 |
Hot Stories
Darksiders Review, continued
Kelli Lenae
April 12, 2010
There was a lot of religious stuff and as someone who isn't religious I had this feeling that I would have been more impressed by certain lines or confessions from the characters if I had some basic understanding of who they were. The coolest character was the giant Smith who reminded me of the Scotsman from Samurai Jack. I didn't even like Mark Hamill's character, the Watcher, and...c'mon, he's Mark Hamill! The other characters were unmentionable. No one stood out, including the main character, War. As one of the mighty members of the Four Horsemen he was the guy who kills things without any sort of concern or reason. There were a lot of incredibly awkward scenes where War would do things outside of his normal mentality (i.e., kill things) and I would just sit there in confusion as no hints were given anywhere else in the game as to why War was benevolent all of a sudden. Especially when War, in the end, shows some actual cunning and I thought back as to why scenes happened in the beginning the way they did and it still didn't all line up. I feel that during War's creation the developers were so obsessed with detailing his armor that they just rolled diced to decide his actions.
The gameplay was obviously taken from other games. We've all heard it and it's true. It functions efficiently; there are a lot of nifty gadgets lifted from all the games the masses enjoy but they're fun, so who cares? That your final tool is the gun from Portal doesn't matter as long as it's fun, right? Maybe you disagree, and honestly speaking, half the time I disagreed because some of them weren't all that fun, but they were all interesting at least. Some of the weapons and gadgets were horribly underused. I think the gun was only needed for the Wyrm boss fight and anything ranged was absolutely useless in normal fights because they did absolutely no damage. The combos didn't join up between melee weapons, which I suppose could be a downer, but I never usually focus on using every combo unless I'm playing a game that grades me on coolness. This is not one of those games so I just bashed through all the cannon-fodder with the square button. That's how I get things done.
The exploration and puzzles were fun but a bit annoying at times. Everything was a fetch quest in this game. I confess they were disguised to seem like missions, but they were just fetch quests in the form of: Kill these guys and bring me their hearts after you kill them. Then a new area opens up and its: Solve these puzzles in three different areas, solve another puzzle here, then I'm freed. Or even better: Fetch the seven pieces of Blah so you can forge the... ugh, I don't care anymore.
The boss fights were, admittedly, pretty cool and varied. The first four were set up to introduce you to new gadgets and weapons and teach you how to use them in the game and they were big and epic. They were, of course, very easy after you understood the secret, but that's always a fun feature because you feel more enlightened, right? It was fun, despite the fetch-quests, just not amazing, and occasionally boring.
The final boss fight was pathetic. That's all I'll say on that matter.
Even though it's good enough on most levels, why did I end up not wanting to play it? There are a lot of reasons. The story didn't draw me in, the fetch questing was disguised but still obvious--and therefore uninteresting--and the combat, while functional, wasn't emphasized enough to make me care. If the time was taken to really make the massive and usually well-made boss fights more epic, there would have been a lot more drive for me. If time had been taken to make the gadgets more flexible and interchangeable then I would have had more fun with them. This is where it hurts me because, based on the fact that it's a new IP and not a terrible game, I want to tell everyone to play it based on brownie points alone.
But that's not fair, because games cost too much money. So, instead I'll warn that you should probably only rent this game, it's a fun play but probably not something you'll play repetitively.
Darksiders on Playstation 3: 3/5
Page 1 | Page 2
For a chance to win a game, see the Contest page.