Darksiders: One Helluva Ride

Xbox
Thursday, April 07, 2011

 

 
Price Paid: $0.00 (was a birthday present - thanks @bwguinig 
Time Played: 30hrs (according to Raptr.com http://raptr.com/tengaport)
Finished with: 34 of 43 achievements
Difficulty: Apocalyptic
Would I buy a sequel?: Hells yeah!
 
I had no idea what I was getting into with Darksiders. I had heard the game was ‘good’ - ‘really good’ in fact, but I knew little of what was in store for me when I popped the disc into my 360. What transpired over the next 20+ hours ranged from ‘good’ to ‘very good’ to ‘fantastic’ with only a few traces of the dreaded ‘Meh’ here and there. Ultimately, Darksiders ended up being one helluva ride!
 
Darksiders is an epic tale, putting you in the role of War - one of the four ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ and arming you with enough gear (over time) to truly raise hell. War is a brutal guy, who could certainly hold his own against Kratos from God of War - though the bloodshed in Darksiders isn’t nearly as over the the top. Sure there are decapitations, as well as an achievement for spilling copious amounts of blood - but Darksiders never struck me as being overly gratuitous at any point. 
 
Combat is quite satisfying as far as I amconcerned. You can button mash your way to victory or there are plenty of combos to juggle your opponents into the sky. Hell - there’s even some big guns in the game for you to just blast away baddies. 
 
While Darksiders has plenty of hacking & slashing to dish out, there was also quite a bit of exploring from the Zelda/Metroid “new items unlock areas” school of gaming. New items & areas kept the game feeling fresh and helped make back-tracking interesting as there was often hidden items only accessible via your new toys.
 
Speaking of toys - there is no shortage of weapons & gadgets in this game. Hell, War even has his own Portal gun for some Portal-esque puzzles. There is so much gear at your disposal by the end of the game that it was annoying that you only have 4 quick select spots available. While playing I often had to go into the menu to re-assign the quick select spots to deal with the tasks at hand. A minor complaint really and it hardly impacted my overall opinion of the game
 
One other minor complaint was that a few of the levels & puzzles dragged on for too long. Flipping switches and such just wasn’t nearly as much fun as pulverizing enemies. I also had a little difficulty with the timing of jumps for some of the platforming - note of advice, just jump a split second before you think you should and you’ll be a-ok.
 
So yeah, Darksiders is good - really good and right now it is a HUGE bang for your buck. There is a ton of quality game here as you follow War on his quest - so much so that I’ll give Darksiders a coveted ‘HIGHLY RECOMMENDED’.
 
Like I said, it’s one hellvua ride!Price Paid: $0.00 (was a birthday present - thanks @bwguinig 
Time Played: 30hrs (according to Raptr.com http://raptr.com/tengaport)
Finished with: 34 of 43 achievements
Difficulty: Apocalyptic
Would I buy a sequel?: Hells yeah!
 
I had no idea what I was getting into with Darksiders. I had heard the game was ‘good’ - ‘really good’ in fact, but I knew little of what was in store for me when I popped the disc into my 360. What transpired over the next 20+ hours ranged from ‘good’ to ‘very good’ to ‘fantastic’ with only a few traces of the dreaded ‘Meh’ here and there. Ultimately, Darksiders ended up being one helluva ride!
 
Darksiders is an epic tale, putting you in the role of War - one of the four ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ and arming you with enough gear (over time) to truly raise hell. War is a brutal guy, who could certainly hold his own against Kratos from God of War - though the bloodshed in Darksiders isn’t nearly as over the the top. Sure there are decapitations, as well as an achievement for spilling copious amounts of blood - but Darksiders never struck me as being overly gratuitous at any point. 
 
Combat is quite satisfying as far as I amconcerned. You can button mash your way to victory or there are plenty of combos to juggle your opponents into the sky. Hell - there’s even some big guns in the game for you to just blast away baddies. 
 
While Darksiders has plenty of hacking & slashing to dish out, there was also quite a bit of exploring from the Zelda/Metroid “new items unlock areas” school of gaming. New items & areas kept the game feeling fresh and helped make back-tracking interesting as there was often hidden items only accessible via your new toys.
 
Speaking of toys - there is no shortage of weapons & gadgets in this game. Hell, War even has his own Portal gun for some Portal-esque puzzles. There is so much gear at your disposal by the end of the game that it was annoying that you only have 4 quick select spots available. While playing I often had to go into the menu to re-assign the quick select spots to deal with the tasks at hand. A minor complaint really and it hardly impacted my overall opinion of the game
 
One other minor complaint was that a few of the levels & puzzles dragged on for too long. Flipping switches and such just wasn’t nearly as much fun as pulverizing enemies. I also had a little difficulty with the timing of jumps for some of the platforming - note of advice, just jump a split second before you think you should and you’ll be a-ok.
 
So yeah, Darksiders is good - really good and right now it is a HUGE bang for your buck. There is a ton of quality game here as you follow War on his quest - so much so that I’ll give Darksiders a ‘HIGHLY RECOMMENDED’.
 
Like I said, it’s one hellvua ride!
 
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Comments (2)
Default_picture
April 07, 2011

Couldn't agree with you more.  One of my favorite games from last year.

100media_imag0065
May 23, 2011

By far one of my most favorite action games ever made. I enjoyed it more than any God of War game. It was just so polished and so varied. You were never doing the same thing over and over again. The game always introduced you to some new mechanic or new environment to explore. And just when you began to get tired, it would throw something else awesome at you.

I had an absolute blast with the game from start to finish. The bad news is tha THQ already said they are changing the sequel. It is not going to be like the original, which me and every fan I know thinks is the worst possible thing they can do. Darksiders was fun for a reason, and changing the gameplay as much as they hinted they were changing it will just completely alienate all the fans the game has.

However, they aren't interested in its fans. They are interested in more money. So you can bet they are going to streamline the whole thing, and I will ignore it when it launches. Instead, I will just remember fondly the first Darksiders. A game that was not afraid to borrow ideas from every game around it, and make them better.

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