N-Philes

XBOX 360 REVIEW – Darksiders

Posted January 25th 2010 by Will Davey.

Darksiders is a game that is, for the most part, made up of ideas from other games. This action-adventure title's overall structure is scarily similar to that of The Legend of Zelda series, and you'll see plenty of similarites to the Devil May Cry series in the combat system. However, rather than flat-out copying them, Darksiders simply embraces these mechanics and places them in an environment and setting that you've never see them in before. It's for that reason that playing something that you already have in another game isn't a bad thing, but rather a modern take on a classic idea.

The story for Darksiders is actually unique, so it's a shame that it can be hard to follow during certain sections of the game. You take on the role of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and your job is to pick up the pieces of a catastrophe that wiped out the human race. The major problem here is that you've been framed for the whole thing, and the forces of both Heaven and Hell are out to get you for it. It's a great revenge story as War has to try and not only clear his own name, but destroy whoever put him through all of it. Several scenes do explain a lot of the story, but it's the sections before and after those that don't really explain a lot, and it's these moments that made the story seem quite underwhelming.

After starting this post-apocalyptic adventure, you'll find out that you have to collect several items to progress further on into the game. To do this, you'll be sent across various different locations and into several different dungeons. It's in these dungeons where you'll find the references to other franchises, particularly the Zelda franchise, much less subtle than you think. The enjoyable mix of combat and puzzle-solving make these dungeons very enjoyable to play through, and although the puzzles start out easy, they do get more difficult later on in the game. Still, throughout these clever, puzzle-filled sections, you'll end up finding a new key item that'll help you through the rest of the area, and will also be key to defeating the boss at the end of the dungeon. Once you're done, you teleport out, and you're onto your next task. Sound familiar?

Luckily the combat is good fun, which is a plus, as that's what you'll spend the majority of your time doing playing Darksiders. With the souls that you collect from killing enemies, you can purchase upgrades and combos for your weapons, and each of these will add to your arsenal of attacks to unleash on the various demons that are painted all over the landscape. You can block, counter and dodge attacks as well, but when swarmed with enemies, I found it much easier to just dash out of the way and set up more combos. Counter attacks are powerful, but I found that I had to go out of my way and focus on one enemy to set one up, and in that time I could be killing them all at once instead. The combat is also helped, in part, by the great animations to each of the moves. The end of a brutal combo can send enemies flying, and the harsh animations and one-button insta-kills really make the combat incredibly satisfying. Some of the moves and combos in Darksiders are actually very similar to some specific moves in the Devil May Cry series, so if you've played those games before, you may find yourself more at home with the combat than you first thought.

It's not just the combat that looks great though. The environments and facial animations of the main characters are very well done, and all of these things help to draw you in as a player. The environments aren't perfect, and one or two places could probably have done with a bit more subtle detail, but they're still visually impressive, especially since the most of the game is accessible with no loading screens. A great soundtrack and excellent voice acting really add to the overall presentation of the game, so when you add up all of these positives, the negatives in technical issues don't seem as important. Sadly though, the Xbox 360 version does suffer from occasional slowdown and very frequent screen tearing issues. It's a shame, because although it's not a game-breaking issue, it's very noticeable. Not only that, but I also had the game crash on me twice during Serpent Hole sequences, which is this game's take on teleportation. Luckily the game does autosave (though you can manually save at any time) so I didn't lose any progress. A patch is currently in the works to fix the screen tearing, which is great, but I can't say whether the game crashing is as widespread as the screen tearing is.

As far as re-playability goes, I finished my first playthrough of Darksiders on Normal difficulty in roughly 13 hours. Following that, I jumped back in to satisfy my need for completion in the form of finding chests I'd missed, and ticking off the achievements. After a total of 20 hours, I'd done all that could be done on that save file, so I ran through the game again on Apocalyptic difficulty, and I finished that playthrough in under eight hours. Roughly 30 hours for an action-adventure game is pretty impressive, and although that was spread across two playthroughs, I don't regret playing through the game twice at all.

Darksiders is the first game that I've played in a while that not only satisfies my need for hack'n'slash craziness, but also my need for exploration and puzzle solving. Sure, the game is a bit linear, but that only serves as a way to keep the game moving forward without having to re-tread too much old ground. Whether you're looking for a Zelda-style adventure or a Devil May Cry slash-fest, you won't be disappointed.

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