Darksiders II review
Ed Smith August 14, 2012 - 3:59 pmReview: Death has kicked War out of the saddle in DARKSIDERS II, but can he build upon the solid foundations laid by his brother in this huge sequel or will he be left to rot for all eternity?
Darksiders II, this much-hyped sequel from THQ and Vigil Games, was promised to be so vastly improved that it would be “more like Darksiders 2.5″. But here is a game that emerges so plain it’s hard to get enthused. Bigger and more complex it may be, but all you can really say about Darksiders II is that it’s okay. It’s perfectly fine.
You play as Death, a semi-decomposed, gravel-throated Horseman of the Apocalypse out to clear his brother’s name after he inadvertently triggers Armageddon down on Earth (see: the original Darksiders). Death finds himself stuck in a mystical world between Heaven and Hell, and must scour several semi-sandbox environments looking for trinkets that’ll sort everything out.
It’s a predictable, watered-down mix of spells and MacGuffins: People X are in danger from Evil Wizard Y and it’s up to you to stop it because Z. The dialogue is functional, the voice acting is adequate and the whole thing feels like a WH Smith airport paperback: no real complaints, but nothing worth remembering.
It’s the perfect blanduscript to accompany Darksiders II’s cut-and-paste action-adventure gameplay with a smattering of light RPG elements. You can pick between two skill trees – warrior or mage – and pour XP into improving either your melee attacks or your spells. Armour and weapons can be customised and upgraded too, giving you the room to pimp your Death to your heart’s content. But it’s all moot: Super Bastard Sword or not, the combat in Darksiders II inevitably devolves into button-bash, hack-’n'-slash nonsense, as you occasionally tap dodge while spamming your strongest attack.
It’d help if the enemies were more interesting to look at. For all the good work gone into making the environments shine, Darksiders II’s bad guys are mostly indistinct blobs of armour and spikes that are unsatisfying to hit. Combat is more of a chore than a thrill, as you laboriously grind away hit points by repeatedly stabbing the attack button. It’s not a fresh evil – this kind of graceless button mashing rears its head in many other games – but Darksiders II is guilty as sin nonetheless.
Death in paradise
Back to those shiny environments: Darksiders’ trademark art style is on more beautiful display than ever here, with indoors and outdoors lovingly rendered in crisp hues. And navigating around the world is genuinely a lot of fun: you can summon your horse with a tap of L2 and charge from objective to objective, lopping off heads as you go.
Or you can go on foot. Darksiders II’s platforming has all the nippiness and fluidity that the combat so sorely misses. Death hops and jumps like Altair on Red Bull, effortlessly leaping from a surface to surface with just a single button. Shimmying up pipes, running across walls – Death has all the moves, and it ensures that traversing through Vigil’s gorgeous locales is easily the best part of Darksiders II.
But the world feels uninhabited and airless. NPCs are dotted very sporadically, and exist only to assign mundane fetch quests and repeat generic animations. It’s not a small game, either: Darksiders II links its main objectives with sprawling meadows and endless ice fields, completely unpopulated by anything except listless enemies. It’s an entire game full of World of Warcraft starting areas – grinding combat on barren fields.
Wood you kindly…
Dozens of sidequests go some way to livening things up, though. There’s still your standard fetch quest (bring me 15 animal pelts, find the secret trinket) but these are thankfully broken up with lengthy assassination missions.
Take one of the early sidequests, which sees you taking on a monstrous tree creature-thing called Gorewood. After picking up the quest from the central town hub, the job itself is twofold. First, you need to get to Gorewood, who is kept under lock and key at the bottom of a labyrinthine cave. Cue Darksiders II’s seamless platforming, as you leap across waterfalls and scramble up outcrops in search of a way in.
Once you find Gorewood, or any of the sidequest bosses for that matter, the ensuing combat is far more alive than during the game proper. Learning Gorewood’s attacks and timing your dodges and counterblows accordingly is as much a puzzle as finding him in the first place, and it makes for some deep breaths of satisfaction when the wooden sod finally goes down. These sections don’t have the variety or scope of Bethesda or Blizzard’s sidequests, but as self-contained offshoots they’re plenty enjoyable.
However, for every positive, there’s a negative: the beautiful environments are totally dead; the great platforming leads to one-button combat; the half-decent voice acting serves a half-baked story. At times the game pushes towards being properly good, but all too often it finds itself languishing in that most damned of places: mediocrity.
Darksiders II, from THQ and Vigil Games, is available now in the US and from August 21st in Europe for PS3 (reviewed) Xbox 360, and PC.
Comments (10)
Maybe if you weren’t hungover from a bender of Hatorade, you’d enjoy it more.
I think the main point Ed was trying to make was that nothing stood out as special in the game and the art style really seems to bother him.
Don’t think the general art style bothered him. The game’s environments are gorgeous. It was just the character designs.
This is about what I expected from a garbage company like THQ.
LOL…i like garbage, but this game didn’t make too much sense…seemed to goody goody heroic for a character such as death. I think the plot should have been rewritten…make death seem more like death. He acts like he was forced to be a horseman or something…he was after the power the charred council offered him…sigh*
Besides the character models being shit…it’s just another copycat game. Why oh why did they not add a niche. GOD OF WAR/FABLE…can’t see the game being any different than those titles smooshed together.
I played this game through and I couldn’t disagree with this review more. Yes there are a lot of fetch quests however the same can be said for Darksiders 1. You had to begin by collecting souls for Vulgrim. Then collect the hearts for Samael. Then collect the shards of the sword. Everybody is looking way to deeply into the fact that there are a lot of fetch quests. The fact is the game is bigger than the first so there is gonna be more to do as you go further and further into this massive game.
To complain about the concept of borrowing other concepts from other games just shows that the author was simply looking for bad things to talk about in this game and didn’t want to give it a fair chance. The author of this review uses Altair from the Assassin’s creed games as an example. But here’s a news flash people. Altair was not the first wall runner in the video game world. Anybody remember the Prince of Persia games. As I recall he had a lot of skill for wall running. To say this game has borrowed to much is like saying that every first person shooter is the same cause they all involve shooting guns. It’s just not a fair concept to rate a game on.
And to claim that the game is a “one button bashing game” is just not true. So I will explain this to you. You have two primary attack options. You have the light attack, which is using your scythes, and your heavy attack , which has a nice verity of weapons. With the heavy attack you get fast and slow weapons. Both have there advantages. The slow weapons (axes, maces, hammers, etc..) pack a serious punch and hand out massive damage. While the fast weapons (arm blades, gauntlets, claws, etc..) deal less damage but are faster and deal smaller amounts of damage faster. You are able to mix and match attacks and the switch outs are seamless. And it’s not just pressing a button and dodging. Enemies attack in all kinds of different ways. There is one button for dodging but you have to decide what to do in each fight. An angel is not gonna attack the same way as a demon. You have to dodge and decide where to dodge to. Do you dodge or should you jump. Then after the dodge you have to decide how to attack. Some enemies cannot just be attacked head on or you will fall for a trap. Plus there are lots of new moves you can both earn and unlock and you can even include tools you gain throughout the game into your fight. The hand of death is a big one. It is a tool used like a grapple. You can use it to stun your enemies for a moment before putting an end to them. And then there is the reaper form. While in this form you can withstand stupid amounts of damage and dish it out ten fold. If you say the combat system is just a single button masher then you have not played this game.
But I think the thing that I disagree with the most is that he called the story half baked. When it comes to the story you have to mix it with the first Darksiders. The Darksiders story is one of the best I have ever heard and all Darksiders 2 does is add to it. After The horseman War is accused of bringing doom to mankind before the appointed hour, his brother death sets out to prove his innocence. To do this he plans to resurrect mankind and undo the apocalypse. To do this he has to travers many worlds a defeat a corruption that he and his siblings caused when they wiped out there own race, the Nephilim. A race of both demon and angel. There are two more chapters in this story. The story of fury and the story of strife. The tale is not done yet so you cannot call it half baked.
To be honest I don’t think the author of this review even played the game. He failed to mention a lot of features. He only briefly touched on the subject of the armor. The armor isn’t something you can have the strongest of. Every piece is all about player preference. Every piece of armor will give you a higher stat, but will also lower another. If you prefer to fight with more magic, then you will want to equip armor with higher arcane attributes. However if you prefer a more direct approach, you will want to equip more strength based armor. It is all up to how you want to play. Your death will not match another players.
He never mentioned things like the crucible, or the Soul Arbiter’s Maze that add so much to the game. He didn’t mention the army of interesting characters that are in the game that increase the story and move the game along. Some are old and have come back. I admit it was great to see Vulgrim again and it was awesome to play with Samael again. And there were all new characters. From the old ones to the king of the dead, the characters are all well thought out and very interesting.
Now I am not saying the game is perfect. Yes there is the occasional glitch and I would have liked to see something like action commands in certain places like when you beat a boss. But these things don’t take away from the game enough to call it a disappointment.
In the end the game is actually really good. It is beautifully designed and there is plenty to do. It is really fun both gameplay and story wise. It deserves at least a 9.0 out of ten and is a game I am proud to say that I bought for my collection. I can’t wait to see where the series goes.
yeah between him thinking the combat is one button, calling the sidequests standard fetch quests, and the fact that he doesn’t even mention the dungeon areas or puzzles at all, I get the feeling this guy didn’t even bother playing past the first hour or two.
To be honest I don’t think this guy liked the first Darksiders. I heard a ton of crap about the first one but I liked it a lot. Most of the people that didn’t like the first didn’t like it because they felt it ripped off the Legend of Zelda games too much. I have a feeling the author of this review was one of them. So he wasn’t gonna give it a chance to begin with. I bet he had this typed out based of a video he saw, rather than just playing the game. In short he is just a dumbass that has no idea what he’s doing.
i cant agree more with daranigan if this fool ever played the game he wrote no indication of such the story if far from perfect but i assure you sir it is not half baked and i tried to do the whole one button thing and died a total of 95 times alone in the forge lands then i just said to myself that guy is stupid and doesnt know a good game when he sees one u make me angry beyond recognition sir and my death and the hellgaurd have mercy on your haterade loving soul!
well sirike, I do concur with your agreement. though it is impossible to one button mash through this game like some old 16 bit game on the NES, it did have it’s flaws…check this video out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKbB1mv-d60&feature=plcp
i know, vigil, not virgil.