Darksiders 2: The Horsemen ride again (Review)

In the video game industry, many developers and publishers will cover “taboo” subjects, such as a racism, sexuality and my personal favourite; religion. If done right it can make for a really amazing game, that leaves you stumped and contemplating the meaning of your own existence by the time you've finished it. If done wrong it just makes players angry as some half cocked game attempts to make them “See the light” like a street preacher squawking at you atop his ivory soap box. In this review I will be going over the core aspects of the game so that if you haven't played it or haven't even heard of the Darksiders franchise, you may well think about picking it up. But enough of my pandering, let the show go on!

Story

In this outing of Darksiders you take control of Death the leader of “The Horsemen”. Death is on a quest to clear his brothers name and restore humanity, although he has no idea how this can be achieved (good call dude!) after a brief encounter with a transmogrification of his brother, he is sent to a far off world that is being ruled over by “Corruption”. In order to restore humanity he is set the task of destroying Corruption by the natives; a race of giants with Scottish accents known as "The Founders", how fortunate for them that he turned up...

 

Say what you like about him, he's still going to kill you.

As you play through Darksiders 2 you will learn more about how “The Horsemen” came in to being and clear up some of the previous games unanswered questions, such as: what Uriel was doing before she was trying to make War her ultimate pin cushion. Along the way you will also hear NPCs name drop characters which you will recognize from the first game and will cause a small smile creep over your face as you remember the good (or frustrating) times that you had playing alongside these characters. It has things for newcomers to the series too though, from the deadpan way that Death delivers his threats, to the “battle chatter” that “The Founders” spout in a heavy jock accent.

 

An important factor that makes this game different from the previous title is that is almost twice as long as the original Darksiders. This may be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your point of view.

Game play

As with the previous title, Darksiders 2 is more than just an apocalyptic button masher, the overhauled level up system is more reminiscent of World of Warcraft or the Dragon Age series, making you fill an experience bar to get to the next level and allowing you to add another skill point to Death's “Talent Tree”.

If you can fill up every talent, Death is near on unstoppable

The Amount of customization that can be done with Darksiders 2 is nothing short of epic, with each piece of clothing or armour adding or subtracting points from Death's “Attributes” points, allowing the player to mould Death in to the character that they prefer to play as. Although this may seem tedious and boring, the ability to create Death as you envision him to be is something that can't be missed.

As you would expect the combo system is back. Instead of buying all your much needed combo maps and items from the masochistic demon “Vulgrim” (who coincidently makes a reappearance) instead you have to find the different traders that hold the item you want, which can be frustrating but also refreshing in that you don't have to buy everything from a deranged but loveable, soul hungry demon outcast.

The in-game currency has changed from “Souls” to “Gilt” which appear as small piles of gold and won't gravitate to you once they are released from what may be containing them, unlike Souls from the previous game.

The enemy design in Darksiders 2 is just as, if not more creative as the previous title, they are also biome specific, i.e. You wont find a Mummy roaming round green brightly lit fields of The Forge Lands, instead you will find them in the many tombs and dungeons that the Land Of The Dead has to offer.

Vulgrim: Sneaky, greedy, maniacal...whats not to like?!

A word to the wise however, if “Fetch Quests” quests aren't your thing, then it would be best to stay away from this title, as there is A LOT of them, and believe me when I say A LOT, however if you enjoy exploring and finding hidden goodies. Then the fetch quests won't really phase you too much, read on to find out why.

Level Design

In many ways the developers “Vigil” took a lot of inspiration for the “Hub” from the Zelda games of the 90's, each dungeon, cave or tomb is connected by a meadow or a desert that has to be crossed on horse back (purely to save time) to be reached. This is remedied by the enemies that felt the need to converge there, time can be wasted (but experience gained) by taking a little time to despatch these misguided nasties and then procede on your merry way.

These unfortunate foes can be deadly in numbers!

The dungeons/caves/tombs are extremely well designed, with multiple levels on in all of them it is easy to get lost for any length of time whilst you work out what you have to do next, this happens more often in the later dungeons, the addition of usable items that Death can collect, makes the later dungeons even more of a grind to complete, but the rewards at the end of most of them are more than adequate.

As you would expect with this kind of game, each dungeon ends with a boss battle of epic proportions, many of these bosses follow patterns of attack that are extremely easy to memorise such as: Shield Bash, Ice Breaker, Ice Breaker, Killing Blow(A lil hint for you).

Some bosses are extremely frustrating to kill until you work out a way to counter or evade every attack that it may be throwing at you, but as a lot of them are gigantic compared to Death, laying the final blow to deplete their health meter is extremely satisfying and the goodies that they drop even more so.

One of the more frustrating bosses, but has one of the best loot drops in the game.

The Pros

Being able to spec out Death exactly as you like is great, you can now create Death exactly as you've always imagined him.

The wide variety of worlds and levels can keep you engrossed for hours, which is EXACTLY what you want from a video game...right?

The Cons

Being the game of epic proportions that Darksiders 2 is, you can't expect glitches to be non-existent, several annoying camera angle glitches presented themselves to me on my play through, but once the game has its initial giggle at me waggling the analogue sticks trying to get Death back in to the camera shot, the glitches never reappeared.

The dungeons can sometimes get repetitive and boring, especially if you are on a long gaming session, I found that leaving it for a day or two helped me get back in to the flow of things and complete them.

The Verdict

Even though it may have a small Legend of Zelda complex, Darksiders 2 is an extremely enjoyable game that a Darksiders veteran or new comer would enjoy, if you have a thing for the end of the world with a lot of blood, intense boss fights and games that involve a lot of scythe swinging, then Darksiders 2 is definitely a game worth picking up.