Released back in 2010, I borrowed this from a friend, but it never really got me invested. I returned the game still in the first act. Years later I finally came back and finished it. Was it a coincidence Darksiders 3 was announced while I was playing it? Or did I spawn the third installment?
The Seventh Seal is broken, summoning the Four Horsemen, or so we thought. Only War arrives and later finds out the seal was never broken. The Charred Council, the balance between the war of Heaven and Hell, accuse War himself of breaking the seal. War asks to be given the chance to prove his innocence and find the real culprit, leaving him bound to The Watcher, who has the ability to kill War should he stray from his objective.
Darksiders has a semi open world, your able to explore the areas you enter, but there's not much to do. It's primarily a hack and slash game, you have the ability to upgrade weapons and gain abilities. Each weapon has its own moveset, which you can buy new moves using souls you attained from your foes. Your weapons can also have modifiers, they can upgrade weapons quicker or give you more souls. The sword and scythe were great weapons and worth most of your time. I hated the gauntlet, I didn't find it a useful weapon at all, the pistol was also pretty poor, it was unlimited ammo, but it seemed like it just shot water.
I found the game to be far too serious. There were no jokes and every character seemed angry. The only exception was Ulthane, but he wasn't exactly hilarious. It had Mark Hamill, so how could there be no humour? The voice acting was ok, but there needed to be a more informal tone at times. Another thing I couldn't get over was how small War looked, I felt like he was a giant who'd been shrunken down, it just looked odd.
There was fast travel, but it wasn't really. You'd go to Vulgrim the merchant to fast travel, and it'd take you to floating stairs you'd have to go through to reach the other side, then you travelled to where you wanted to go. It certainly wasn't fast. You have the ability to use Chaos Form, this allows you to turn into a creature, similarly looking like The Balrog from The Lord of the Rings, you're pretty much unkillable and can make short work of most enemies. There's also some platforming, that's very clunky and late into the game, you're gifted a horse, but have limited areas where you can ride it.
There's a huge variation of enemies, most of your first encounters with certain enemies were like mini bosses. They were quite tough the first time. Following that, there are a bunch of actual boss fights. I played on Apocalyptic difficulty, which is the hardest difficulty, I found it pretty tough, but the boss fights weren't too bad. I never spent more than five attempts on a single boss, I think that's pretty good. Something really off putting during the boss fights, was the lack of health bars they had. It ended in a lot of deaths that felt cheap, you could do a crazy amount of damage, but if you're not doing the right thing, you may just waste time and die.
You're able to pick up a lot of items like cars and throw them at enemies, you can dash, but War hesitates after leaving him open to attacks. The executions are really cool, it has realistic graphics, but they're not that great. There was a pretty boring on rail section, where you ride a flying eagle. There characters were just far too serious, the only one I found likeable really was Ulthane. The story was pretty interesting and had some good twists, but I wouldn't recommend this for the story or gameplay. There is also a clear homage/rip off of Portal, you literally shoot orange and blue portals to walk through, you can decide what it is.
It's not the best game, but playing as Death in the sequel seems very interesting and I will definitely be playing, and keeping a close eye on the third. Hopefully a less serious and more humorous game follows.
7.3/10
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