Thread: Darksiders Review

Well hello again my fellow community i am here once again for another review. This one is for darksiders a game that may have flew under peoples rader when it was released back in janurary. So here i am to provide the definitive xbox friends review for a game that i grew to love over time.

Story

To preserve the balance between Heaven and Hell, a mediator group, The Charred Council, sends the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to intervene and force a truce between the two kingdoms after countless centuries of war. Eons after the truce, The Council foresees that Man will be a major factor in the final apocalyptic battle; this would be marked by the breaking of the Seventh Seal.

In the present day, armies of demons and angels fall to earth, destroying everything in their wake. In the midst of the chaos, War is summoned to Earth to bring order. Upon his confrontation with Abaddon, the general of Heaven's army, War discovers that the other Horsemen have not arrived and the seal has not been broken. The story is more of war going on a revenge mession but the story is very solid in my opinion. and worth seeing through until the end.

Presentation

Now here for me is one of the games most impressive aspects not from a tech stanpoint but from an art direction perspective. Every area has a different feel and look to it everything from destroyed cities to the desert. The draw distance for everthing is good and the game does not really suffer from any texture pop in. The frame rate is solid and a recent patch has cleared the screen tearing issue that was on the 360 so all now looks good. All in all the video game industry is full of post apocalyptic games but this one manages to stand out due to the art style the game has.

Sound

The sound design for the game is great and i must give a special shout out to the voice actor for war. He delivers his lines well as do all the supporting cast in the game. As many of you might know mark hamill voices the watcher and puts in a steller performance. The background music suites the tone and the mood of the game very well and i never once felt it out stayed its welcome.

Controls

The controls for the game are very tight and i never really came across any real issues when using them. Jumping and attack buttons are mapped to your face buttons whilst you can lock onto enemies with the left trigger.. Using the D pad will change your secondary items such as hookshot and boomerang on the fly. You can also assign health stoes and other offensive abilities to the left bumper. The controls can be complicated at times and can lead to frustration but they are not game breaking.

Gameplay

Darksiders is a single-player action adventure in which the player takes control of the protagonist, War. In third-person perspective, the player engages in combat, puzzles and exploration. The world is divided into separate locations with many areas at first initially inaccessible until War regains many of his lost weapons and abilities.Each contains a series of linear and non-linear paths, many of which require large sections of platforming, climbing and swimming along environment-based puzzles that impair progress that require the use of newly-gained abilities. He fights mainly against Angels and demons, and has a unique way to kill each particular type of enemy, usually tearing them apart painfully.....very painfully. When in these sections when having to perform specific jumps the camera can sometimes be an issue for me but i did get used to it in the end. Every dungeon is like the zelda games of old and if you like zelda then you will like this. Apart from one annoying puzzle at the end all the dungeons are fun to navigate and explore. War has access to a boomerang, hookshot and other pieces of equipment that help you navigate to certain areas. He also has arage mode so to speak making him very powerful for a short period of time. The combat in the game is very mashy you will tend to depend on a few combos. The system does have depth however its not really need as i finised the game using the same few combos again and again. Each enemy has their own death animation when the B appears above their heads. In my opinion the gameplay is very very solid and well worth your time.

Replayability

On my first play through which took me about 16 hours i managed to get over half of the achievment points. There are collectables in the game that you can go back and collect before facing the final boss in the game. There is no new game + option in the game so its best to get all the points in one playthrough if you can. Some are missable so watch out for that and the difficulty achievments do stack. Overal the games length compensates for the lack of replayability.

Final Thoughts

This game came onto the shelves back in janurary and it was a bit of an underdog but upon playing it i realised that it is a game the 360 has needed for some time. Its fun, engaging and a decent sized adventure and now its on sale in a lot of places its well worth your time and money. As a side note it was suggested i give my reviews ratings so my ratings will be out of 5.

Rating

Pros - Great art style, Long adventure, plenty of great puzzles to solve, nice spread of achievment points.

Cons - Not too challanging, Controls can lead to some frustration, We have seen this type of game before.

4 out of 5 stars

Another brilliant review, it sounds like a good game to me

Cheers for your support of my reviews mate

I'm tempted to try this now. Bolty hates it which means it must be good.

Your reviews always go down well m8. They get lots of views.

Cheers my friend i did notice that my battlefield bad company 2 has now got 200+ views and most of them average 150 + so i am happy everyone is enjoying them. Plan on starting to do video reviews very soon as well

Great review.

I bought the game when it was released, and just couldn't get into it, dont know why....that said, I still think it's well worth a go, and it looks great.

Cheers for the feedback

Originally Posted by warrier22

Cheers my friend i did notice that my battlefield bad company 2 has now got 200+ views and most of them average 150 + so i am happy everyone is enjoying them. Plan on starting to do video reviews very soon as well

yes u did a good review of BFBC2 but it was already popular before u did the review but ur review is a little special coz of the seperate headline that makes it easy reading

Yeah i am now adding a pros and cpns section as well as ratings. Soon there will be video reviews, they wont be there to replace the written review just to add more depth to them.

Great review

I'll give this one a go as I'm still trying to suss out what type of games I like!