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Darksiders Review

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*With 2010 drawing to its inevitable conclusion, I figured I'd do a review of games I've managed to get my hands on during my available free time this year.  They won't necessarily be in chronological order from the months they were released-- I'm not Uncle Moneybags here.  These reviews mainly serve to address points easily glossed over by the main review sites and earn what I consider a score more justifiable than the biased ones of these sites.*

Game: Darksiders
Consoles: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Vigil Games
ESRB: Mature


January 5th was an interesting day to start off the gaming year of 2010.  It marked the release of Bayonetta, a title released from the newly formed Platinum Games under the guidance of Sega.  After building up so much hype since E3 2009 and learning that Kamiya was the director of the project, hordes of fans gathered for its midnight release at retailers everywhere.  It was a night where everyone thought the year started off great...

But this isn't about that game.  Oh no, this is about another game released on that same day, covertly garnering its own fans and sales while the Bayonetta hype kept customers distracted.  Debuting in the November 2007 issue of Game Informer, this game has displayed evolving game footage and content starting way back in E3 2007, making one final appearance in E3 2009, followed by its release on January 5th.  This covert game... was Darksiders.

Darksiders is an action/adventure title and first video game release of newly formed developer Vigil Games, headed by iconic comic artist Joe Madureira (www.joemadfan.com/gallery.html), known for his work at Marvel on Uncanny X-Men, The Ultimates 3, various concept art for (now canceled) games, magazine covers, and his own original comic series Battle Chasers (with a heavy fan-base cult following), with his unique art style influenced by manga and anime.  After some experience serving as a concept artists for past game studios, he formed Vigil Games with colleague David Adams in Austin, TX and began work on Darksiders in 2007.

STORY
The story of Darksiders is the tale of War (Liam O'Brien), one of the fabled Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  After receiving the call that the biblical Apocalypse has begun on Earth, with Heaven and Hell already at war, he quickly heads down to follow the orders established by his masters, a collective entity body called the Charred Council (Fred Tatasciore), an ancient mediator entity of sorts keeping watch between Heaven and Hell (and later on, mankind) who ultimately decide when the end of days is nigh.  However, upon his arrival, the Horseman realizes something is amiss-- he's the only one who showed up to the fight; the remaining three Horsemen aren't here.  This detrimental error proves fatal and results in the death of Abaddon (Troy Baker), Heaven's commander of the forces on Earth at the expense of his second-in-command Uriel (Moon Bloodgood) swearing vengeance upon the Horseman.  Taken back to the Council, War is stripped of his powers and declared worthy of execution but not before he persuades the Council to send him back to Earth and find out the perpetrator who caused this mess.  After consideration, the Council agrees but they don't exactly trust War and bind him to a malicious entity called the Watcher (Mark Hamill), whose orders are to kill War if he decides to go rogue.  War returns to Earth after a century has passed-- the human race is dead, Heaven's main force is still stuck on Earth, and the demonic legions of Hell have begun moving in for expansion.  Without his powers, War has to make small allegiances to ensure the success of his mission that include a demonic merchant named Vulgrim (Phil LaMarr), a Scottish troll/giant blacksmith named Ulthane (JB Blanc), and a fallen demon named Samael (Vernon Wells).  Samael sees that War is seeking the perpetrator of the Apocalypse, the Destroyer, and agrees to help War but the Horseman must help him in return-- to reach the Destroyer, War must kill his elite demon corp known as the Chosen and bring their hearts to Samael.  With no choice but to comply, War's quest for justice and revenge begins...

With Madureira as the creative director, Darksiders follows the graphic novel/comic book route.  Though it takes inspiration from the biblical Apocalypse, it gives it a comic book twist and serves as a fantasy story in a modern setting.  It does a good job of grabbing the audience's attention, but as events progress, the story sometimes causes confusion and often includes plot holes that are glossed over, much to the chagrin of the gamers.  It does make it up with a great twist near the end and numerous conspiracies that provide a satisfying conclusion; add in a good cliffhanger ending to signify a sequel and Darksiders can be a potential great franchise in the future.

DESIGN
Graphics wise, the game is good to fit the next-gen console's potential, but it's nothing groundbreaking; sadly most gamers use graphics as the primary cause for a game's ultimate success, a terrible fallacy to take up.  Madureira served as Darksiders' creative director, and his iconic art style easily transcends from pen and paper to 3D models-- stocky male protagonists with somewhat exaggerated body proportions and a wide array of fantasy monsters.  The game is essentially an interactive and cinematic graphic novel, a formula that executes well as opposed to realistic graphics to take away that comic book atmosphere.  Post-apocalyptic Earth looks fantastic as nature begins reclaiming all the man-made structures and turn them into twisted, cavernous overpasses or even a massive desert composed of the ashes of all the dead humans on Earth.  Initially, a large handful of the game's world is available and slowly unlocks as the game progresses, resulting in some good pacing despite some bland beginning and nearing end bookends (the "bland" near the end involves a dreaded backtracking scavenger hunt).

GAMEPLAY
At first glance, many gamers desperately try to run with the with "God of War clone" argument regarding Darksiders, but closer inspection shows that the game takes great inspiration from the Zelda franchise, and it shows.  As stated above, the game world starts off pretty large and as War regains his powers and new items, new areas and paths open up.  Even the dungeons follow the traditional Zelda blueprint:
>> Find the dungeon.
>> Acquire specific item at center of dungeon.
>> Use said item to solve specific puzzles in dungeon.
>> Defeat mini-boss(es) and boss using strategies involving said item.
It's not revolutionary, but it does provide familiarity and comfort, allowing anyone who's played a Zelda game to easily pick up the controller and figure it out.  However, the game's puzzles do get more challenging as players reach the boss at the end of the dungeon and often times require a little thinking outside the box to solve them-- the game's final dungeon, however, is like this from start to finish, which may discourage players greatly.  Combat-wise, Darksiders follows the simplistic fighting system of Devil May Cry with the expansive combo list seen in God of War and Ninja Gaiden; as War makes continuous use of his weapons, his lethal armaments level up and unlock new combos for purchase from Vulgrim, along with unique magic attacks called Wrath abilities that can do damage to enemies or buff up War's defense.  Weapons can also be modified by rare items known as Enhancements, found in chests on the main world and in the occasional dungeon.  These items provided status effects such as increased damage, fire elemental attacks, health leech, and so forth.  Though unique and beneficial, the Enhancements and Wrath abilities seem tacked on and not as broad as most games featuring this system; if more time was put into these two features perhaps gamers wouldn't show such disdain towards them.  Still keeping to the Zelda inspiration, War does eventually get a horse in the form of his steed Ruin, and surprisingly the controls for Ruin are simple and easy to use-- he can summoned and ridden in most areas of the game except for tunnels and dungeons.  Darksiders also takes note of Zelda's Z-targeting (focus in this game) and allows you to lock on to targets, making brawls and boss fights ever so much easier.  Weakened enemies can be defeated with a one-button pressed Cinematic Kill, but with so many variations, it would be better to see more creative kills rather than the same one for enemy types from a same monster species.  The only other weapon that can be purchased in the game is a Scythe (or via the universal pre-order code, Death's own scythe for free), which was a great irk for most gamers.

PRESENTATION
Darksiders provides a great orchestral soundtrack to accompany the ruined remains of post-apocalypse Earth.  The voice cast is a mixed bag of great and hammy-- Hamill's Watcher brings up memories of his performance as the Joker while Wells' portrays Samael as a sinister demon working on his personal motives yet holds respect for anyone willing to lend him a hand.  The Mature rating fits in the game's over-the-top graphic novel style of violence: bloody, brutal, and big.  Trivial things such as the chime of ran down parking meters result in a chuckle now and then, but the game does suffer from a share of screen tearing and the occasional bug here and then (from personal experience I never encountered these issues, though there are reports of such bugs), which worsened on the game's PC port on September 23.  The replay value is only moderate and amounts to the form of a "New Game+" onto the game's Apocalyptic difficulty, in which the only feature carried over is an unlockable armor set hidden in ten chests scattered throughout the overworld and can be assembled at any point in the storyline.

FINAL VERDICT
While Vigil decided to play safe with Darksiders, much to the annoyance of overhyped fan boys, it does seem to fit well and deliver a fun, yet familiar, experience.  Boasting a sales of 1.3 million units, THQ gave Vigil the greenlight to work on a sequel, hopefully expanding on the features of Darksiders, addressing and solving problems from the first game, and introducing new elements altogether.  Despite a somewhat confusing story, occasional bugs and tears, a somewhat timid and small combat/weapon system, Darksiders is still a great game if you're a sucker for familiarity and fun.  Vigil's IP stand outs from the usual crowd of action/adventure games by creating a smooth blend of features from nostalgic games all bundled into one package.

Overall Score: 4.5/5
You'll Like It If: you've played classic games such as Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Panzer Dragoon, etc-- the list is almost endless.
Buy, Rent, or Ignore: To be safe, give this game a rent first and see if it appeals to you; if it does, I'd recommend a purchase (now at used price) for your beloved console, or find it on Steam if you're a PC player.
Looking back on my journals, I realized a lot of my reviews on there were just taking up space. I figured I'd start submitting them as official reviews like the ones I've already got.

This first review is for a game called Darksiders, an early release back in 2010 that soon faded into obscurity with a small cult following.
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