Darksiders

Darksiders is indeed a surprise among the less-known AAA games and definitely needs to be praised: great exploration, fun combat and good old school puzzles. It's like an older style of how to make games has finally come back and offered a new alternative to a never enough praised peculiar genre. If you like pure gameplay games, this is a love letter for you. Too bad the series then went in a less interesting direction and is currently halted. In the meantime, playing this first installments should fill your old-school gamer needs right where they are.

I don't like saying that Darksiders is a Zelda made for grown-ups and not for kids, since I consider Zelda great games for all ages, but that sentence may give you an idea of what Darksiders is. Darksiders is a hack and slash game in a non linear world. A world full of dungeons and secret items to collect, so you can expand your life and mana meter and many other things. Dungeons full of items you need to use to get to the boss and getting access to whole new areas, with different puzzles that takes the game to a new level. Darksiders is a mixture of some great games (even Portal), and it is totally worth it. Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda, Portal or God of War are some of the names that crossed my mind while playing this fantastic game. It might not do something brand new, but everything is so well done it just doesn't matter.

This was a very enjoyable action/adventure experience. I don't have any previous experience with the comic book series, so I don't know how well it follows along with that. However, the story in the game is very fun. It really -feels- like you're playing a comic book with the way that things unfold. Also, the voice acting is just superb - personally one of my favorite parts (some of my very favorite voice actors and actresses star in this game). However, where things fall a little is the combat. It ends up feeling repetitive as all that you end up doing is hitting light attack->light attack->pausepause->strong attack. Throughout the progression of the game you get more upgrades, more weapons, and special traversal techniques. This makes it a little more exciting for that first time that you get to use it, but outside of that it starts to feel very repetitive again. The puzzles all end up feeling very simplistic, as well, as it turns into a "go here, kill that" or "jump on that button, kill that". I suppose this is to be expected, as you ARE, after all, playing as one of the four horseman of the apocalypse, WAR. Ultimately, get this game for the fun comic book style story, excellent voice acting, and pretty interesting set-pieces/environments.

This is a Hack'n Slash game starring WAR, one of the legendary four horsemen of the apocalypse. A mishap causes Earth to be ravaged by war between heaven and hell and WAR is betrayed in the event resulting him to go on a quest for revenge and find the truth about the betrayal. The narrative was cliched and felt like your typical hack'n slash scenario. I still liked the whole premise though. The game pulls a God of War II at the beginning, stripping our hero of all of his godly powers and leaving him as a weak, broken being. The game HEAVILY borrows from God of War franchise, and I do mean that. The gameplay consists of solving puzzles, some platforming reminiscent of prince of persia games, and lots and lots of tearing down demons and angels alike. The combat starts out pretty barren, but fun nonetheless. As you progress through the game, you achieve new items and weapons. You can buy abilities and combos to enhance your combat. The feeling of progress was pretty great. You slowly but surely start to feel like a powerful being, what WAR truly is. The combat however was restricting. Only one button for the main weapon for attack, which restricted combos and versatility a lot. Secondary weapons also had only one button for attack. The game featured TONS and TONS of puzzles and stuff to solve and find out a way but disappointingly, all were very straight forward and easy to solve. The game also overstayed its welcome. It was just too long and started to drag a lot. The repetitiveness factor was too much due to the increased length. As for the graphics, while the art style was good and I liked the character models, the environments and texture were poor. When I started it, it looked like a PS2 remaster game to be honest. Regardless of the drag, the game ended up being a great hack'n slash game. Can't wait to try out its sequel and play as DEATH!!

This game reminded me a lot (in a good way) to GOW franchise. There are even some very similar events and ways to trigger certain actions. Even the buttons are in the same layout! If you like GOW franchise, you should give Darksiders a try, it's well worth the time, though it's a little bit different in gameplay (not much as I mentioned) and very very different in visual style, as you can see merely browsing the preview images or a gameplay. The game is well optimized, and even with a max resulution of 1280x720 it still looks great!