This week I've played through Darksiders, a face-paced action-adventure game. While being a dark-themed game, it still used a lot of bright colors and everything during the game so you get more of a fantasy feel of the game than a spooky feel which I actually started to like after about an hour of gameplay. At the beginning things seem to happen very quickly and you're not sure what's going on. It was actually a bit repelling because of that, but once the main character is (spoiler!) stripped of his power and basically has to start earning all his moves and skills, the game actually gets interesting (i.e. after the intro level which is most probably used for a demo as well).
The story revolves around the first Horseman of the Apocalypse, War. He is convicted of causing armageddon on Earth and thus sealing the human race's fate. A century later he is sent back to either find the ones actually responsible for the chaos or to meet his death and thus actually carrying out his own death sentenced by the Charred Council.
The game itself was released at the beginning of 2010. While it is still quite a new game, graphic-wise it may not really compare to other games. But what the game graphics lack in detail, they make up in clever use of particles and bump-mapping. The environments do tend to look artificial (except the desert called Ashlands), but this works in favor of the game. Generally the environments seem alright, not too crowded, but there are some points in the game where the gameworld feels vast, especially in the Ashlands.
The initial gameplay is simple: Hack and slash. During the gameplay the player can collect souls as currency and buy/upgrade various moves. The primary weapon is a badass sword and two secondary weapons are available as well (scythe and gauntlet). The scythe can be bought from the demon merchant while the gauntlet is obtained as a mandatory item about 30%-40% into the game. You can also find weapon enhancement items (which you can insert into each weapon's slot then) which have different effects ranging from simple stuff like weapon attacks boosts over increased soul drops by enemies to cool stuff like health leeching and more.
A lot of logical puzzles are also featured in the game, using the special items and tools you acquire throughout the game. While the puzzles are usually not too complicated, they definitely tend to get harder, especially in the 5th level (the Black Throne) where you have to play with portals (yes, portals). The environment expects of you jumping, climbing, grappling around ledges and other basic stuff. While not too extensible, it gets the job done and is definitely a fair challenge between the battles, especially when combined with the puzzles.
There's something called Wrath energy which is basically an equivalent for skill points. You can use Wrath energy to either execute a few special powerful moves that do a lot of damage or you can use a few other skills continuously to improve how you fight (e.g. the Stoneskin ability that improves attack and defense while it's active) which then again drain Wrath. You can get health, currency and wrath from killing various enemies. There's also a special skill called Chaos Form which transforms you briefly into a huge burning demon (you get to see it shortly during the intro level) which can deal massive damage. Perfect when you're in a pinch or low on health and have a bunch of enemies surrounding you. In order to activate Chaos Form, you have to charge up the Chaos bar (by basically killing enemies with the sword Chaos Eater or by other means such as using an enhancement item that allows any weapon to drain Chaos energy from enemies) and then use it whenever you please when it's full.
Battles are fluid and the player is assisted in the basic moves quite a bit as they mostly require only one button, depending on whether you hold it, keep pressing it or do a combination of both. Extended and more advanced (and sometimes more useful moves) can be accessed by combining additional buttons for other actions (such as jumping or dashing). These moves first have to be purchased from the demon merchant. In the later parts of the game, these advanced moves make fighting a lot more efficient and keep you from dying too often.
There are also tertiary "weapons" which usually only act as special tools for solving puzzles, but some of them can be used in battles. Most of them are ranged so this additional aspect makes the game much more fun in certain situations. You can switch to target mode, charge up the razorblade weapon, throw it around to hit a few enemies and while the weapon does its stuff, you pull out your sword and start smacking the rest. It's very fun.
While enemies are somewhat generic, you will notice something that is called palette switch (basically the same enemy with slightly altered graphics in form of color, maybe a bit different 3D mesh model and different particle animations) and basically repeat most of their moves, the bosses are quite entertaining. Each boss battle is creative enough that it requires you to first figure out how to actually beat the boss, but they're not too creative. Especially towards the end the creativity of the boss fights drops and the bosses and mini-bosses actually get easier.
The boss battle against the Stygian, a giant sandworm, in the desert was very entertaining as you obtain Ruin, War's horse, prior to that battle and then you have to ride around the boss arena. It was really cool.
The general game feel is pretty good. You will keep playing for a couple of hours until you start to trust the demon merchant to some extent, even though he doesn't have too much to do with the general story. Seriously, I was very skeptical towards him when I first met him. Kudos to the voice actor, that evil demon laugh is great. The game really got a grip on me at the beginning. I was sent to a devastated Earth with no one to trust and basically everybody against me. Suddenly having to trust some demon who has probably nothing but his own interests in mind (with a very sinister demonic laugh on top of that), is not something I'd call comforting.
There's about 10-20 hours of gameplay (depending on your skill/speed, whether you want all items for health slots, wrath cores, enhancements, Abyssal Armor pieces, etc. and whether you use a walkthrough for all that stuff).
I give it a 8/10.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarksidersCurrently I am about an hour and a half into Darksiders 2 (which was released just a few days ago) and I have to admit, they have not only improved existing concepts, they have also changed a lot. For starters, the game is not an action-adventure game anymore, it's a full-blown action-adventure RPG. You can collect a shitload of randomly generated weapons, armor pieces and other stuff. You have proper levels, a skill tree and more. Enemies also finally have health bars and you can also actually see the damage (if you wish, you can turn this off) that you deal to enemies in numbers (just like in any other RPG) which also includes that weapons don't do fixed damage anymore but have damage ranges (e.g. 20-27) and you can have a different range of different secondary weapons which you basically switch as you please just like the primary weapons.
The game features also quests and sidequests unlike its predecessor where the closest thing to a sidequest was to find all 10 pieces of Abyssal Armor so you get (guess what) the Abyssal Armor. The movement has also been changed and extended a lot. Not only can you climb around now, you can also dash along walls (reminds me a lot of the new Prince of Persia series), grapple on pillars and much more. The game also gives the feeling that you are more in control of your character during these things. Some things don't seem to be so automated like in the predecessor, but not in a bad way. The increased feeling of control over movement definitely works in favor of the sequel.
As for the environments in general, you get a feel of vastness already at the very beginning of the game when you have to ride across the snowy mountains to reach your destination which then continues while you ride along the plains of the new world. I definitely like that.
The only down point so far seems to be the general story as it's somewhat flat. Death, another Horseman of the Apocalypse, learns of the fate of his brother War (from the first game) and sets out to prove his brother's innocence. That leads him to become trapped in an entirely different world. While this is ok, it feels very forced as now he has to complete a bunch of bullshit quests and destroy/clean the "Corruption" ("as if hate was given life" how one of the NPCs describes it) in order to talk to the Tree of Life so he can find out how to save his brother (though when I entered the plains and saw the huge eye monster which is part of Corruption, it looked pretty cool).
I hope things will get better in time. It's true that the story of the first game wasn't much either, but at least War had emotional motivation (revenge) and determination to fulfill his goal. He'd even risk a great deal (like freeing the imprisoned demon Samael and restoring his full power where you can already see why this may not be such a good idea) in order to achieve his own goal. Pretty reckless and pretty badass. In the sequel Death basically just acts pissed all the time, doing the stupid sidequests he gets anyway. I really hope things will start to look up and more characters will be actively involved in the story like in the prequel. According to Wikipedia the game is supposed to be double the content and playtime of its predecessor.
More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darksiders_2