Darksiders Review

January 13th, 2010

I'm very proud to say that Vigil Games has crafted their best action-adventure title to date. You play as the powerful character "War" (seriously, how bad ass is that name?) who was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Basically all hell breaks loose and the battle of Armageddon begins. With the world destroyed, War finds himself caught in the middle of the battle between angels and demons. He was misled into starting the final battle, which in turn leaves him confused, angry, and powerless.  Upon his return to earth, War discovers that he had been gone for about 100 years.  All the humans have been killed and Hell won the final battle.  This is where the story picks up and the adventure begins.

The art direction in this game is outstanding. This is what the earth would look like if hell took over. The design work on things such as various environments, characters, and weapons are very well done.  The level design is pretty solid and keeps you entertained and entrenched.  War is a very heavy character with no cheesy lines, and personality traits that make all heroes great.  Get in his way and you get destroyed.  The menu system is clean and very easy to understand. The map does a good job keeping you going in the right direction and back tracking for bonuses if necessary. The save system in the game works the way it should and the checkpoint system keeps the game flowing as it is done correctly allowing you to continue almost right where you died instead of having you waste another ten minutes trying to get to the same point.

There are a lot of challenges in the game that keep you wanting to succeed and move forward instead of frustrating you.  There are some pretty cool puzzles that give you a nice break from the regular game action, disallowing things from getting too dull.  There are no quicktime events where you wait to mash a button continuously; just straight deaths of all enemies and bosses once you have dispatched them.  You'll be swimming and engaging in underwater combat, traveling through portals, witnessing unreal remarkable landmarks, enjoying some classic platforming, discovering tons of secrets (which reward you nicely), slowing down time to advance or easily take out enemies, and grappling for dear life.  Upgrading both your character, weapons, and power moves only get better as you play along.  The process involves collecting souls, finding secrets, taking names, and kicking ass.  There is also unlimited ammo and weapon use, giving you one less thing to worry about.

The voice acting is one of the things I enjoyed the most here.  Mark Hamill is a voice-acting extraordinaire at this point in his career, and he brings a very recognizable element to one of the game's most memorable characters, “The Watcher”.  Liam O'Brien also puts forth a great effort as "War".

Darksiders also pays significant attention to direction. The cut scenes are truly wonderful, informative, and entertaining. Beautiful visuals are complimentary to the style and depth with every camera angle, including the smooth transitions. The music is very fitting and at times, very powerful.  Darksiders also brings forth a dimension of unpredictability.  It's a long adventurous game with hundreds of unique environments and massive lands to conquer.  We highly recommend Darksiders to any gamer that wants an epic action adventure game with a great lead character.  It is in many ways like God of War, yet in so many ways different. It remains true to itself and keeps the experience as original as possible.



 

Submitted by: theprofessor29