Darksiders: Wrath Of WarThey should have kept the subtitle of "Wrath of War" for the game, Darksiders. No big deal that they didn't.

I bought and beat Darksiders already. Good times. Many people say that it barrows elements from several games. Basically it's a mash up of Zelda, Prince of Persia, and God of War. Many people drag Devil May Cry into the mix, but the only thing that it barrows from that series is the gun. So let's get rolling.

You are War. Somebody gone messed up the cranberry sauce and woke you from your slumber. You only get woken when the 7 seals are broken and the apacolypse begins. So you roll down to earth and destroy anything that doesn't deserve to live. This means angels or demons. You do this because you work for the Council who is in charge of keeping a balance between good and evil.

But you get down to earth, kill a few demons and angels, and then you relize that your 3 brothers aren't here to join the apacolypse. The Councel sucks you back to their cave and tell you that you are a rebel, and that the seals weren't broken. As punishment, Mark Hamill gets to keep you on a leash while you go look for The Destroyer...

Mark Hamill is the voice of the Watcher, who is keeping War on a leash. If you don't know who Mark Hamill is... shame on you. Luke Skywalker? Yes. The voice of the Joker? Yes. Just imagine the Joker's voice from either Batman Arkham Asylum or the cartoon TV show and you have the Watcher. I feel that I needed to school you on this information.

So you are War looking for The Destroyer, with a Joker version of Navi tagging along. Navi is the little fairy from Zelda Ocarina of Time that went "Hey! Listen!". The Watcher isn't as annoying. Plus it's the voice of Mark Hamill.

Since you are on a short leash, you have to regain your powers/items/horse. You are a horseman without a horse for about half of the game. That's OK though. The post Apacolyptic world is an open world, but some paths are blocked off until you regain and ability or recieve an item. Very Zelda-isk. Usually you are sent forth onto a mission which involves going in a Zelda type dungeon where you will find a useful item that will open up paths, or help you reach secrets. You will get to solve a lot of Zelda like puzzels as well.

All this is not a complaint. The developers did a very good job replicating the experience. The puzzels were fun and satisfying and never frustrating which is good. However they really don't reinvent the wheel.

Unlike Zelda, there is a lot of combat. Which is also good. The combat feels like God of War. You will use your sword most often. Along the way, you will get other weapons, like a sythe and some gauntlets. Each handle a little bit different from each other. For instance, the sythe has a longer reach but is slower than your sword. The gauntlets pack a punch (haha puns) but are slow and tend to throw your enemies away from you after two punches. You get relics that you can socket into your weapons, which add attributes to your weapons. It's a simplistic system like adding more damage or stealing health, but it does add a fun RPG element to it.

Speaking of RPG, your weaposn gain experience when you use them. The higher the level, the more damage they do and you can buy upgraded moves for them. Speaking of buying, you will be visiting the Vulgar who is your demon shopkeep. He sells you items, weapon moves, upgrades, and allows you to teleport to places. You can also buy magic abilities from him as well. You get 4 magic abilities, which include fire damage, poison damage, stone skin and you do more damage, and spikes popping up around you. Not very many but varied nonetheless.

There's a good variety of enemies. Not a lot, but a good amount that kept me entertained. Each one seemed to have a little bit different tactic in defeating. This game is a shining example on how to do a boss battle right. Each boss was Zelda like in their epicness.

Let's talk about characters while we are talking about enemies. I already talked about The Watcher. There are a few stand out characters, but there are a lot of trash characters or there might be a character that comes back later in the game and you forget the name of them. Darksiders likes to set up characters but never fully executes them to their full potential. It's like they plan on exploiting them in a sequel. However, each voice actor does a good job at breathing life into their character, which helps. War's voice is a little unexpected at first, but you realize fits nicely into his motives and personality.

I really like the graphics syle of the game. The apacolypse has a lot of varied colors which makes it a joy to explore in. The environments are varied as well. You'll explore the desert Ashlands, tropical Anvil's Forge, and many more locations. The look of the game is different from your normal realistic browns and greys, which is refreshing. Kinda reminds of Torchlight if you are loooking at graphic style. However, they seem mature in their own cartoony way.

For sound, I didn't notice anything amiss. The voice acting is superb. The music always matched the mood and never seemed out of place. The sounds of combat were good. The only gripe is the enemies remarks when you are fighting them. They reused lines over and over again and most of them were cliche hollow threats. It's a minor gripe.

The biggest gripe would be controls. There isn't enough buttons on a controller for everything that needed to be done. Every face button was used and reused. This is probably why the magic system was simplified. I found myself not using magic very often because it was a hassle and made me lose my flow. I had to hold down "L1" and then use "X, Square, Triangle, Circle" to pick from the four magic spells. When you go from hitting Square to choosing from 4 magic spells, it takes away from the flow of combat. Although there are only 4 spells, you can assign potions to them as well, so you might need to access your menu more often later in the game. Personally I didn't use them often so I didn't worry about it too much.

"R2" is used to use your secondary weapons like your gun, grapling hook, cross blade, etc. But you have 6 secondary weapons and you can only assign 3 of them to be quick selected from the D-Pad. So you will enter the menu more often later in the game to solve some puzzels because you'll be like "Crap. I need the grapling hook but I haven't used it in a long time so I don't have it assigned." Takes away from the game a little bit. Down is reserved for switching between sythe and gauntlets, that's why only 3. You do get used to the controls in the game, and they work, it just is a lot of stuff on a controller, and therefore magic suffers.

Even with the controller gripes, I still recomend buying the game. It took me about 20 hours to finish the game on normal, but I have plans on replaying the game. The difficulty is right on. It's a good balance of satisfyingly hard and easy. I think the hardest difficulty will offer up a good challenge and I might throw the controller. Not necessarily a bad thing.

I also want to get a Platinum Trohpy on this game. I don't care about Trophies but something about this game makes me want it. I only have one Platinum Trophy and that's from Assassin's Creed 2. So maybe I'm riding off the high off of that trophy.

I hate telling people whether or not to buy/rent a game because it's really up to you. I really liked the game and am glad that I bought it. There are some games that I regret paying 60 bucks for, but Darksiders is not one of them. Now go buy it.

GABE: "Dante's Inferno is derivative. Darksiders is more like an homage."
TYCHO: "Yeah, but what's the difference?"
GABE: "Whether or not I like it."
-- Penny Aracade - 01/08/2010 comic