Does this homage to both the God Of War and Zelda franchises, move out of their shadows, to become a stand alone hit?
Thankfully Vigil Games, in their first release has delivered in spades. By paying homage to the greats of the genre (The Legend of Zelda and God of War franchises), Vigil have created a brilliant action/adventure title worthy of the aforementioned franchises, so how did they do it?
Darksiders tells the tale of War, one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. He gets sent down to earth prematurely to restore balance to the war between heaven and hell. The pieces have been set on the board, and now War must set about restore balance to the world. I won't divulge any more details into the story, but it is safe for me to tell you, it is a brilliant, captivating adventure.
From a presentation standpoint, Darksiders delivers. With lead designer Joe Madureira leading the way, Darksiders was always going to be visually stunning. The menu layout is clear and tutorials thorough, making it easy for the player to effective navigate the game and its options.
The soundtrack compliments the action in astounding fashion, and the casting of Mark Hamill as the voice of The Watcher was a master stroke, on the downside, the audio sometimes loses sync with the video during cinematics.
One of the main issues with the game is the simplicity of the combat. You can easily complete the game by simply mashing the square button, there is no diversity. This however is a minor quibble since the enemies you fight are diverse and interesting. A word of warning, if you are looking for a title that presents you with something new... you will not find it here, Darksiders blatantly takes ideas from both Zelda and God of War, and creates little that is original, but look past this and you will see the best of both franchises in Darksiders.
THQ have already stated their intentions to make a sequel, and with the quality of this title, bring it on!