Review: Darksiders: Wrath of War

by Jennifer Allen - February 4, 2010

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Darksiders is nearly a great game but lacking in any real unique selling point, it doesn’t quite manage to be worth playing over the games that it borrows so liberally from.

A hack n slasher at its heart, Darksiders starts depressingly slow. For the first few hours it really isn’t very exciting. The action is extremely slow paced and War, the main character, feels far too underpowered.

Bearing in mind that War is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, it’s annoying that after the prologue he’s stripped of his powers and players are left with a character with only one real attack combo.

Having a sneak preview of the potential of the main character is an increasingly common theme of late with similar happening in Batman: Arkham Asylum and Prototype but it feels frustrating in Darksiders as it takes a little too long to really get going.

It’s not until around the halfway mark of the 12 hour game that players finally see the real potential to War’s powers. Even then there’s still no sign of the fiery horse that we’ve all seen in trailers, until later on in the game.

Despite the meandering first hours of the game though, Darksiders turns out to be a much more enjoyable beast of a game even if it isn’t exactly memorable due to its confused identity. Parallels have been made between it and the Zelda series which isn’t really the case. The basic concept is the same but Darksiders is, unsurprisingly, much darker and lacks some key Zelda elements.

There’s no sign of charming conversations between NPCs or wandering around provincial towns here, nor does Darksiders feel as open as the likes of The Ocarina of Time. However the well constructed puzzles and dungeons within Darksiders do bear a passing resemblance to the Zelda series, albeit with a lot more blood and guts to them. There’s also a shop available for War which offers various armour and other RPG-lite upgrades.

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The beat em up mechanics are extremely reminiscent of the God of War series and despite the slow start, the amount of combos available widen into quite a variety. It’s unfortunate then that many of these combos aren’t really worth doing when the basic pummeling of the same buttons over and over works just as well. Most basic enemies can be killed by a few hits of War’s Chaoseater followed by a press of B to inflict the ‘insta-kill move’.

Much like the rest of the game, it’s later in the game when War acquires a secondary weapon such as a scythe or gun that things become more enjoyable with the ability to mix things up particularly fun. A variety of moves do become more useful in the boss fights, and there are certainly plenty of them throughout. So many in fact that they get a little tedious.

The bosses are particularly impressive visually, keeping to the strong post-apocalyptic comic book style that is evident throughout the game. Most of the boss battles suffered from an over-reliance on learning their moves via trial and error which quickly became frustrating in latter stages.

With the open ended approach Darksiders echoes the increasingly favoured approach first popularized by Super Metroid: acquiring new powers as the game progresses and retracing steps in order to gain every upgrade and collectible possible.

It certainly extends longevity but it also feels a little predictable. Once an item is acquired such as a grappling hook or the ability to glide, it’s obvious that the ability is needed to get to the next section of the game taking away any real surprise and making things appear a little stale.

Darksiders gives and takes away in equal measures. It’s an enjoyable title, once the first few hours have been traversed, but it doesn’t feel tremendous enough to be a true great. Bearing so many resemblances to great games such as God of War, Devil May Cry and Zelda brings about the question: why play this when you could play one of those instead?

Darksiders was shrewdly released at a time when the competition was limited (excluding the sublime Bayonetta) while later in the year up against Dante’s Inferno and God of War III, it would have struggled to be noticed.

An enjoyable game but one that’s perhaps best left to play during a release lull.