticable screen tearing issues in the 360 version, however Vigil says these are easy to fix and a patch will be issued ASAP, plus it's worth noting these never ruin the experience. The framerate remains extremely steady even with an absolute ton of stuff taking place on the screen at one time, and only happens to chug slightly in one or two occasions. Nevertheless visually the game looks great. The character and art design in the game is all done extremely well, offering a very 'comic book' style. The audio in Darksiders has been put together fairly well. Alongside some pretty solid voicework, Mark Hamill lends his vocal talents in the game as the Watcher. Sadly the music never really stands out, however does its job to keep the action feeling 'right'.
Overall Darksiders is a complete and utter surprise. I don't think anyone could have predicted just how well the title would turn out. The whole game takes elements from other titles and merges them together to form a completely cohesive solid experience. The game is fantastically paced and will keep you interested from start to finish. The combat, although simple when compared to other pure combat games in the genre, is extremely satisfying and robust. Finally, the story won't win any awards however offers a pretty interesting tale, which all comes together in the end to provide gamers with one of the most kickass endings seen in a long time. Darksiders has its issues and certainly its downfalls, yet really comes together as the sum of it's parts. What a great start to 2010.
Darksiders gets an official Game-Pad 8.8/10
Average Press Score according to TestFreaks: 9.0/10
Update: Since this review was written the patch has now been deployed to fix the screen tearing issues.
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