So I've been catching up on old titles that I've yet to play. I've borrowed quite a few games from several friends, and right now those are: 

• Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition*
• L4D2*
• Darksiders*
• Crysis 2
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Dante's Inferno* 
• Dragonball Raging Blast 2*

So far, Mortal Kombat is the only game I've kept coming back to, out of the ones I've tried out so far (the ones marked with an asterisk). L4D2 is only really fun if you're playing with a friend (or people with a normal number of chromosomes), and Darksiders and Dante's Inferno are just 'meh' to me, though Darksiders is definitely the worse of the two. I managed to play up to around 4 hours of Dante's Fern and 2 and half for Darksiders. I couldn't quite put my finger on why I couldn't enjoy these games until I sat down and thought about it, so I figured I'd share.

Dante's Inferno

A 2010 release that is a shameless GoW clone. I'm fine with games re-using successful formulas as long as the final product is just as good as the source material. However, Dante's Inferno just isn't that great, despite its rather impressive intro. 

The main problem I have is that enemies just take far too many hits to kill. It may sound like a silly complaint but if you've played the game then you probably know what I'm talking about. Even the weakest enemies (which are meant to be defeated easily) take at least 2 of my most powerful, drawn out combos to kill off on normal difficulty. Given that you get surrounded by these dudes frequently, the game quickly turns from a fun experience into a chore. The much easier way is to simply grab and kill them one by one, but it's a methodical snore. 

"Would you like to punish or absolve this one? Absolve? Okay. Mash B."

It's the most dull, repetitive activity I've experienced in a long time, to say the least. And on the point of mashing B, who's bright idea was it to have to mash a button to open almost every door and every single treasure chest? It's annoying in GoW, and it's annoying here. Stop it. My thumb hurts. 

The Other One

...I really don't understand why Darksiders is seen as good. I mean, sure, if you endure the incredibly sh!tty first few hours I suppose it'd be decent, but I'm not the kind of person to do that; the notion of keeping to a certain game, TV show or book because someone else said it gets much better later on is just weird to me. Exposition in both story and game play elements should be what entices a person to keep on going in whatever it is you've created - if you do a piss poor job of it then your audience is only going to lose interest. 

But I digress, my main problem with Darksiders is mostly the combat. It just sucks. If it's not bad enough that you only have access to one combo at the beginning of the game (that only uses one button), the control scheme is just unintuitive. Blocking is something that actually requires effort to do, which is just plain silly in an action game; you can only block while being completely stationary. Why? Because some idiot thought it'd be a good idea to map block and dash on the same button. So half the time when I try to block, a dash comes out, and it fxcks me over. It also doesn't help that there's input lag on jumps and that the very first mission after the intro is a fxcking fetch quest. 

Oh, DB Raging Blast? It's good for drunk fun with friends, can't say much else about it. 

I just hope Deus Ex: HR and Crysis 2 don't disappoint.