The game’s been out for a while, so I’m not going to go into review mode. I just thought I’d share a few thoughts on the game, for those who may not have played it yet. (I imagine this is how most of these recaps from the backlog purge will go.) So let’s get on with it, shall we?
Oh, and **spoilers** ahead, if that’s even possible for a game that released in 2010.
First off, why do all demons sound the same? Just once I’d like to come across a giant winged beast with an Irish accent. No, they always have to sound like Grimlock from Gen 1 Transformers.
I thought the story was pretty straightforward until the last act, when War has his “revelation” in Eden. Then the timeline got kinda fucked up because they don’t explain when all of this took place. They explain that 100 years have passed between the Intro of the game and when the actual first act begins. But you see Abaddon during the intro. So did he become the Destroyer after War was imprisoned? Did the scheming between the Council happen prior to the events in the intro? An Apocalypse Community Calendar would’ve been nice. Oh, and they never explain who convinced Abaddon to turn in the first place. Perhaps that will be revealed in Darksiders II. I’ve never played that one, but it’s on the list.
Holy balls that Tower was a chore. After four dungeons that last just a wee bit too long, the Tower puts them all to shame. It took me about a week’s worth of small bite-sized play sessions just to get through it, because it is a long, tedious, grind of a dungeon, and the worst part is the payoff falls flat because…
Straga is a pussy. Seriously, for this guy to be so feared and talked about for the entire game, he was probably the easiest of all the bosses. The spider chick took way more of a beating than this pansy. I do believe all it took was three hits (in the pattern) to kill him. But I quickly whupped his ass and gave him the finger (my ritual after a boss battle) and was ready to confront the Destroyer and get this shit over with. Only I couldn’t just yet, because…
They took the worst part of Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and thought it would be cool to put it in Darksiders. Seriously, if you haven’t played the game yet, be warned. Just when you think you’re on your way to the final boss, the game throws you a curveball and sends you all over the fucking map collecting pieces of a sword to be re-forged. Sound familiar? Yep, and Nintendo even admitted it was a shit thing to do in Zelda and streamlined that quest for the Wind Waker HD release. No such luck for Warmastered Edition. It’s game padding at its worst.
There are multiple weapons to upgrade, but the game isn’t long enough to even do one. I used my sword almost exclusively, and yet by the time I got the “master sword” (really Vigil?) I still hadn’t even leveled up my old sword all the way. On top of that, when I got the re-forged sword, it was already maxed out, which was kind of a slap, since it voided all the work I’d put in to it up to that point. The other weapons suffered a worse fate, they were under-utilized. Other than just pointless running from zone to zone grinding, there’s no possible way to upgrade these items all the way, nor is there any reason to. I got through the game on Normal difficulty just fine by rarely using the Reaper or the Punchy Fist Gauntlet of Hitting. Or whatever it was called.
So there we are. I know I’m being hard on the game, but there’s a testament to the fact that I was willing to finish it. It is a fun game. The combat is solid, the graphics are nice, and it was a first effort by Vigil to make a Zelda clone that wasn’t Zelda or high fantasy based. It works, but the main drawbacks lie in its backtracking and the lack of palette cleansing activities to do in between the dungeons. From what I understand, Darksiders II remedies this, and is more akin to a true adventure game, so we’ll see. I can’t see myself diving right back into another Darksiders game when I have other shorter things in the backlog I can bump off first, but it’s on the list.
Until next time…
