Darksiders Updated Hands-On

Imagine yourself as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The world has come to a screeching and violent halt as the scattered remains of humanity amount to little more than dust and debris in the empty streets. You must be pretty proud of your handiwork, right? One problem: This isn't your apocalypse. Some unknown force has conspired to bring the world to an end, but you've taken the blame. Now you're an outcast seeking to find answers in the middle of a fight between angels and demons.

Of course, the apocalypse is hardly a new setting in the world of video games. The destruction and lawlessness that go along with the end of the world make it an appealing backdrop for many developers, but one thing that immediately sets Darksiders apart from its ilk is the eye-catching art design. The game's denizens of angels and demons are rendered in impressive detail thanks to the imagination of comic artist Joe Madureira, who occupies the role of creative director on Darksiders. It's a slick look that lends the world a style that feels both gothic and modern at once.

Our time with Darksiders was split between a guided demo courtesy of Vigil's David Adams and some hands-on time to call our own. What Vigil showed was an impressive collection of characters and battles intended to reveal some of the game's more attention-grabbing moments. Among some of the highlights were sequences like these: Seeing the stone facade of a giant building break free from the foundation to reveal itself as a towering golem of rubble; a fight against a demonic figure known as the Phantom General confined entirely within a blazing ring of fire; and a boss battle against a dragonlike monster that you finish only when you rip its wings off with your bare hands.

While there's plenty of killing to be done, Darksiders is very much an action-adventure game with a heavy focus on exploration and character progression. One of your biggest challenges in the story is that you've lost a great many powers, rendering you a shell of your former horseman self. Over the course of the game, you'll rectify this by picking up a number of weapons and abilities. You'll acquire the big ones as you unfold the story and complete various "dungeons" (a term used loosely by Vigil, considering the urban setting), but you can also deal with a merchant named Vulgrim, who's more than glad to sell you items and upgrades for the low, low price of captured souls. This currency is gained from just about everything you destroy in the game, from zombified humans wandering the streets to wooden desks in old office buildings, and serves as a sort of reward for taking your time within the game rather than jumping from one boss fight to the next.

Our hands-on time was more about learning the basics than executing those big, cinematic moments. War wakes up in a parking garage whose multistory structure offers a good opportunity to shake the dust off his acrobatic skills. You learn to leap across wide gaps, shimmy along ledges, dangle from ceiling pipes, and climb walls covered in the proper handholds. Soon, we were swarmed by zombies, whom we were only too eager to dispatch with a few swipes of War's giant sword. The controls did a fine job of balancing between melee and platforming, without requiring too much input in either area. You need do little more than hit jump and let War automatically grip the side of a wall when he falls short, and time the attack button to execute multistrike combos when faced with a number of enemies. The most challenging portion of our session came against a miniboss in the building above the garage, who was best taken care of by lifting up chair and tables and hurling them at him just before he came charging at us like a bull.

Vigil has described its goal for Darksiders as creating a mature Zelda game with a distinct style to call its own. The style is certainly there, and for the most part, it's obvious where the game draws its inspirations. It's a wide-open world that you can traverse at your own will, but certain areas are off limits until you learn a critical ability at the end of a story quest. That continual sense of progression, combined with a host of upgradable talents and weapons, means the team looks to be on the right path.