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In 2010, the question of “How gritty can we make every single voice actor sound?” was answered in the form of Darksiders. And sadly, from this inauspicious beginning, things only go downhill. The combat is horribly dull (though that may partially be the fault of Dark Souls’ existence), the levels are aggressively linear, and the story isn’t particularly compelling. Your first quest is to gather 500 souls. Great. Fantastic. Top score.
You play as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (War, in this case), who has been unjustly blamed for killing humanity and disrupting the all-important Balance. He wants to redeem himself by taking down the being that now rules over earth. In one of the many, many cinematics that played during my first hour, I learned that the Charred Council (who control the Four Horsemen) decided that any one force being too powerful would disrupt the Balance and…bring an end to existence or something. The trouble is, the Charred Council is a too-powerful force – so right off the bat we’re faced with plot holes.
Beyond that, it’s a pretty straightforward hack-n-slash. But there’s absolutely nothing interesting about combat (well, the camera control is certainly… interesting). The boss I encountered was boring and gave no indication if I was actually doing the right thing, and later I was immediately able to cheese all the enemies with a jumping attack. There really isn’t anything to recommend this game. Tier Three.
Darksiders II
Apparently someone liked the original Darksiders, because they made a second one. It is far, far better. There’s still a good helping of grittiness in the voice acting, but it’s not in every line. Even better, the plot hook is a whole lot more relatable. They seem to have learned their lesson from the distant intro from the first one: you play as Death in his attempt to redeem his brother from the crimes he is accused of from the first one (which I guess means War didn’t do so well). The cutscenes have been trimmed down and the characters have motivation, passion, and a slight sense of humor.
As far as combat, they removed the cheesing jump attack. Instead, they have a dodge that works – which makes combat interesting and fun. It’s still not terribly difficult (again, ruined by Dark Souls), but it is satisfying. The enemies telegraph nicely without spending a minute winding up; even better, they have health bars!
I waffled on putting this in Tier One, but I think it’s worth my time since it seems like a good winding-down game. As a warning, it sounds like people encounter bugs in this version (according to Steam), but I didn’t run into anything in my hour.
