Darksiders(2010) Vigil Games

Darksiders (2010) by Vigil Games

So, lets get one thing straight, I reviewed this game on an older blog last year around this time. I'm reposting this because It may be a few days before I finish the game I am playing so I can review it. Also, because I have heard some buzz about this game lately and because of the sequel that is to be coming out in June. So, without further ado, here is my old review on Darksiders.

Darksiders, is the first game created by Vigil Games, a subsidiary of THQ. Vigil Games was founded by comic book creators which is Darksiders first problem. Seeing as this is their first attempt at creating a game, I will take it easy on them, as this is also my first full review. If you read my twitter then you probably know that I have a huge list of comments and complaints about this game, I plan on addressing all of them here.

Story line: The one HUGE flaw with this game is, the story line takes a big back seat in this game, so far back that it’s almost nonexistent. The story in the beginning was nice and gave a good backdrop to the game itself and its lore, but as the game progressed it became very evident that the story to this game was to simply realize that you have something sharp and you can kill demons and angels with it. It’s a very simple and linear story, with one major theme, vengeance.

Character design: The one thing I noticed right off the bat, which I bet most would, is War (the main character and one of the four horsemen) looks like a design train wreck. He has about 7 different kinds of armor on and they are all mismatching, which makes me think at one point he has a clothing fixation that was opposite of the Prince’s from the Prince of Persia series, every time War gets blood or a stain on his uniform he covers it with a nearby corpses armor, creating the ensemble you see today. His “final” armor looks much better than his normal clothing. He looks more like a horseman and his armor actually matches.

Game Design: To start off the levels of this game a very very linear, yes there are some split paths are some points in some dungeons but those rarely split off and all have very linear corridors that will either bring you back to the beginning, give you a new item, or give you the key to a door that is two rooms away.

One major question I would have to Vigil Games would be if they actually intended on making a Frankenstein monster of several good games, because they half succeeded. They took parts from certain games and tweaked them a bit, throwing them together creating something that looked like a game, but in the end turned into a brain dead chimp that only knows how to eat its own feces.  Here are only a few of the things I noticed that this game seemed to “borrow” from other successful games.

Life Shard: If you collect 4 life shard you get a new full life container and every time you beat a boss, you get a full Life Piece.

Map/Hordefinder: Each dungeon has a map that shows you the entire layout of the dungeon and a Hordefinder that shows you the locations of all of the treasure chests in the dungeon.

Crossblade: a four-sided blade that moves like a boomerang when thrown and can hit multiple targets.

Grappling Hook: A grappling hook that can catch onto climbable ledges.

Voidwalker: A gun that can shoot blue and orange portals that you and objects can go through.

Lightbeam puzzle: The final dungeon has you move beams of light in certain with portals and movable mirrors.

Gun Juggling: When shooting a falling opponent you can juggle them.

I know that this is their first game but I think these guys could have done better with creating their own material and actually making this game their own, and good.

Fighting System: This is a fighting game so I bet your wondering how the fighting system is, right? Well I can sum up the fighting system very very easily for you. Press attack button to slash, press it again to slash and again and one more time to cut them in half. There, you have now mastered the fighting system.  This game obviously wanted to be like God of War but fails at it very hard.

You get secondary weapons but your main attack doesn’t combo in with them and their attacks on their own are very flimsy and difficult to actually kill with. The one skill that I found to completely break the game was the dash stab. This attack does tremendous amounts of damage and stuns most enemies or makes them fly backwards and stuns them. I leveled this all the way up after my first dungeon in this game and didn’t have a problem afterwards.

Once your enemies and some bosses get low in health you can do a small QTE (Quick Time Event) that I swear was meant for the mentally handicapped. Remember how in God of War the normal enemies had one or two QTE’s and the bosses had 5 or 6 and they gave you a reasonable amount of time to actually press the button? Well this game takes that and makes it stupid, you can kill all minion and most bosses by simply pressing one QTE and its typically the same button. I found this to be way too easy and really dumbed the game down for me.

Enemies: The enemies all look like they either belong in Warhammer 40k or they belong in Starcraft. The Angels look like a mix between some of the Warhammer figures and the Archangel from Diablo 2. The demons either look like the Orc’s from Lord of the Rings or the Zerg from Starcraft and think and act like Orc’s from Warhammer. The enemy diversity at first seems very good and at a nice pace, but once you get a few hour into the game the enemies get palette swapped and all start to look the same and have the same QTE finishers making the game extremely repetitive.

In conclusion: Based on the games own merits I wouldn’t recommend this game at all unless you like to watch games try so very hard and fail, and if that’s true then you are one sick puppy. This game has many ups and downs, many more downs than ups.

However, seeing as Vigil Games is a new company and created a game that had its moments, by moments I mean times where I got a little too *happy* over ripping an angels wings off and slamming his head into the ground. This game is at least worth the rent. It has many flaws that prohibit you from really getting into the gameplay but does its “best” and may entertain you. If you like to support small companies or subsidiaries then I would strongly recommend buying. Even after you beat the main story line there are still things for you to find, even though it’s hard not to find them on your first playthrough.

Pros:

Gore

Challenging Puzzles

Flowing fights

Massive Bosses

Multiple weapons

Easter Eggs

Hidden Items

PS3 version has no graphical glitches

Cons:

Weak Story

Steals from other games

One move can make combat too easy

Short

No replayablilty

The intro to the game is unskippable

Strange loading times

The Xbox version has many graphic glitches

Button priority can get misconstrued.  (Picks up a stick instead of doing QTE finisher)

Stupid AI

Clunky Controls

Bad GUI

War isn’t likable or relatable

Palette swapped enemies (I thought we were past Final Fantasy 3)

Unforgiving Environment

Predictable story and ending

Game is a big lead up for the sequel

Secret Armor doesn’t show in cinimatics.

Name never explained.