Darksiders (Hands On)
Death comes to your living room – in a good way
Tags: Darksiders: Wrath of War Categories: PS3 Previews, Previews, Xbox 360 Previews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Sep 17th, 2009
God of War has made quite an impression on the industry, and everyone has been clamoring to recreate the formula. Heavenly Sword recreated the formula, but threw on a lot of glitz into the game. It did a good job of showing off what the PS3 could do for graphics, but that meant that the grit that defined God of War’s atmosphere was missing. In trying to bring the grit and the action of God of War to a new franchise, Darksiders is much more of a direct translation of the formula. Taking control of War, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. It’s actually a laughable little nod to the their inspiration for the game, At least it wasn’t called Horseman of War or something silly.
The story seems rather disposable, as War needs to regain his strength to stop the apocalypse. Darksiders doesn’t seem to be really plot heavy in its focus anyway, with its main asset (and appeal) being the visceral violence and action. The combat is brutal, and the game relishes very moment of it. War’s movement is a little slow and lumbering, akin to Nightmare from the Soul Calibur series. However, when he grabs an enemy, it turns into a red paste.
The combos seem to be less fluid than other hack and slash games, something that I hope they correct. More annoying that this, however is the reliance on the quick time events to show off more brutal moves. I think anything that’s going to pull the gamer away from the controller is a mistake. Although the animations are great, and these allow for a wider array of enemy specific moves, you cut the players tether to the world, and the giant buttons shown are an even bigger detriment to immersion.
Despite my misgivings about the quick time events, Darksiders looks like it might be fun. It looks like their shooting for “epic” with a storyline about averting the apocalypse. The section of game I played through didn’t show much, and let’s face it - the button mashing can only carry the game so far, that story will make the difference between a rental and a buy.
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Tags: Darksiders: Wrath of War
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Sep 17th, 2009 and is filed under PS3 Previews, Previews, Xbox 360 Previews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
