Darksiders Review

Only just now gotten around to this game as a result of the Darksiders Franchise sale earlier this month. Vigil Games, being a brand new studio to the highly competitive game industry, decided to play safe by borrowing from other franchising with a focus on polish and execution. Given such, my overall impression of Darksiders has been that of a nine out of ten experience.

The storyline premise centers around the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in their role as liasions between the bitter forces of heaven and hell. As the Horseman of War, you are engaged in a celestial conspiracy that's has doomed mankind. The mystery behind the destruction of man  serves serves as excellent motive for the player.  Driven to avenge the downfall of man, War becomes a memorably likable tale's end, with plenty potential for expanded storyline. 

As stated, Darksiders is a new IP made by a rookie studio with much to prove. As such, they chose to follow reverently in the footstep of other successful franchises in a master crafted demonstration of competence. It'd be easy to simplify it as a rip-off in the matter, though one must remember that its only a rip-off if it sucks, otherwise its a homage.

To set the right expectation, best to think of Darksiders to games as a movie like Kill Bill or the Expendables are to movies. In this case, God of War and Legend of Zelda are the central foundations.  Each journey to the next LoZ style dungeon usually involves a cinematic fight sequences inspired by God of War, though impressively there will be moments reminiscent of other titles, including Panzer Dragoon, Portal, and even Gears of War.

Having played many hack and slash titles before, I can claim that while it comes close, it lacks the full depth its source material such titles. Hack and slashes require two things to work: Enemy variety and interesting toy and techniques to play with. The enemy variety is certainly there, though the amount of methods to kill them all wasn't quite there.

However, highly engaging combat never was a hallmark of the Legend of Zelda series. Thus, while the combat lacked the true depth of a Ninja Gaiden or Bayonetta, this is forgivable given that the Zelda segments would really shine, implementing puzzles and boss fights that'd truly make Nintendo blush.

Overall, for the first game of a new studio, Darksiders excels in execution and polish. There is one sorrow note however: the music. Though commissioned by Mike Reagan and Cris Velasco of God of War fame, its clear that they were uninspired for this game. There you'll be after witnessing War do something cinematically impressive, and now you're cutting down hoards of the angelic and demonic creatures almost feeling like a true horseman...only for the music to be half asleep. Took me three days to identify what if anything, was a main theme, and nothing caught my ear during the set pieces. The more I realized this game deserved better music, the more this flaw started to irritate me. Nothing much epic or memorable about it, and that's why I have to dock this otherwise 9/10 game as more of a 8.8/10.

Having started its sequel however, it appears that Vigil Games were aware of this flaw. The sequel's music is more like it. But that aside, Darksiders is a fresh new franchise you can't help but respect. Just give it time to grow on you.

What This About

I started this blog to consolidate a certain few passions in my life: This blog is about one awesome passion in my life:

1) Software design 2) Tutoring. 3) The occasional video game review. Which I'll try to keep from an technical standpoint.

As software design would become an ever increasing obsession on my part, I simply figured that it is here where I'd consolidate the lessons learned on my journey, to the benefit of others. I hope that for any who follows along, they'll be able to learn some things about how to think like an IT specialist.

~David Noble Morris Out~