Darksiders is a game that flew under a lot of people’s radar when it first released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The buzz around it was that it was an amalgam of God of War and The Legend of Zelda, two highly-regarded series.
You play as War, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. The seals have been broken, and the Apocalypse has descended upon Earth. War has been summoned, but finds out he has been tricked and framed by forces with ulterior motives, and the story goes from there.
The cutscenes in the opening moments are great, but some of the in-game cutscenes are hit and miss, and come off as being low-budget. The voice-acting is spotty and the volume sounds too quiet at times. As the game progresses, the voice-acting and the overall story improves. In fact, overall, everything about Darksiders gets better the further you get into it.
There are few games I’ve played that wear their influences on their sleeve the way Darksiders does. If God of War, Legend of Zelda, Prince of Persia, Devil May Cry, Diablo, and Portal (yes, Portal) fused their DNA together, it would play something like Darksiders. As a result, as a player, there’s an inclination to go into the game expecting a hodgepodge of poorly executed ideas from these different IPs that don’t work or fit well with each other – but that’s not what Darksiders delivers. In fact, far from it. Darksiders turned out to be one of the most mechanically sound third-person action games I’ve played in a long time. It may wear its influences on its sleeve, but it does justice to those influences.
Darksiders has an upgrade system very similar to God of War. When War defeats enemies, he collects souls. You can use these souls as currency to buy moves and upgrades for his weaponry and consumable items. War has a life meter, a wrath meter, and a chaos meter. As he defeats enemies, he’ll get wrath and life orbs as pick-ups, which fill his life and wrath meters. Wrath allows him to perform special moves that you can buy. The chaos meter slowly fills as he fights and take damage. When his chaos meter is full, he can turn into an uber-powerful demon and decimate enemies for a short period of time.
Much like any Zelda game, Darksiders has its fair share of puzzles, and some of them are quite elaborate. As a whole, they strike the right balance of being challenging, but not tedious or frustrating. You have areas that serve as “dungeons” similar to the dungeons in a Zelda game. Each of the dungeons has a special item you get that you need to progress, but also allows you access to earlier areas you couldn’t get to before. While the game is somewhat linear in its progression, you’re free to visit earlier areas of the game for power-ups and items you might’ve missed your first time through.
While the game does a good job of pacing the ratio of solving puzzles and combat, the combat tends to take the ‘kill-room’ approach later in the game. You solve a puzzle, you move on to the next area. The door closes, you’re sealed in, and here come the enemies. When you defeat the sequence of enemies, the doors unseal, and you can move on again. It does this a lot to the point that it becomes pretty predictable.
The three pillars of gameplay in a typical Zelda game are combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving. Darksiders has combat in spades, a healthy amount of puzzle-solving, and a decent amount of exploration. War also uses a hookshot, a boomerang weapon (crossblade), and can ride a horse very similar to Link in Legend of Zelda. He uses QTEs as finishing moves very similar to Kratos in the God of War series. He can attack up close with a sword, or from a distance with a gun, very similar to Dante in Devil May Cry. He can climb walls and slide along ledges very similar to the Prince in Prince of Persia, and he does them all very well. The controls and mechanics are fluid and easy to use. The camera is never a problem. Judging it strictly by its mechanics, Darksiders is a fantastic game. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any stretch, but it’s not trying to.
Visually, Darksiders has an animated look closer to World of Warcraft than it does any of the games it’s pulling from. It won’t blow you away with its visuals, but running at 1080p at 60 FPS, it looks great.
However, I had issues with its graphics setting in the game’s options menu:
I played all the way through the game not knowing it has screen resolution settings. Darksiders hides its screen resolution settings behind an option called Exclusive Fullscreen Mode. The game’s normal fullscreen mode the game defaults to doesn’t have any resolution settings available. For reasons I was never able to figure out, the default fullscreen mode destroyed my framerate during my whole first playthrough of the game. It’s a testament to how good the game is that it didn’t cause me to quit the game completely because it was seriously annoying. I adjusted some of my video card settings which may have helped, but my second playthrough of the game in Exclusive Fullscreen Mode was a much smoother and stable experience with everything turned up.
I have no idea why you wouldn’t have screen resolution settings front and center in your options menu. It’s one of the first things any PC gamer is going to fiddle with before they start playing. After I got it worked out, Darksiders ran like a dream.
VERDICT
Darksiders pulls from several well-known IPs and turns it into an experience that is unique, polished, mechanically sound, and satisfying to play. After I finished, I immediately wanted to start over and spend my orbs differently for a different build in a second run through the game. Darksiders is derivative in its mechanics, but extremely polished in those mechanics at the same time. It’s the heart and soul of the game and the primary reason why it should be played.
With a better story and presentation, Darksiders could’ve been not just a God of War imitator, but a serious competitor. It doesn’t quite reach the heights of any of the games it pulls from, but if you enjoy 3D action games, Darksiders: Warmastered Edition is a title you shouldn’t overlook.
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