PS3Blog.co.za

Darksiders: Wrath of War Review

Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by Freak_c in Games, News, Reviews

How does one describe Darksiders? Well think of the game as a product if certain elements from God of War and Ratchet and Clank had a child that would kinda give you an idea of what Darksiders is. Vigil Games have taken some of the fan favourite gameplay mechanics from these other excellent games and used them to their advantage, with a few tweaks but most importantly, they made it work, and work well it does. But does it have the goods to take on the big boys?

Darksiders is a single player only game, it plays great, looks fantastic, sounds really good and will give you about 14 hours or so of solid game time. Darksiders features all the usual type of stuff found in these types of games, many a enemy to slay, big bosses, puzzles to solve and an array of collectables to find. There is some replay value if you wish to collect everything or if you are a trophy whore.

Story and Gameplay
You play as War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the very powerful out of the four. You have accidentally screwed up the balance between Heaven and Hell and basically destroyed all of humanity, so you will have some very angry and respectful demons and angels after you. So you are on a mission to find out what is going on and basically nothing will stop you during you path.

You will traverse through the world slaying enemies and upgrading your weapons, with new moves, combos and finding the general upgrades of health, stamina or wrath and souls used as the currency. Green souls restore your health, gold souls restore your wrath and blue souls are used to trade for weapon upgrades through a demon called Vulgrim. As for the combat system there is nothing complex about it, one button (Square) will be used for your attacking and combos. You do have a secondary weapon but use it not as often as the sword (primary) as the sword is the strongest in the game. As in God of War once you have dealt enough damage to an enemy, a action icon will appear above their heads, indicating a instant kill or cut-scene if its over a boss. There are no quick time events, which I actually missed and would have preferred, though some may disagree. The controls are set out in a way so that anyone can pick up the control and know exactly what to do after a few pushes and even start chaining some attack combos. It is even great just watching someone play the game as the combat and the animations are so smooth and fairly epic.

War will come across puzzle dungeons from time to time, and within each is buried a gear or weapon item that allows more for you to explore and of course reach the boss. This is repeated a little too much as once you receive a new item you will be using that specific item to complete the puzzles until you gain the next item. Throughout the game, you’ll find, treasure chests, soul chests, keys to open specific doors and bombs to blow up red crystal walls. Of course what is a horsemen without his horse and the good news is that you will be reunited with your beloved horse, Ruin, where you can ride around in large spaces and swat at enemies with your sword. These are the levels that I particularly enjoyed.

The building of the story and characters felt to me, very slow at the beginning and took some time to get into it. You will play for about 2 hours or so and think why do I care about my character and you may even find yourself thinking about the next game you want to play. Don’t though as it really does get better a little later on once you start upgrading your weapons and getting new weapons, it’s a pity that it does not have that instant grab and hold factor.

Graphics and Sound
The first thing you will notice about Darksiders is the art style and this is because the games art director is the legendary Joe Madureira. You know? The guy who was an artist and worked on a small comic book called The X-men. So with his vision the characters and environments within Darksiders truly stand out and are eye popping to look at. If you like the art in comic books you are going to love this. Because this is a post apocalyptic set game, the world environments really do give the feeling the the world as we know it has ended. You will travel through destroyed cities, buildings and parks just to mention a few.

The demons and other characters are great, and playing as War really gives you the impression that this guy has some serious power. And when you transform into your demon type thing you really just want to stop and look at it as is just that cool. The animations of the moves are super smooth and crisp and I never noticed any frame rate drops. But having said all this much of the rest of the game feels dry and dull, even with an art style so cohesive and such pretty visuals. I’m not sure what it was but it was just something nagging at the back of my mind.

The game really sounds great with excellent surround effects and atmosphere sounds. If you have a decent sound setup be sure to crank the volume because when the demons talk in that deep bass voice of theirs and when the larger boss’s walk the bass will go through you and will draw you right into the game even more than the visuals. The voice acting is not Oscar winning, you will get the cheap one liners, but War just seems flat and you do not really make a connection with him.

Conclusion
Overall this is a game that will keep you button mashing and taking up your time for about 14hours. Nothing besides the story is new really, as Darksiders uses game mechanics from other games such as exploration, and combat we’ve all seen before, but Vigil have managed these elements and have combined them in the same product and executed well overall. More could have been done with the bosses and puzzles, true, but the game as is it is still thoroughly entertaining. Great visuals and sound, smooth gameplay and even though the story starts off a little slow it sure does pick up. I mean where else do you get the opportunity to stomp demons as a Horseman of the Apocalypse?

Story – 7 A little slow but builds up nicely.
Gameplay – 7 Simple action, puzzles, and controls anyone can play and is smooth.
Graphics – 8 Stunning looking game, awesome art style, top notch animations.
Sound – 8 Good sound with bass, draws you in, voice acting could be improved.

Overall – 7 / 10

Written by Claudio Cecchi (Freak_c)

A HUGE thank you to Ster-Kinekor for supplying the game for review.

Tags: darksiders, Darksiders: Wrath of War, Review