June 6, 2010
No, see, he has to get a Boomerang AND a Gun, because a gun is Bad-ass.
Darksiders succeeds at what it sets out to do.
Basically, it wants to remake Zelda, but it wants to make Zelda with dark, brooding characters one might see on some sort of metal album or really “badass” fantasy setting. Nobody may smile, everything is dead, everyone destroys. Demons rule the world, you messily kill people again and again. This is an “adult” Zelda.
At the same time, though, it’s really kind of childish. It’s a young person’s idea of what adult is, and while some people obvious can get into that (For example, I know Cole really liked the art and setting and whatnot) I found it really grating. Every time there was a cutscene, I was just “I GET IT, YOU’RE WAR AND YOU’RE A BADASS.” It was tiring. It certainly wasn’t why I stuck around for as long as I did.
The reason I stuck around is because this is a really, really good Zelda clone. Make no mistake, it is a Zelda clone completely. You get a new heart, or Life Stone, each time you beat a boss. The first dungeon contains a Boomerang. Sure, the combat has some God of War trappings, but the actual gameplay is a Zelda puzzle dungeon crawl, and it does it really well. If you want more of that, you really need to play Darksiders.
However, I didn’t really want more of that. As I progressed through the game, I realized why I hadn’t really played a Zelda game in a long time. The formula is just kind of stale. Since I didn’t enjoy the new coat of paint, I was looking past it to the same formula I’ve played through again and again since Ocarina of Time. Eventually, I got tired of that, too, and when I realized I wasn’t going to boot it up again, I sent it back to Gamefly.
Still, the reasons I stopped playing it are purely personal preference. Darksiders is a great game, and if you know what you’re getting into, and that sounds good, you really should play it. It’s obvious this game was made with love and with a strong reverence for the source material it’s sort of stealing from. It’s great stuff. Just not stuff really made for me, I guess.