I’m on a streak writing reviews for games I’ve been playing, so now it’s time for one that I think deserves a closer look: Darksiders. A lot of reviews will compare this to other games such as Zelda and Metroid, which may be enough to get you excited, but don’t listen too much to these because Darksiders definitely puts the pieces together in an interesting way.
For the most part the game is a cycle of fighting tons of dudes, getting a new move or gadget, and solving a puzzle on your way to a boss fight. It works out well because the combat is pretty mashy with just enough variation built in to keep you trying new things, the puzzles mostly make sense, and your are given new toys regularly enough to keep you from getting too bored. Pacing, pacing, pacing, it’s a mantra that more games should think of using.
Boss fights have always been one of my favorite part of games and Darksiders has some pretty good ones, especially the final one. Full disclosure, I did play the game on hard (points!) and was starting to get mad at the final boss, but managed to calm down, learn the pattern and the proceeded to crush him almost without taking a hit. It manages to walk that fine line between challenging and fun pretty well and there weren’t any parts of the game that proved to be too hard once you play around with the various tools that you have. I found myself enjoying the learning process because I felt like ihad genuine options and wasn’t just trying to find the way to cheese te game.
Single button combat has never worked so well for me. It’s really somewhat surprising the amount of moves they crammed into only using the x button for attack. There are plenty of upgrades and plenty of special attacks and secondary weapons so you can experiment and find your own style, which is nice. A mistake that a lot of action games make is that they try to get too technical and force you into a single way of fighting, I was really glad to play in my own demented way and have the game allow it. For example I’m not a huge fan of blocking when a dodge is available and managed to make it through the game blocking maybe 10 times total.
Darksiders is not without problems though, it felt a bit boxed in at times and didn’t really utilize the world as well as they could have. It also felt a little padded at times with arena challenges that would have worked just as well in a separate mode. On the whole you get the sense that a kitchen sink approach was used and that there was a lot of experimentation, which led to a slight bit of jankyness, but nothing that would dilute the experience.
Darksiders is an example of the kinds of games I wish there were more of; solid, well-rounded experiences that don’t over-extend themselves. It also has one of the better endings in recent memory, managed to get me really pumped up for the inevitable sequel. Bottom line: play this game.
