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dkirschner's Darksiders (PC)

[January 28, 2017 08:57:39 AM]

This was a surprise! I wrote it off long ago as a God of War clone, but it is much more than that. Yes, there are numerous equivalencies (chests of green, yellow, and blue orbs that fill War's stats; similar combat including "finishing" enemies with a button press and even the enraged enemy [cyclops in God of War I think] that you ride on as your hero stabs it to death; similar tones; etc.). It's also got a hefty dose of Zelda games, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Gears of War, and even Portal at the end, which was really cool.

The game feels great, sounds great, and looks dated. But I ended up liking the comic book art style and I've got no qualms about its graphics. Combat is fast and you feel like there's weight behind your attacks. Enemies are vicious, gang up on you from all sides, and you'll frequently switch weapons and make use of all your move sets and special abilities. Enemies will beat the sense out of you, so thought is required! Button mashing will not get you through. Puzzles are smart, level design is excellent.

As in any good Zelda or God of War game, you get new gadgets and abilities over time that let you traverse new parts of the world. Here, you get a power fist that lets you smash crystals blocking your way, a demon horse (badass) that lets you move faster and cross special areas, a grappling hook to latch onto walls and interactable objects including enemies, a sort of boomerang spinning star of death that is a weapon and you can use to hit far-away switches, and finally at the end a sort of portal gun that lets you open portals (like in Portal, duh) on specific parts of walls and floors. You can hold R1 as you open the portals to make them propel you farther when you come out, and you can shoot portals through portals. It does some things beyond what the Portal games do with them! I really, really enjoyed all of this.

BUT, and big but, the game is buggy. I had audio issues in a lot of cut scenes. No big deal there, but annoying, sort of like what happened when I played Life is Strange. BUT, and humongous but, there are game-breaking bugs, and I had to quit and watch the rest on YouTube when I was near the end. There is a door in the Black Throne area after you cross the chasm with the two rotating pillars using portals in a tricky way. Kill the enemies across the chasm once you get there and the door unlocks. I saved the game here last week. When I booted back up yesterday, the door was locked and I couldn't go through. Enemies didn't spawn, and no amount of going back across the chasm and returning or anything else would unlock the door. I reloaded; still locked. Hmm. Everything in this game, no matter how tricky (hello bomb puzzles!) has a solution, so I assumed this was the same. I toyed around, backtracked, thought more, and I finally relented and looked online and saw that this was a glitch. Noo! Explanation: The game will think that you entered the door and it will lock it "behind" you. If you saved when you were outside the door, you're locked out. Even if you save inside the door, people report that you will load outside the door again also be locked out. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game. No luck. Wow. It's been a long time since I hit a bug that made it impossible to progress. And this one is well documented, with tons of threads about it, but no fixes from the developers even in the Warmastered Edition that came out last year that I played. That sucks.

But the funny thing is that I still think of the game very fondly. I really, really liked it. I'm even feeling glad that at least I got to play as much of it as I did. Shouldn't I be more mad? Maybe it's a testament to how good the game is. Strange feeling! Anyway. I won't play Darksiders 2, but I suppose this one will go down as a flawed gem.