Darksiders is a game that has taken me a fairly substantial period of time to develop a review for… I would like to have been able to say that this is due to me having been so engrossed in playing the game that I merely have had no time to even think about a review. Sadly, this couldn’t be further from the truth. I haven’t been able to review it until now because it has taken me until today to muster up the desire to play enough to even warrant me writing a review about it. This lack of interest isn’t something that I generally have trouble with as a gamer, so it’s necessary for me to explain what made me feel this way about Darksiders.
The game’s story focuses upon War, one out of four of the eponymous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. After a prolonged and contrived introductory sequence, our protagonist is thrust into a cartoony version of modern New York, during what seems to be the Apocalypse. Screaming humans, explosions, lava, angels and varying sizes of demon are rife and War sets about smiting pretty much anything that he crosses paths with. In these opening sequences, Darksiders is guilty of one of my least favourite video-game crimes of recent times: allowing you to begin with all your über-awesome health, mana and powers (a la Prototype) and then stripping you of them and leaving you feeling like a friggin’ wuss-bag weakling failure.
Perhaps it’s my history of playing RPGs, but I feel that a character’s strength and power in video-games is something that should be developed and earned over time by playing the game, not dangled in front of your face like a proverbial carrot as an incentive to compel you to continue playing the game.
After a large boss battle, involving the throwing of car, War is summoned to an audience with the powers-that-be (in this case, some caves with faces) and accused of bringing about an early end-of-the-world. He is stripped of his powers but begs for a chance to redeem himself and is given the opportunity to return to Earth, a century after the apocalypse, to restore order. He is forced to have another being (known as the Watcher) accompany him. Even the voice talent of Mark Hamill isn’t enough to stop him being an annoying little incorporeal git, though. Believe me, you’ll get extremely tired of his snide ‘advice’ in a relatively short time period. Upon returning to Earth, you find a broken, dirty, hell-hole (literally) of a city, populated by demons and zombies.
Unfortunately, it’s at this point that the game began a steady decline, in my opinion. The main plot-line of trying to find ‘The Dark One’ (presumably Satan, although this game enjoys being vague) in order to kill him, exact your revenge and restore the Earth just holds no interest for me. It’s just too clichèd and not unique enough. The battles soon become boring and repetitive, comprising of the same combat-buttonmashing and quick-time events against enemies that simply aren’t varied enough. It does get quite old quite quickly. A variety of other reviewers have summed this game up as a poor-man’s God of War and it’s quite easy to see why. The levelling and menu system is awkward and too similar to many other games of this genre. I had hoped for something more individual.
In addition to the poor combat aspects of the game, I feel that it also comes in below par graphically. Coming out only a couple of weeks before Dante’s Inferno, a game of similar ilk, it’s chunky cartoony styling just doesn’t stand up well. Also – and this isn’t something that I would usually point out and I don’t enjoy doing so – for the first time since I made the step up from SD to HD gaming, I noticed major frame rate issues and near constant ‘clipping’ problems (e.g., certain areas of the image movement not keeping up with the rest). On occasion, this combined with lip-syncing issues during cut-scenes and really impeded my ability to enjoy the game.
It would be hard to imagine Darksiders having any kind of longevity. It follows too linear a route and each and every battle that you have will be extremely similar to the last. Even when you find yourself battling a boss, the same tried-and-tested routine of throwing something, waiting for injury and then attacking falls into place. Honestly, it all becomes a frustrating chore and that’s not how I want to be feeling when I play a game.
I consider myself to be a fairly patient individual and I believe that it is fair for me to say that it would take someone considerably more patient than myself to really get a wholly enjoyable experience from Darksiders. My own personal recommendation is that if you’re looking for an interesting new hack’n'slash experience, you would be wise to save your hard-earned cash, give this game a miss and patiently await the upcoming release of God of War III on the PS3 or run out and buy Dante’s Inferno on Xbox 360 or PS3 (Coincidentally released today – 5th Feb. 2010 – and set to be my next review for BfF!).
