What do you get when you put together DMC combat, OOT-like world design, weird controls, impenetrable lore and progression systems and a map you can't zoom? A pretty fun little adventure game it turns out.
I always forget Darksiders isn't an Xbox first party franchise; it's just got that look. It feels like it exists in the same world as Killer Instinct and Gears of War. Everyone has massive limbs, sword blades are six inches thick, everything is pointy, and the weapons and environments all have that heavy metal "put a bunch of skulls on it" aesthetic.
I heard a cool interview with a couple of the guys behind this game and basically they had never made anything like it before. This is apparent when you play it, but in both good and bad ways. It's bad because everything needs some more polish and there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed. There are simply way too many mechanics; actually there's really too much of everything. Puzzles always have twice as many steps as it feels like they should and battles tend to outstay their welcome with wave after wave of spongy baddies. The environments are all kind of lackluster, and I think if they were smaller and there were fewer of them, they could have given them a lot more attention.
It's kind of like... you know that new season of Twin Peaks where nobody ever told David Lynch "no"? This is like that; an unfiltered glimpse into the creator's brain because it's hard to imagine much of anything being left on the cutting room floor.
At the same time, it is admirable how committed this game is to its goals. The character action combat feels very nice (although I would have appreciated a couple more moves). The environmental and traversal puzzles are no joke; some of the "guide the beam of light through corridors" puzzles felt like they took over an hour. If that is your bag, Darksiders is 110% ready to fill it. There are a million different character interactions and affordances. I was constantly going "Wow I'm doing this now?"
Mostly due to the terrible maps, there were quite a few times I got hopelessly lost. That, the incredibly long puzzles and the combat tuning were the main points of friction I experienced. When the game was firing on all cylinders, though, I really was having a blast.
Apparently I'm on some kind of Mark Hamill kick; I just finished the Batman game a few days ago and here he is again hamming (Hamill-ing?) it up alongside the fantastic Liam O'Brian of Naruto and Warcraft fame and Phil LaMarr from Futurama and a million other things. Everyone's having a great time and it helped me get past the rougher spots and learn to love the game for what it has to offer.
It's got gusto! And gusto goes a long way with me.
I always forget Darksiders isn't an Xbox first party franchise; it's just got that look. It feels like it exists in the same world as Killer Instinct and Gears of War. Everyone has massive limbs, sword blades are six inches thick, everything is pointy, and the weapons and environments all have that heavy metal "put a bunch of skulls on it" aesthetic.
I heard a cool interview with a couple of the guys behind this game and basically they had never made anything like it before. This is apparent when you play it, but in both good and bad ways. It's bad because everything needs some more polish and there's a lot of fat that could be trimmed. There are simply way too many mechanics; actually there's really too much of everything. Puzzles always have twice as many steps as it feels like they should and battles tend to outstay their welcome with wave after wave of spongy baddies. The environments are all kind of lackluster, and I think if they were smaller and there were fewer of them, they could have given them a lot more attention.
It's kind of like... you know that new season of Twin Peaks where nobody ever told David Lynch "no"? This is like that; an unfiltered glimpse into the creator's brain because it's hard to imagine much of anything being left on the cutting room floor.
At the same time, it is admirable how committed this game is to its goals. The character action combat feels very nice (although I would have appreciated a couple more moves). The environmental and traversal puzzles are no joke; some of the "guide the beam of light through corridors" puzzles felt like they took over an hour. If that is your bag, Darksiders is 110% ready to fill it. There are a million different character interactions and affordances. I was constantly going "Wow I'm doing this now?"
Mostly due to the terrible maps, there were quite a few times I got hopelessly lost. That, the incredibly long puzzles and the combat tuning were the main points of friction I experienced. When the game was firing on all cylinders, though, I really was having a blast.
Apparently I'm on some kind of Mark Hamill kick; I just finished the Batman game a few days ago and here he is again hamming (Hamill-ing?) it up alongside the fantastic Liam O'Brian of Naruto and Warcraft fame and Phil LaMarr from Futurama and a million other things. Everyone's having a great time and it helped me get past the rougher spots and learn to love the game for what it has to offer.
It's got gusto! And gusto goes a long way with me.