Thursday 5 November 2015

Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition - A Destroyed World has Beauty.


By Sam Coles:

Darksiders is a series in my opinion that is really underrated and I know people berate it for being an M rated Zelda clone, in which I reply with. Yeah so what? How many games do you see that actually copy the Zelda formula? Not many and to be honest if you're going to do an action adventure format with blade based combat, why not take the simplistic nature of Zelda.



Darksiders II originally came out on the Xbox 360 and PS3 back in 2012 which was the follow up to the 2010 release. This time however you no longer play as War one the horseman of the Apocalypse, but instead you play as his soul harvesting brother Death, who looks like a more muscled version of Marilyn Manson. The story for this game is that you must help your brother War because he got into trouble with the Chard Council in the previous game for setting off the Apocalypse off too early so you must try and restore the world back to normal in order to save him.


This game is an adventure game where you roam the world collect treasure, slay monsters and grab new abilities, but it also splices in elements from RPG's such as armor and weapon loot with different stats whether it be better or lesser than your currently owned weapon. You also have a skill tree that you can upgrade various abilities such as Death's Reaper form where he turns into the traditional Grim Reaper and he can deal more damage, or his teleport slash where he can strike multiple enemies within a short teleportation jump.



Gameplay is fairly familiar if you've played any of the 3D Zelda games and God of War. It takes the Z targeting from Zelda and the frantically over the top hack and slash action from God of War so you can mix two types of weapons in a combo with pausing to switch them out. The combat is super responsive and satisfying although the camera can freak out a bit in tight areas when you're locked on so you get a face full of wall texture.

You’ll also be doing a lot of platforming as you traverse the land and dungeons. I must commend the game for this because it’s one of the best climbing controls that I’ve used because it’s not awkward, it’s snappy and you don’t perform leaps of faith and hope you land somewhere safe. For example if you’re climbing a pole and you want to jump to another pole then you press a button to reach and not awkwardly point the analogue stick in that direction and hope your character reaches out. Take note Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted.



The visual presentation is a mix bag in terms of the environments; some areas came look beautiful with vibrant colours such as the starting area where you’re wondering the tundra with your horse. However some areas can look really bland and bury this seems to be the dungeons only with their grey and brown hues that aren’t very interesting.


Darksiders II is a fun adventure game with interesting puzzles and great combat. If you’ve played this game before I don’t see any point in revisiting this game, but if you missed it the first time round and are looking for a decent game to fill the time on your Xbox One or PS4 then I would say pick it up.

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