cinematic gaming experience - Using the power of next-generation consoles, Darksiders: Wrath of War will immerse players a rich cinematic gameplay experience - with colorful graphics, detailed special effects, cinematic lighting and an epic musical score that incorporates action game.
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Amazon.com Product Description
| Darksiders is a third-person, single player action/adventure game inspired by the characters, themes and mythology of the apocalypse and the battle of Armageddon described by the Book of Revelation. But this modern interpretation is not your run of the mill Sunday school stroll through the New Testament. In the game players take on the role of "War," one of the dread Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But things are not as they were.
The Story Gameplay As for combat gameplay, Darksiders features a variety of weapons--including blades and firearms--that can be used in combo moves or in single strikes. Some of these can be charged up for quick, but devastating attacks on enemies and all can be arranged on your controller's D-pad for easy and preferred access. Additional gameplay elements include the ability/necessity to fight from the back of your mount, Ruin, and the collection of the souls in the form of glowing orbs that fall to the ground as enemies are dispatched. The latter can be used to level up War with new items and abilities. Varied Characters and Environments Key Features |
Customer Reviews
A gamer's game? Hell yes.
I'll preface this by cribbing lightly from early professional reviews. Yes, the game borrows concepts from GoW. Yes, there are aspects reminiscent of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Toss in Devil May Cry and Portal while you're at it too.
Does the game suffer from this? Absolutely not.
I believe Darksiders will prove out to stand on its own merits:
Art/color/effects. The Darksiders world is painted vividly. Bloody, scarlet reds. Vivid, electric blues. Hellfire crackles and belches with palpable heat. Death effects are varying and plentiful. The Chaoseater rips through opponents with satisfying degrees of violence and gore. Joe Mad's character designs are top-notch, fresh, and lend strongly to the 'playing a comic book' feel. You'll like it or you won't - but I love it. The angel and demon designs, the shattered, demonically-warped landscape, the weaponry, War's armor - it's just awesome.
Voice acting. Mark Hamill is worth the price of admission. The other voice talents do an able job, but his role really stands out, and he does an impeccable job.
Combat. Button-mashers will find a lot to like. Newcomers will quickly feel at home with the combat setup. Experts won't feel like they're jogging around a dumbed-down rail-fighter. Combos are expressive and fun to achieve, and their resulting effects are satisfyingly brutal.
Story. I won't detail the twists and turns the story takes, but the fact that you're War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, sent back to Earth to figure out who screwed you over, and why, and kill everything standing in the way of that - it doesn't need to be any more cerebral. Revenge and justice are always a solid theme to an action slasher, and the story here doesn't fail.
The soul-currency system is a nice touch. There are many, many items in the destructive environment that will kick out souls that can be traded in as currency for new combat moves, weapon enhancements, health/rage buffs, etc. Some of these items raise an eyebrow (souls confined in a parking meter? ok.), but the gathering process is still fun.
Early boss fights are decent, but these battles really shine with selected increased difficulty.
The puzzles aren't terribly difficult. You're not going to employ any Half-Life 2-type problem-solving to figure them out, but they factor into the overall gameplay logically and seamlessly.
Some players might get hung up in the comparisons to other games in the genre. Others might see similarities or common themes as strengths - building on what gamers like, discarding other elements. My advice - enjoy Darksiders based on what you see, what you hear, and what you beat the holy (and unholy) crap out of in-game. Anticipate at least 17-20 solid hours of gameplay, with plenty to discover on subsequent playthroughs.
Start to finish, this game was a 9/10, and earned a spot on the shelf next to Halo 1-3, Fallout 3, CoD4, and Bioshock.
Darksiders is 3rd-Person Action/Adventure Perfection
Thank you Vigil. Finally, a game developer who 'gets it.' It's obvious that Darksiders was a labor of love, created by gamers, for gamers. I've played a lot of games over the years, and Darksiders masterfully crafts together the best elements of the genre while stripping out the garbage we could all do without. Why is Darksiders possibly the best pick-up-&-play action/adventure game ever?
+ Easy-to-learn, forgiving controls.
+ Variety of gameplay elements (swordplay, throwing objects, climbing, swinging, swimming, shooting, riding, treasure hunting, weapon upgrades, puzzle solving, etc.).
+ Beautiful artistic style, animation, and environments - if you've enjoyed Joe Madureira's art in other mediums, playing Darksiders is an awesome interactive experience that brings his artistic vision to life in high definition.
+ Frequently saved checkpoints, plus save-anytime feature, and multiple save blocks that can be copied between memory cards and hard drives.
+ Epic fantasy storyline.
+ Effective defensive moves (block and dash/dodge).
+ Easily-controllable camera/perspective.
+ Engaging puzzles that don't take forever to figure out and complete.
+ Fast-travel network to quickly move between distant previously-visited areas.
+ No 'artificial challenge' that handicaps and punishes players.
+ No flow-breaking, action-obscuring quick-time events.
+ No unskippable cut-scenes.
+ Amazing audio that artfully conveys the epic scale of the characters and battles.
+ On-screen mini-map (and full map on the paused game's options screen) keeps you from getting lost and wondering where to go next.
+ Saved slots are indicated with the location and play-time you saved at, along with your difficulty level and health, making it easy to remember which file to load among multiple saves.
Whoever crafted the controls and usability/accessibility features of this game deserves the gaming industry's most prestigious award and recognition. For all the different gameplay elements, the controls always feel fluid and familiar. Most of us play a variety of games, so familiarizing ourselves with a new game's control scheme (or re-familiarizing ourselves with an old favorite later) can be rough. Darksiders takes this pain away by keeping the controls simple and always displaying the appropriate controller button on-screen next to each actionable icon. Many gamers buy or rent used games that don't come with instruction manuals, and thankfully Darksiders can be quickly and easily grasped without ever laying eyes on a manual. Awesome, powerful attack combos can be pulled off with merely a couple button-presses. The on-screen tips (which are saved in a log accessible via the paused game's options screen) walk you through every step of the way. Any action that consumes resources (like a magical attack that use up your wrath meter) requires two buttons to be pressed simultaneously, so you never accidentally slip and hit the wrong button and waste your resources.
If you've played other popular contemporary action/adventure games, you'll likely find familiar gameplay elements here. Darksiders pays homage to the most fun aspects in popular gaming while leaving OUT the frustrations that are too common in most other games. Most thankfully, Darksiders AVOIDS the maddening handicaps that too many other games rely on to inject what I call 'artificial challenge:'
- Few and far-between save points (sometimes real life happens - the phone rings, a visitor knocks at the door, dinner's ready, etc. - and you don't have an hour to play until the next save point).
- Only allowing one save file (preventing you from having multiple games in-progress, or reverting to an earlier save point).
- Pathetic defense (no ability to block incoming attacks, limited ability to dodge incoming attacks, limited opportunity to take cover, etc.).
- Leaving you helplessly stunned/paralyzed and vulnerable for a brief period after sustaining damage, allowing enemies to endlessly juggle you to death.
- Convoluted control schemes and complex combo moves that are too long or tricky to reliably execute in the heat of battle.
- Scarce resources (never any health or ammo around when you need it).
- Obstructive camera perspectives that obscure your view of the action.
- Requiring you to swim through areas while only giving you very limited breath.
- Defeated enemies release floating orbs for you to collect, but you must be in very close proximity to receive them (I'm here to kick butt, not chase butterflies).
- Performing an attack move (or being attacked) too close to a ledge causes you to fall off that ledge.
- Falling off a ledge is an instant game-over, restarting you at a prior point.
+++ Darksiders does NOT punish the player with ANY of these buzz-kills. If you ever felt like throwing your game controller through your television out of frustration from cheap shots like this that other games shamelessly and repeatedly hit you with, then Darksiders will soothe those old wounds and renew your joy of gaming. Darksiders is by no means lacking in challenge, but it lets you focus on battling bad guys WITHOUT battling short-sighted, penalizing game mechanics. Darksiders doesn't keep finding cheap ways to end the fun and hinder your progress like many other games do. EVERY game developer should take serious notes on how smoothly and accessibly Darksiders flows for the player.
I have a hard time coming up with even minor things I would change about Darksiders:
- I've become spoiled the last few years on the auto-regenerating health systems that many popular games have, so I wish Darksiders didn't require the player to find health-replenishing items (although it partially compensates for this by providing plenty of health pick-ups and a weapon modifier that gives you a little health boost every time you inflict damage on enemies).
- I wish the enemies and bosses displayed a health meter so I could see how much damage my attacks are inflicting (to find the most effective attacks) and know how close (or far) I am to defeating an enemy.
- The screen that lists your available attacks for each weapon does not indicate what level each attack has been upgraded to (the only way to know is to check what the next level available for purchase is at a shop).
- The shop/purchase screen does not give you a last-minute confirming ('Are you sure you wish to buy this item?') back-out option when you buy something, so don't hit that 'buy' button accidentally.
- The shop/purchase screen does not show you how many of a particular item you may already be carrying in your inventory.
- While the 360-degree moveable camera perspective is great, I wish the speed/sensitivity of the camera movement was adjustable (sometimes I want to whip the camera around faster to get a view of something, but again, Darksiders partially compensates for this with the 'lock-on/focus' trigger that instantly resets the camera to the direction you're character is facing).
- There's a combo meter that counts your consecutive hits during fights, but I haven't seen any reward system that ties to racking up long combos (so why count them?).
- The only technical glitch I've noticed so far is some graphical screen-tearing.
Do yourself a favor and play Darksiders, and wrap yourself in a cozy blanket of fun, frustration-free action/adventure gaming. Do the gaming world a favor and buy this game to promote this kind of development so that future games will follow the fine example Darksiders sets. Vigil, please make sequels (and/or other games) that keep the same gamer-friendly spirit of Darksiders. Darksiders is not just a game - it's a gift to gamers.
Ignore the X-Play Review
Very seldom do I actually write a review, but after seeing the horrible and unjust review that X-Play on G4TV gave, I had to speak up. So I will take this opportunity to lay it out.
X-Play: "I want to see more gore for something rated Mature."
Reality Check: When I ripped the wings off angels and then decapitated demons; that is what I expected in a game rated M.
X-Play: "Weapon Options are Limited."
Reality Check: Sword + Gun + Scythe + Cross blade + Gauntlet + Add Ons + Turrets = Almost more than I can keep up with when I'm playing.
X-Play: "Finishing off enemies is repetitive."
Reality Check: While yes, it can be repetitive at times, but as you level up and become very powerful or use the "turrets" or the horse in the game; you find yourself doing the finish moves less often, especially on the weaker enemies.
X-Play: They knocked the swimming for some odd reason.
Reality Check: The swimming is fine and fluid and adds a lot of depth to the dungeons. No pun intended.
X-Play: "Puzzles were predictable and easy."
Reality Check: Not all are "easy" nor are they predictable at all. You will have to think, especially when it comes to finding some of the chests.
X-Play: "Lacks Originality or a Soul."
Reality Check: I do not know what this game is compared to aside from mechanics "borrowed" from some of the all time bests, but in my opinion it gave the game an old soul that everyone can enjoy. Take something that works and use it. Sometimes people just want a game that is fun, easy to learn, and challenging at the same time.
X-Play: "Hack and slash that is cliché."
Reality Check: NOT AT ALL! I do not think when I stun an enemy with my cross blade, shoot it in the face, then lunge forward with a stabbing blow, and then reel any other nearby enemies with a flame saw sword move, and then finish it off with a gauntlet ground pound, and then raise my horse on the fly and slash away from a higher position while galloping around. Hmmm...How is that cliché??? Let's not forget you can turn into a 25 flaming monster and there are also special "magic" powers that can be used as well.
I could go on and on. Bottom line is that this is a fun game that has given me plenty of surprises.
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