darksiders

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Darksiders II

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/25/2012
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch, Wii U, Xbox 360. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Vigil Games

Release Date: 8/14/2012


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THQ and Vigil return with a new protagonist and tons of improvements over the first game. This time you play as Death, War’s brother, who is trying to redeem War from the Charred Council’s wrath for destroying humanity. On your adventure, you meet new and old faces, as well as a ton of puzzles, bosses, and combat, as well as new abilities.

The first thing I have to mention is that this game isn’t nearly as confusing to play as the first game. I was always lost and had no idea what to do. Even finding hidden chests was a pain. This time around there are lots of collectibles and chests, as well as some free-roaming, but in a more organized fashion. You wind up traveling through three different realms each has its own secrets. The Forge Land is where you start, and you can buy armor and weapons, so Vulgrim plays a small part this time around. By finding Book of the Dead pages and Boatman coins you can trade them in for special keys as well as random boxes with a piece of armor or weapon with Vulgrim. There are lots of different items to collect and find, so loot is abundant here.

My favorite part about the game is the platforming. It’s just so fun and fluid as well as fast-paced. The level design is ingenious here because it seems labyrinthine at first, but I rarely had to go to a walkthrough to figure out where to go or what to do. Death even gets to acquire some abilities that are just for puzzle-solving like the Soulsplitter which allows him to split into two and the Voidwalker, which makes a return from the last game. I found the puzzles to be really fun, and they were just challenging enough to where you only had to think for a bit then it all clicked. The satisfaction reminded me of how I felt when solving puzzles in Portal.

Secondly, the combat is a lot better than in the last game. Death feels fast, fluid, and has a lot more moves at his disposal than War did. You can buy over 20 new moves throughout the game, as well as upgrade your skills. You will need to play the game twice to be able to upgrade all the skills, but what I did unlock was fun. Eventually, certain moves leached health from enemies, gave me more Wrath (needed to do these moves), and stunned enemies. You can turn into Reaper for a while which does a lot of damage and you take very little damage. Overall, the combat was just fine, but the camera had issues. Every so often when I was in a tight corner the camera didn’t know what to do. It didn’t happen often, but when it does you can’t really see what’s going on and will take hits. After the Forge Lands, the game gets extremely difficult. I died multiple times during certain fights because they were so hard. You also get fewer health potions later on which can lead to frustrating deaths.

The boss fights are some of the best things the game has to offer. There are plenty of them and they are fun but challenging. You have to be quick and dodge and learn the enemy’s moves. There isn’t a block button here so the game can get really tough. I did find the final boss disappointing because I beat him in one try in just a few short minutes. Besides these issues, the combat is fun, solid, and well done.

I did find the game a bit repetitive after a while. It was the same thing over again just in different orders. Fight these enemies, solve this puzzle, and do this platforming bit. Most action-adventure games are like that, but Darksiders II doesn’t offer much variety. Even the enemies repeat constantly to the point where you just get sick of killing them. The only time I felt excited about combat after the mid-way point was during the boss fights. Thankfully the game is just overall fun, so even when you feel the game is getting old you will want to press on.

The game looks pretty good with a gorgeous art style. The textures can look a bit ugly up close, and I was disappointed that Vigil didn’t include any PC-specific features. In fact, the graphics options only allow you to change the resolution and V-Sync doesn’t even work. The keyboard and mouse controls are clunky, so stick with the Games for Windows controller if you have it. There are plenty of collectibles in the world so people who are dedicated to that will stay busy. This is one long game ranging at about 15-20 hours if you just go through the story and most side quests. If you complete it 100% you are looking at close to 40 hours of gameplay here. I just couldn’t find the motivation to collect everything like in games such as the new Batman games and Assassin’s Creed. After I got to the end of the game I just wanted to finish it and be done.

Overall, Darksiders II is a solid action-adventure game with some minor issues. There are no PC-specific graphics options, there are camera issues during combat, and the final boss fight is a disappointment. Enemies repeat often, and the same puzzle, platform, and combat formula follows throughout with not much variety, but the game is fun. There are a lot of collectibles and a few side quests, and the boss fights are a blast. If you loved the first game you will love this even more. People who didn’t like the last one should check this out.

Darksiders: The Abomination Vault

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 08/24/2012
Posted in: Book Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Del Rey

Author: Ari Marmell

Release Date: 7/24/2012

MSRP: $14.99 (Paperback), $9.99 (Digital)

Pages: 368

Recommended Audience: Young Adult

With the success of Darksiders II, it’s no surprise that a novel would come out. The Abomination Vault follows War and Death, two of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, before the events of the first game. This is an all-new original adventure that uses the game’s ideas very well. Death and War are trying to keep the Grand Abominations from the wrong hands. These are weapons made of flesh and steel of the now-extinct Nephilim race. Of course, the White City is involved and so to the angels. The Charred Council sends Death and War to stop this problem so it doesn’t tip the balance of the pact between Above and Below.

You get to see some insight on War and Death that weren’t in the game as well as a sneak peeks of what Strife and Fury are like. They appear briefly in the novel, but it’s more than the games. I liked how Ari gave us a closer look between Dust and Death because their relationship isn’t really fleshed out in the games. The same goes for Despair, his horse. There are some pretty good fight scenes in the game, and I found they were well-written and entertaining. Ari really brings across the true power of Death and his personality. One thing I was disappointed in was that he never appeared as his true form in the book. Death is a Grim Reaper and in the game, he can turn into one, but never in the novel. The part about the book is about the relationship between Death and War. You truly see how tight-knit these two are and how much they care for each other.

The conversations in the book are well written and keep you drawn in. Ari does a wonderful job describing the environment and what’s around the characters so you can paint a perfect picture in your head. Overall, The Abomination Vault is highly entertaining and gives us some insight that the games can’t or don’t offer. That is what I mainly came here for and I feel satisfied after closing the back cover. I know Death and War more, as well as their relationships with their horses and weapons. Pick this up if you are a Darksiders fan, but hold off until you play the second game.

Darksiders

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/10/2010
Posted in: Microsoft Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Unsupported, Steam Deck Verification, Xbox 360. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Vigil Games

Release Date: 1/5/2010


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Norse mythology. That’s what drew me to Darksiders, but don’t just jump into this thinking it’s a God of War clone. In fact, it’s a mix of Zelda exploration and puzzle-solving, and combat similar to God of War, but not as good or as epic. The story goes a little something along the lines of you playing as one of the four horsemen, War, who is chosen by the Council to find these broken seals and kill whoever did it to bring back Balance because the bad guys want all the realms aligned and made into one. The story is stretched thing between the long-winded levels, and it never picks up until the last hour, but by then you have forgotten what has happened because there is a little story between levels. It almost feels as if the story was an afterthought and Vigil just concentrated on the puzzles and combat.

That being said there is a lot of puzzle-solving in this game; almost more so than any other, I have played. The game takes a lot of ideas from other games such as God of War, Zelda, and even Portal and puts them to good use. While the game isn’t 100% original it does have its originality in certain areas. While starting with the combat it’s pretty simple. You start out with your Chaoseater sword which is mapped to the X button. Later on, when you get the scythe you can map that and any other secondary weapon to Y, and your tools to RT. Combat moves can be purchased by using blue souls gained from killing enemies. There are power moves, and multiple combos you can pull off and it’s all fluid and fun to use so there’s no problem there.

You have a yellow Wrath meter which is War’s “special powers”, then you have health shields which are bars of health. Sometimes when you weaken an enemy you can execute a kill move by pressing B (God of War anyone?), but no QTE (quick time events) are displayed. Instead, you just watch War butcher the enemy. I love QTEs and would rather participate in the killing than just watch, but some people may prefer this. You can also ride your horse, Ruin, through the last 3/4 of the game and swing your blade while on him to kill and demolish enemies.

Now combat is neat and fluid I just wish there were QTE events and a more fixed cinematic camera, but after explaining the puzzle-solving you’ll see why it’s a user-controlled camera. The puzzles are so frequent and so complicated that they drove me nuts. It was just puzzle, after puzzle, after puzzle, and never-ending. While this doesn’t ruin the game it just feels more and more like Zelda with every hour that passes. You have a free-roaming world that is broken down into sections that you can warp to. You have to find tools such as a grappling hook, Mask of Shadows (to see hidden objects), and a portal gun (yeah ripped straight from Portal, but it’s a gauntlet instead of a gun), as well as a glaive (Dark Sector maybe?). As you discover each tool you use them to solve puzzles accordingly. The portal gauntlet is probably the most unique. There are orange circle plates that you can attack portals too, and if any Portal fans are reading this you know what happens. However, there are a few unique touches such as in the Black Throne area (mostly puzzles and hardly any combat) where you guide a beam from across a level through the different rooms and solve those puzzles to allow the beam through more rooms. Yeah, it’s a bit in-depth and complicated, and don’t fret because most puzzles are pretty easy to solve, but there were a few brain scratchers that resulted in a video walkthrough.

A lot of the puzzles are pretty unique, but there are a few things thrown into the game that will surprise you such as the ride on the dragon, and using heavy guns that enemies drop. There is even a pistol that you can use in the game, but it is kind of useless except for the boss in The Ashlands level, but other than that the pistol was pretty useless. There are just a lot of unique puzzles in the game, and they are pretty fun, but the fact that there are so many makes the game redundant, and that’s why it didn’t score as high as I wanted it to be. The combat is pretty repetitive and there’s nothing outrageous about the gore level, it’s actually pretty mild; it’s nothing close to the gore in God of War III. The kill animations are pretty repetitive since there is only once per enemy, and even the enemies are recycled. While there may be about 6 or so different enemy types; they are just recycled with different “costumes” and are more powerful as you progress through the game.

The boss is pretty epic, but they aren’t too hard to beat. They repeat the same pattern over and over, and even the last boss is a pushover after you learn the strategy. The graphics are actually pretty nice. The character details are excellent, but the environments tend to be lacking. There is a lot of aliasing (jaggies) and I know the game could just look a whole lot better. This is also a game for people who like collecting since there is hidden crap all over the game, but I tend to not go searching for this stuff since I’m not good at it, but it’s there for Zelda fanatics to find.

Overall the game is worth a purchase, but people who want just the action should steer away from it since this game is very puzzle heavy, as in Zelda-type puzzles. The game gets very redundant after a while, and only the hardcore will continue playing, but Zelda fans and puzzle fans should check this out. You anywhere from 10-20 hours of gameplay depending on if you’re a completionist or not. There are lots to love in this package, but a bit more flare would have been nice. Bottom line: This is an adventure game for men, not elves.