The VGZ blog

Some things in life are unavoidable. Crazy people sitting next to you on the bus, those same people telling you that the end is nigh as you walk through town, and mentioning the Legend of Zelda and God of War in a review of Vigil Games’ début release, Darksiders.

The aforementioned crazy people would probably take quite a liking to the premise of Darksiders: Heaven and Hell, each well and truly removed from the others’ Christmas card list, have their eternal quarrel overseen by a Council (A sort of United Nations of the Otherworld) who keep everything from wiping out poor, weak, frail humanity, and command the services of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

All is in balance (very important word, that) until one day all hell breaks loose, quite literally, in New York City and War of the Horsemen turns up, thinking it’s judgement day. Unfortunately it isn’t, and he’s arrived embarrassingly early for a party that isn’t supposed to happen yet.

The Council, benevolent balance-keepers that they are, are not best pleased, and charge War with the task of finding out what exactly is going on. Oh, and humanity is wiped out somewhere in the middle. Nice job, Council.

What follows is a curious, blatant and entirely unapologetic hybrid of highly successful games, including the Legend of Zelda, God of War, Portal, Prince of Persia and Gears of War. What many people will tell you is that this makes for an incredibly derivative game, and they’re not entirely wrong. What most of these people will then go on to miss is that the ‘mix and match’ nature of Darksiders does not instantly make it a bad game. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The first major point, aside from a severe identity crisis, is the art direction that Vigil decided to pursue. It’s a very ‘love it or hate it’ kind of grim fantasy, with War himself hulking around in hefty boots, glimmering battle armour, a bright red hood and wielding a really, really big sword. Put it this way – His sword’s name is ‘Chaoseater’. That should give you a rough idea of where the art’s going. Sort of a ‘Gears of Warhammer 40k’ look.

Personally, I like it, but then I’m quite juvenile in my tastes anyway, and can think of precious few things that are as cool as a big guy with a big sword beating even bigger hellspawn into the floor. But that’s just me.

The environments follow the same aesthetic, with desecrated buildings and crumbling highways for the early going, giving way to lush forest ruins and a lethal desert area later on, topped off with a huge, foreboding black tower of death, doom and other unpleasant things. To Vigil’s credit, considering the nature of the game, there was a real danger of every environment being little more than ‘grey with a hint of brown’, but they’ve managed to avoid this pitfall superbly.

The soundtrack, save for the intro and credit sequences, is unfortunately completely forgettable. I’m not sure if it’s something technical on my end, but I had to play with the game’s volume settings considerably to even hear it, and even then, all I got was little more than ‘Generic Atmospheric Score For Post-Apocalyptic Earth #4992′, which is a bit of a shame. Still, that’s nitpicking, and you could always replace it with the Devil May Cry 3 soundtrack instead.

The most talked about aspect of Darksiders, sometimes for all the wrong reasons, is the formula behind its core gameplay. Ready for this? It’s mind-blowing stuff.

You traverse an overworld, sometimes on horseback (Horseman of the Apocalypse, remember?), doing the odd sidequest here and there to progress along a relatively thin narrative that ties together a series of dungeons. In these dungeons, you progress by solving puzzles (that largely consist of pushing blocks and hitting switches) until you receive a unique new item. The functionality of that item will allow you to progress further to the boss of the dungeon which, upon defeat (utilising the aforementioned unique item), yields a health upgrade. Then you go back to the overworld and do it all again.

Sound familiar? Thought so. What if I add that the items include a boomerang and a hookshot, and that you’re accompanied on your quest by a ‘guiding companion’ (In this case voiced by Mark Hamill) who spontaneously appears to point you in the right direction? And the bosses have ‘nameplates’ before battle. And certain walls have scalable vines. And there are bombs that grow from the ground. And… Well, you get the idea.

Yes, Darksiders borrows heavily from Zelda, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing. The core mechanics of Zelda have been so good for so long that they’ve never really changed, and none but the most finicky of ‘internet hardcore’ gamers have ever minded. If you’re going to take something from a game, you might as well take the best you can get your hands on.

That mantra copies over to the combat, of which there is quite a bit. There’s a solid targeting system in place, with the ability to dodge, mix up combos and switch targets on the fly, in a manner highly reminiscent of God of War. The combat follows various other action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, in that you get out of it what you put INTO it. Certainly, you could mash the square button until everything dies and indeed, in the beginning of the game before you’ve unlocked any other combos (via the TOTALLY ORIGINAL ’stuff for souls’ system. Ahem.), there’s little other option. But carry on like that for more than an hour and you’ll be in for a repetitive and unrewarding experience.

Choose instead to explore the possibilities of the various combos on offer, as well as the two acquirable ’sub-weapons’ (a scythe and a gauntlet that can only be described as ‘GodFist’) and you’ll have a much more enjoyable time.

A criticism I have to place here, if only a minor one, is that some incentive to DO said experimentation would’ve been nice. In much the same way as Devil May Cry rewards you with consistently higher ranks, some sort of actual, tangible reward as opposed to the player’s own sense of self-satisfaction would likely have saved the developer from ever needing to hear the word ‘repetitive’.

The other games ‘borrowed from’ that have not yet been explained, Prince of Persia, Gears of War and Portal, are present in the form of some stylised wall-climbing and platforming sections, some third-person shooting, and a fully fledged portal gun (complete with blue and orange portals) respectively. Like the adventuring and combat systems, these elements are all handled with respect and finesse. They’re identifiable, but not executed in a way that you’d ever really say ‘Gears of War did this better’.

And that’s really the crux of what Darksiders is. Yes, it’s an amalgamation of about half a dozen other games, but it’s a GOOD one. No single part plays worse than the game that inspired it and the whole thing ties together quite nicely behind, as I’ve already stated, a ‘love it or hate it’ visual aesthetic.

There’s probably not much replay value here, although there’s an extensive array of optional stuff to seek out, if you’re a collectomaniac. My personal play through, on Normal difficulty with relatively minimal optional sidequests, took around fifteen hours which I think is more than adequate for a third-person action adventure.

Oh, and whenever the video game awards come up this year, Darksiders wins the award for Game With The Best Lead-In For A Sequel Ever. Take my word for it.

Bottom line: Some people say ‘Zelda meets God of War’ like it wouldn’t be awesome. Darksiders proves them wrong.