Do you know the old, ternary apportionment of the world: Heaven is up there, Hell is down somewhere, and between them there is a planet called Earth? At the end, judgement day comes when spheres above and below are clashing together. Where else, if not in the middle realm?
In the setting of Darksiders there are some great changes in the topic of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. According to the Bible, they are the messengers of God, forerunners of judgement day and harbingers of doom at His command. However, in the world of the game they are the last remnants of a race created before the angels, and judged to extermination like flawed prototypes. The last four members of the race swore an oath: In exchange for their lives they keep the Law, in Heaven and Hell alike.
Featuring God is always problematic, regardless of media, so the developers decided to insert the Charred Council, a lower power under Him. The Council is — strictly in my definition — less an executing but a judging authority. The relationship is between God and the Council is not entirely clear to me, but in fact, it is not so important, have no influence on the game experience. The point is: This way the game picks up some kind of gothic fantasy style, avoiding sanctimony and blasphemy alike.
The beginning of the story can be guessed from the foregoing: Forces of Heaven and Hell are battling on Earth (in the present era), then the Horsemen come and the party is on. Or rather, only one Horseman comes, War, who roughly spanks everyone but the big one at the end of the intro. As a dedicated executioner, he is hated by everyone, practically, so no wonder if all the angels and demons want to kill him at sight.
The real conflict starts when it turns out that War came alone, and the other Horsemen were not summoned. The Council charge him with descending on Earth by his own will, but he firmly claims that he was called. Finally he gets a simple task: Without his former power he must prove his truth or die trying.
During his mission War meets various helpers and enemies. Mostly enemies, of course, but this game is not just about grinding. Although the story is linear, you will regularly go back to even the first area for the useful stuffs. Maximizing character development makes combat easier, so it’s worth to try and find everything — and that means you will walk back every time you get the necessary weapon or tool.
Necessary weapon or tool means a whole inventory of useful stuffs. Most of them has its own place and can be brought out easily, because at last we got not a PC-ported console game but real mouse+keyboard fine tuned control.
In my personal opinion the whole game is well-cut. The story avoids big cliches as well as big revelations. The visual is complex, the gothic decorations are not tasteless a bit. Enemies are diverse, and you need different tactics to defeat them. Some puzzles are simple, some needs a little thinking, but in this I didn’t meet any hard to beat barrier.
Reaching the end I have to apologize for the shortness of this article, but maybe it’s understandable that I felt it useless to give a long description about a linear action game, in which I find no big errors. It became one of my favorites, and it gets no maximum Droidscore only because — all things considered — there are better games. Fortunately, only a few.
—Garcius—
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Vigil Games
Homepage: none, nie, null, zero
Style: hack’n’slash, puzzle, agility
What I liked:
gothic fantasy
diverse enemies
diverse tasks
What I didn’t like:
something is missing, the other parts of the series may make it more complete
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