Fun, engaging, but drawn out and eventually tedious

User Rating: 7.5 | Darksiders PC
By deactivated-639e8b549249b | Review Date:
The most notable thing I found with Darksiders its unashamed derivation from the Zelda series. The first dungeon you enter you receive a shuriken with a limited range that returns to you aka boomarang, later on you receive a chain with a sharp point at the end to collect items and pull you aka hookshot, you use a bombs growing in the environment to destroy obstacles, you have a horse which even borrows the same charging mechanism as OoT, you utilise masks and yes, you verse a shadow version of yourself. You use your array of tools to explore a semi-open world, enter dungeons and defeat a boss. Combine these elements with the hack and slash combat, RPG like shopping and currency system and angel/demon/heaven/hell narrative of Devil May Cry and you have yourself Darksiders. You also dual wield a sword and a gun later on. Oh, and did I mention you have portals too?

Although Darksiders doesn't spectactularly innovate anywhere, it is a very solidly built game and epic in scale. You play as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, War. The universe, life and everything is all f***ed up and it's your job to save the day... by destroying everything you see. Combat mechanics remain fun and varied throughout the game. There is motivation throughout the first 3/4 of the game to collect currency and upgrade your items. There is enough variety in swordplay to make combat interesting for the majority of the game. Production value definitely shows. The game is epic in scope with a variety of environments and very well composed levels and events. The voice acting and script is strong but I found the story a little dull. Heaven and hell fantasy isn't really my thing it turns out. Labyrinth vs combat are well balanced and hours go by like nothing.

Towards the end of the game however, I began to lose interest. Every f***ing puzzle became so unnecessarily elaborate, with a heavy reliance on probably the least fun tool you have, Portals. Portal did this well. Darksiders does not. The premise of Portal actually makes sense to include elaborate Portals, level design is significantly better, with more variety and puzzles are better compartmentalised, and the Portal mechanic is extremely well refined.Then the bosses become dull too. Instead of making them interesting just give them way too much health and force you to execute the same attack over and over with no indication of how much life they have left.

A very good game in most respects but about 5 or 6 hours too long.

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