The apocalypse has come! Ride War, and take revenge!!
The four horseman of the apocalypse, they truly are charismatic characters and in 'Darksiders' can play as one. And hell does this feel good! Darksiders is truly a great game and definitely worth a try. Although there are some flaws, the atmosphere is enormously good and this way Vigil Games has the basics of a great franchise in their hands.
It all starts with a short story about the three kingdoms: Heaven, Hell and Earth. Once there was a great war between Hell and Heaven until the 'Council' made a pact to bring the balance back to the universe. There would be no war between Hell and Heaven until the third kingdom, Earth was strong enough to compete. In order to ensure this, the four horseman were created and if it were that the war would start to early, they would rise and wipe out everyone and everything.
And this is what this game all goes about, you play as one of the four horseman, War. You were summoned, but the other horseman weren't, because of that the council declares that you are a threat to the balance and the de war that is going on between Hell and Heaven is your fault. Since you know that this isn't the case, you decide to start a quest to claim your revenge.
When you read this introduction to the story, you probably think that you heard this before and that is probably true. The story isn't original at all and you can almost always guess what will happen next. But although the story isn't original, it is actually really fun to follow. This is mainly because of the way it is told with cut scenes and of course the great atmosphere. That way you don't really care it isn't original which is a great plus of course. There is another problem with the story, unfortunately. In fact you hear the whole story in only two moments of the game, the beginning and the end. Between that there are about ten hours of game in which you hear almost nothing about the story and at those moments it feels like you are doing things but you don't really know what is the point in doing them.
Probably the most important thing for a game is the gameplay and well it isn't bad at all. But it isn't perfect either. You could best describe it as an adventure game with dungeons and puzzles, but you play it as an badass headsmasher. So you spend most time inside dungeons and you try to get to the boss of that dungeon. Like in Zelda, you have to solve puzzles, find keys and occasionally you have to battle in some sort of arena. You also have a lot of gear like a grappling hook and shuriken(which you basically use as a boomerang). You get this gear when you progress in the game and this is something that the game does really well. Just at the moment that you a certain weapon or ability gets a bit boring, you get a new one to freshen things up. Most of the time you use your gear and abilities to solve puzzles, but some can be handy when you battle monsters and like in Zelda, you mostly have to use you newly achieved gear to defeat the boss. So these things are really well done, but in my opinion it doesn't reach the level of Zelda, although it comes really close and that is definitely a great achieved.
But like I said, you are also a badass berserker. This is quite fun to do and the battles are really fluent. After you stunned a certain monster you can always finish it with a finishing move and this certainly is a big to delight to do. Every finish is brutal and easily done with just one button. The battles aren't as good as those in, for example, God Of War. You get three primary weapons, a blade, a scythe and some kind of boxing gloves. While the blade and scythe are fun to use, the boxing gloves are pretty much useless in battle because they are extremely slow and a bit difficult to use. Another problem is that there aren't a lot combo's you can perform. In the beginning this isn't much of a problem, but when you get near the end, things might get a bit boring. This gets even worse because (on normal difficulty) normal battles are too simple and you can simply destroy any creature with only one kind of combo. On the other hand there are some parts in the game that felt a bit too difficult in comparison to the rest of the game.
One last thing is that the controls could have been better. They are quite difficult to master and sometimes a bit not logical. Of course you get the hang of it after some time, but somewhat more polished controls would have been welcome.
Nowadays, graphics are really important for a game and Darksiders looks quite good. It isn't the most beautiful game you'll ever experience, but it definitely isn't ugly either(, although the blood could have been better). Like I already said, Darksiders is set on earth, but that's kind of stupid to say. Actually you should say that you're playing in a fantasy – world that pretends to be earth. This isn't really a bad thing of course, since the world you're playing is interesting to play in. The world is really colorful and I really think that's something good, it creates a good atmosphere, although the apocalypse is coming. I don't really like the hulk – like body of War though, but that's a personal taste.
But I do have two real problem. Firstly, it has to be said that the level design isn't always great. With this I don't mean that there a problems with things like platforming, but something the graphical/level design makes things unclear. Several times I made about ten rounds in a single room because I just couldn't find where to go next. This problem mainly occurred while swimming. Underwater, things aren't very clear and you miss really fast direction and this can be very annoying at times. Of course you have a map, but the way the map is drawn isn't very clear either, so at first it'll make things probably worse.
The second, smaller, problem I'd like to mention, is the design of creatures. While there is some variety in creatures, this isn't very big. They tried to make this less noticeable by giving some creatures a different color and making them a bit stronger, but basically they're the same.
So all together Darksiders isn't a bad game at all, but it isn't a superb game either. It delivers a great mix of puzzling and fighting, but it isn't as good as the 'great ones' of the genres it has had its inspiration. I still do believe this game can get better with its prequels and that way this will probably become a great franchise.