It has been a long time since a Zelda game has been released and since Twilight Princess was a poor Ocarina clone, the world is in great need of a action RPG with a heavy reliance on inventory implementation. Those of you counting down the days to even look at Nintendo’s new iteration into their ancient and unchanged series look no further for a game that looks and plays better – Vigil Game’s Darksiders. Darksiders is essentially the offspring of Devil May Cry and The Legend of Zelda in combat and overall structure. The combat borrows greatly from DMC in the way that you want to commit to all out offense when facing your common foes. Dungeon layouts, inventory reliance during boss fights, and even the mini map all scream Zelda to the point that you expect the Nintendo logo to flash at the bottom of the screen when in the pause menu. Despite Darksiders constant borrowing from great games of former generations, it does manage to stay in a plain of existence all its own as few development teams lately have not even dared make a game close to Nintendo’s text-only game series.
The premise of the game is that you play as a horseman of the apocalypse named War who has…started the apocalypse by accident. While igniting the world in flames, War is killed and sent to another realm of existence where he is forced to deal with a collection of entities, known as the Council, who govern the three kingdoms of the universe (Heaven, Hell, and Earth). The Council decides that since War started this mess, he can clean it up and they bind him to a creature known as the Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamill) who is supposed to keep War on the right path to redemption. From here on out it is pretty much a “who dun it” scenario that is a bit confusing but comes out pretty decent by the end.
YAY:
- The color palette of the game is simply beautiful. Each demon class that you destroy is detailed and completely apart from the next. Even the scenery has been composed carefully by making sure that it grabs your eye and forces you to spend a little more time looking at the world around you.
- War is just bad ass but can seem a bit outdated to the younger audiences. He feels more like the ultimate warrior protagonists that were present in a lot of action movies in the nineties, which I thought was sweet. Many people are going to draw connections between War and Kratos, but Kratos is just an angry spartan while War is an ancient anti-hero that embodies the universe’s history of conflict. Pure wargasmic joyfulness is what he is.
- War’s inventory is pretty expansive and interesting enough to wet your appetite enough to progress to the next dungeon to attain the next piece of gear. War can equip a giant shuriken, a magnum hand-cannon, and an earth-shattering gauntlet as well as many other things. Oh and did I mention that he rides a fire consumed horse named Ruin? Yeah, its cool.
- The ending to the game sets up an awesome premise for part two…if there is ever going to be a part two.
NAY:
- Oh my god is there screen tearing in the game?! It happens constantly throughout the first half and it will annoy the hell out of you.
- The pacing is well composed during that same time where your screen will tear all day, but when Darksiders gets to the back nine, you will wonder what the hell is going on. Not to mention that that last hour and a half of the game has you backtracking throughout the whole game to collect pieces to an item that you use for about a minute. Ugh!
- All of the character models are very well done but there is one boss in particular that will make you cry a little bit inside because of how many other games that very same design has been in. Seriously, I think I have seen the same boss design since 1998 and I think everyone else is sick of it too.
So is Darksiders worth the price tag of $60? No, but I do not think many single player adventure games are worth that price tag either. It is a game that is worthy of your time if you give it a fair shot. Either rent it, use gamefly, or borrow it from your friend because Darksiders proves that Zelda is not the only kid in the playground who can do the same tricks and be appreciated for it. In many ways Darksiders is what Zelda should have evolved into if it took some chances.
