Darksiders is an interesting series, in the sense that it feels like a potluck of different genres and plots. In the first game, players controlled War, who after being framed for starting Armageddon too soon, awoke thousands of years later to clear his name. All while drawing heavy influence from Zelda, God of War and even Portal for its design.
As they say: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Darksiders worked. However, with the sequel, we’re left controlling Death in an even more soulless game (no pun intended.)
Reaping Along:
For those hoping that the sequel would continue the story of the first one, you’ll be disappointed to know that Darksiders 2‘s plot is a prequel. This time we control Death, who apparently did his brother: War, one major solid by trying to free him from imprisonment by restoring humanity. That means that Darksiders 2 takes place during the time War was locked up before the first game got underway.
While the first game took place on Earth after thousands of years of ruin, Darksiders 2 takes us to “The Maker’s Realm”: which seems like your usual fantasy setting. Full of Big temples, giant plains to run around and giant people who all speak with a Scottish accent.
Right off the bat you’ll find that the story carries less weight this time around and not just because we’re playing a prequel. Death’s journey has him going on fetch quests and mcguffin hunts to reach his destination. A far less interesting story compared to War’s exploration of a ruined Earth to regain his powers and find the people responsible. And no Mark Hamil voiced demon tagging along this time also.
As mentioned earlier, Darksiders 1 was a mix between Zelda like exploration and progression, with a God of War combat system. With Darksiders 2, the developers continued the tradition and even threw in some Diablo.
Death can equip himself with weapons and armor throughout his quest, with gear that can be dropped from enemies, in chests or bought from vendors. As you’ll play, you’ll find different rarities of gear and slowly but surely make Death… deadlier. You can also level up that increases the newly introduced stats, as well as give the player a skill point to put into two skill trees.
New equipment provides upgrades throughout the game. Too bad the game doesn’t tell you most of the stats do.
Unfortunately, Darksiders 2 for all the inspiration it took from other popular titles fails to live up to any of them, including the first game.
Don’t Fear the Reaper:
The problems with Darksiders 2, is that for all the different mechanics that the developers put into it, the whole game just comes off as being average.
It’s like someone in school uses someone else’s work for their project. Sure, they’ll turn in something that somewhat resembles it, but you can see that the person didn’t understand the fine detail that comes from understanding the material.
Let’s start with combat and how it is a step down from the first Darksiders. In the first game, combat was a mix of close and long range using War’s various weapons. Different combo moves were available to give the player choices during a fight.
In Darksiders 2, since the game features a loot system, you won’t be finding a variety of tools to take into combat. At all times you’ll have a primary weapon (your scythes) and a secondary weapon.
There is some variety in the secondary weapon, as you can find quick gauntlets, or slower 2 handed weapons, but they all work the same way with the same combos. Darksiders 2′s combo system is very basic with only a small handful of combos to use and unlock. Most of the time jamming on each the primary or secondary weapon is all you need to do.
You’ll be largely fighting grunt enemies who follow the same pattern of run at you and attack. Larger enemies require more dodging but are still as basic in terms of combat. Another issue is that the camera is a bit too zoomed in for multi-enemy fights, making it very easy for an enemy to attack you from off camera. This combined with flashy special effects, makes it very easy to lose Death in a crowd of enemies.
The other tactics that you have available come from the skill trees mentioned earlier. One tree gives the player more special attacks, while the other provides defense and summons creatures. Skills cost the player wrath which is the game’s form of mana. But once again the skills lack the variety and depth that we see in other action games.
Combat is fast and flashy. Making it sometimes difficult to see what is going on.
Because they are tied to the player’s wraith, you can’t add them to your combat routine like new weapons or abilities in God of War.
Most unlock-able skills are passive and just affect the few skills that you do unlock.
Actual new abilities that can be used while exploring and fighting are few and far between that takes us to the next problem: Exploration.
Dead and Gone:
For taking place in a new setting, Darksiders 2 feels less epic than the first game. The first problem is the actual dungeons themselves. In Darksiders 1, the developer’s copied the Zelda formula of each dungeon have an unique theme, puzzles, items to find and a boss fight. But this worked as the designers took this template and ran with it.
In Darksiders 2 however, the dungeons are far less inspired. Unlike the first game, you won’t be finding upgrades in most of the dungeons, instead powerups come few in far between, and with many dungeons not having anything to reward the player.
The dungeons themselves are all designed around high ceilings with views overlooking wide expanses to make them feel bigger then they truly are. Instead, the dungeons are linear runs through the same corridors with many of the puzzles repeating. Not helping matters are the limited movement options.
The game boosts that Death is more agile then War by allowing the player to wall run and move around beams. But all of it is scripted: one part by design, and another by the layout of the dungeons. The walls are broken to the point that you can’t run for long on walls, only the ones the design forces you to.
The game tries to raise the stakes with epic looking environments, but the linear path kills a lot of the mystique
For example, in one level there was a puzzle that I was stuck at dealing with a locked door. In the same area there was a small platform that looked climbable, but Death wasn’t able to climb up.
But after exploring the room I found that the platform had one side of it marked with the edge indicating that he could climb it.
Now there was no difference in height between any of the edges, but because one edge looked differently, that was all the difference in the world.
This time around, the game throws side quests at you to help break up the pace of running to each dungeon. But without the variety of upgrades and skills from the first game, the rewards aren’t worth your time for the most part. If you get lucky with finding equipment drops, the item rewards will not be as good as the gear you can find or buy elsewhere.
Speaking of loot, the equipment and stat system which is the only real new addition to Darksiders 2 also has problems.
Dressed to Kill:
The idea of throwing loot into an action based game seemed odd at first, but as I played, I mechanic grew on me. However, keeping in pace with the other problems, the loot system clashes with the rest of the design.
The different stats are not explained to the player in game and other then attack damage and defense, I had no idea what the other stats did. For example, what does strength and resistance do? Or how there are different types of attack damage, but no explanation why you would want pierce damage in favor of ice for instance.
Speaking about defense, this is where there is a major design conflict with the game mechanics. Death, unlike War is a character that is meant to avoid damage, not take it by blocking. In fact Death has no shields or means to block damage and is more like Dante from Devil May Cry.
The whole idea of wearing more defensive items or choosing between defense and other modifiers is a false choice. Simply because the game is not designed for you to take damage, but avoid it. Driving the point even further home is that there are only a few ways to restore health: potions, a few wraith skills and a weapon modifier. This means that taking damage on purpose is never a smart choice.
And having your damage output in an action game, dictated by randomized loot also has some issues. As you move through the game and the enemies begin to level up, you’ll find that even fighting basic grunt enemies can take several minutes as you try to beat them down with weaker weapons. This becomes all the more annoying when you get stuck in a fight with crowds of enemies and you’re unable to fight them off.
Everything from the skill trees, to the loot and combat system feels uninspired
You can of course spend time grinding out enemies to level up or to find money and hope that a store has a decent upgrade. But this forces you to perform more repetitive tasks.
Even with the variety of randomized loot available, the basic gameplay is so plain that there is no excitement in finding new gear, as all it does is raise values.
You’re still going to explore the same basic dungeons, fight the same enemy types and perform the same combo moves, with any actual changes or upgrades to the gameplay come few and far between.
It really says something when a game about being one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse was actually putting me to sleep when I was playing it one night.
Given both the fact that Darksiders 2 didn’t earn enough money to break even, and THQ’s recent problems, the chance of us seeing a conclusion to the story is slim at this point. It’s a shame because Darksiders 2 isn’t a bad game, in the sense that I could find major problems with the design. Instead the game just feels uninspired and it got to the point where I had to push myself to keep playing to see if anything new appears.
Fans of the series should at least try it and see if it clicks for them, but I would still recommend the first game as an interesting attempt at a new series.
