Darksiders Review

19 Jan 2010 at 15:00:04 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

I'm coining a new phrase for this review: “biblical macho.” This is the Bible-as-badass that you occasionally see, with burly angels in massive suits of armour fighting gigantic demonic enemies, with the phrase “internal organs” rapidly becoming geographically inaccurate. Macho angels taking on robot demons, with plenty of swaggering and manly dialogue.

Darksiders is biblical macho. As War, the tough-talking, armour-clad, hooded Horseman of the Apocalypse wielding a sword roughly his own height, it's your task to find out who kickstarted the end of the world a little early. While fighting through the masses of angels and demons arrayed against you, obviously, the majority of whom look like potential entrants into a Mr Universe competition held in Canaan a few thousand years ago.

All in all, it hasn't been a good day for War: he was called to Earth by the breaking of the seven seals, and finds that not only are his fellow Horsemen nowhere to be found, but that humanity really wasn't ready for the end of days and that the apocalypse is going to leave demons and angels scrapping over the scorched remains of the planet. Sapped of his powers, accused of starting the war early, and dragged back to the Charred Council – the group that watches over the truce between the realms – War has one last chance: find out who's really behind it all, or die trying.

It's all tosh, obviously, but it's entertaining tosh. War is suitably taciturn and threatening, and growls his way through every encounter with a twenty-storey demon or a horde of hovering angels with aplomb. He's accompanied by Mark Hamill's Watcher, a Joker-esque demon bound to War and tasked with making sure he does what he's supposed to through cajoling and the occasional spot of utterly sadistic torture. Dialogue-wise, the I'm-a-badass dialogue and snarled delivery feels like a slightly less homoerotic Gears of War. In gameplay terms, though, the Watcher is essentially a verbose, grumpy Navi to War's Link.

Yes, I wrote Link. Much as Darksiders is a God of War-esque third-person hack-and-slash adventure, it borrows just as liberally from the Zelda playbook. Once the opening has played out, War finds that he needs to collect the hearts of the four Chosen demons, each of whom lurk in dungeons with unique mechanics. These dungeons will also tend to contain one or two new pieces of equipment for War, allowing him to both navigate through them safely and get to previously inaccessible areas in the game's hub area.

These dungeons are easily the best part of the game. You know those “puzzles” you frequently see in third-person action-adventures, where you have to find a key to a locked door? Maybe push some blocks? Those are exactly the sort of puzzles Darksiders doesn't rely on. While both make appearances, they're usually disguised; locked doors tend to be in the centre of some of the more non-linear sections of dungeons, while sliding-block puzzles are usually cast in an original light and involve some novel mechanics. How about working out how to shift a giant spider away from a web? Pushing weights on and off of floating platforms to turn them into a makeshift staircase? Figuring out how to cross a rope guarded by three invulnerable enemies? The brainteasers on show here don't feel at all out of place and require a surprising amount of both logical and lateral thinking. I applaud.

When you find enemies that aren't invulnerable – and fear not, there are a lot of them, including biblical macho angels who look like Warhammer 40,000 Space Marines with wings – you get to enjoy Darksiders' simple but enjoyable combat mechanics. You're not going to log onto a forum and see people arguing the most effective combos against particular bosses and enemies; the game focuses more on the attack patterns and individual weaknesses of your foes rather than on giving you an extensive attack system. War has a variety of tools at his disposal, certainly; the initial Chaoseater sword is supplemented by other weapons, both ranged and melee, which diversify your tactics. You could hang back and hurl War's boomerang-equivalent to do some basic damage to a group of foes, or charge in and hack at a particularly big enemy with the sword and then switch to the scythe to do some area damage when minions close in. If you time it right, you might even be able to use a launcher strike to avoid a particularly powerful attack. Again, you won't be debating the benefits of an Izuna Drop finisher over a simple Piercing Dragon's Fang combo, but you'll quite possibly spend time debating the telegraphing and appropriate dodge moments of a particularly fierce foe, and some of the game's waves of enemies will cause trouble through sheer weight of numbers and powerful attacks. Instant kills of enemies on low health add a minor – but gory – layer of strategy, letting you choose the order with which to dispatch foes with greater ease.

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