I just recently finished Darksiders on the Xbox 360 and I must agree with the critics that this game doesn’t really offer anything new to gamers in general. It doesn’t mean that the game is bad though! As a matter of fact, I really liked many of the areas of gameplay, many of which really challenged my skills.
First, I must say that I fought through this on the hardest difficulty, Apocalyptic. The platformer genre is usually always on the easier side of gameplay nowadays, so if you want to strengthen your weapons to their highest ability and have a real challenge, play it on Apocalyptic. The story centers on the main protagonist, War, who never drops the badass attitude and isn’t scared to get a little blood on his hands time and time again. While the story was interesting, it certainly wasn’t anything that stood out among the crowd, nor will I think that this game’s story will be remembered the same way others in its generation will.
The control is pretty top-notch with great response and hit detection. My only complaint was the lag in jumping when running toward an edge, but it wasn’t anything that truly ruined gameplay. The weapons are all pretty much taken straight from other games, like Zelda, Devil May Cry, and Portal. While many have spoke about Darksiders as directly ripping off Portal’s concept, one can’t just place a portal anywhere and the idea of gravity doesn’t exist like it does in Portal. Major disappointment when I found that out.
The achievements in the game aren’t really anything that makes the gameplay any better and a lot of them really involve grinding in order to get the achievement, while others happen by literally just playing through the game. For any achievement hoarder, finishing the game on the Apocalyptic setting nets you a sweet 280 points instantly that kind of makes you feel nice in that little empty part of yourself. Overall, while it didn’t offer anything new, it was still a cool game to play but I’d make it more of a rental than a full purchase. Hopefully this has taught the developers at Vigil a thing or two about storytelling in games. Perhaps we’ll see something a little more original in the future from them!
Freshfully Rad 