Hey there, loyal followers. It's been quite a while, hasn't it? Eight months, to be specific. This review was meant to be my second review on this site, but I kept continuously putting it off because, frankly, I didn't want to play through it again to give it another review, despite my thoughts telling me I loved the game. So, this made me think. Why? Why didn't I want to play it? And well, I will elaborate in the following paragraphs.
So, thanks for sticking by me all this time while I put my thoughts together. And apologies for continuously promising I'll review something, then not delivering. I hope to correct that now.
This review is also dedicated to my friend Michael "The Machine", as he leaves for the Air Force a few days after this review goes to air. Good luck, buddy. Stay safe.
So. Without any further ado...
IIWYM presents...
The long awaited...
Review of Darksiders II
Available platforms: Steam Games, X360, PS3, WiiU, and probably every other console known to mankind.
Freaking. Hell.
I can only think of one other game that I wanted so badly to love, yet it failed to live up to my expectations. It's especially more painful because this game gets alot of things right, but then SO much wrong! I'll try to explain from memory, but forgive me. It's been a long time and I still have no desire to pick this game up again.
Darksiders II is an action-platformer-puzzle game that followed up on the (humorously) dark-horse underground hit Darksiders, which was set in a world after the apocalypse was brought on too soon by War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and War set out to clear his name, as he was tricked into invading earth and bringing about the destruction of humanity. Darksiders mythos is basically christian mythology in nature, but with the second game it takes some more turns into weirder territory. Darksiders II takes place in the same time frame as the first game, but from the different perspective of Death, War's brother and the other of the four horsemen, last living Nephalim known.
So, now that we've got the setting up of the game out of the way, let's get on to my favorite part of this game. The soundtrack.
My god.
I want to give the composer for this game a medal.
The battle theme in the opening world is AMAZING, powerful, intense sort of Celt Rock being the best term to describe it. It's glorious, and so is much of the rest of the soundtrack to the game.
The combat is faster and more fluid than the last game, with Death getting a dodge as opposed to War's block, and Death's scythes have alot more visual flair than War's sword swings, though War was an admittedly cool character, with a very Warcraft-style design. In fact, that's a good sum-up for alot of the game's visual style. Warcraft.
But all of this... Comes at a price.
THE GAME IS BORING!
I really hate to admit it, but it's frankly true. The first game was one of my favorite games of all time, blending several different games experiences into something all its own, taking bits from God of War, Zelda, and Portal. The dungeons were creative, and had that Zelda-style feel that other games have tried to replicate unsuccessfully, and it bulged with fun ideas. Sure, it didn't break any new ground. But it was FUN, and I like fun things. And why not have more of our favorite experiences in a new shell? Darksiders I was an awesome game, and if I gave it a review today, it would still get a Buy it Discount.
However, Darksiders II loses ALMOST ALL of that. In Darksiders, you gained a new tool for traversal or other useful item in EACH. DUNGEON. In II, you do NOT get this. It's a constant quest of "Collect the three things so you can advance and collect the next three things". It's a cosmic road trip that really... Goes nowhere. And that's not even getting to the BETRAYAL that the game does in the ending, but I'll get to that later. I mean, oftentimes you would collect one of the series of three things and in one case those three things were just ONE of ANOTHER set of three things you have to collect. It has very MMO-style feels... Hey... I'm seeing a pattern here...
The designers seem to have taken so much inspiration from Warcraft, World of Warcraft in particular, that they BECAME like world of warcraft, and all the problems that has. Now, WoW can get away with really simplistic design and occasional middle-school intelligence because it is, by its nature, multiplayer. Deep, involving stories tend to not translate well into mulitplayer, especially if you're skyping with two or three other people and are laughing your keister off at a buddy's attempt to glitch his sword through the NPC's head, or jumping around like a rabbit. Storytelling is best told in simple quips, guides to give you a bit of context to what you're doing, which is often a simple "Go collect X amount of this". I mean, the game seems to be taken mostly out of Game Design 101.
It SUFFERS because of this. The game seems to have been approached with multiplayer in mind, as the game is less about fighting some "Villain" and more a cosmic road trip where Death has his one goal, the resurrection of humanity, in mind, and he constantly gets stopped along the way, which would be fine, if you had some friends to spice up the experience. But to me it seems multiplayer got scrapped late in development, so they were left with these really large open areas... But not that much to fill them with. It also necessitated the removal of the clever zelda-style puzzles that made Darksiders I so fascinating and so much fun.
This gets more apparent the farther you get into the game, as the story starts to get more ridiculous and nonsensical. Okay, so, in the game's story, you have angels and demons fighting a war. Angels aren't necessarily good, they're more about order and law and hierarchy and bureaucracy and such, while demons are about chaos and destruction and corruption and that sort of thing... But then you have Corruption, which is a new thing introduced that has nothing to do with any of these but is about... Destruction... And corruption, of course... And...Chaos...
ISN'T THAT WHAT THE DEMONS DO? How is this faction any different from the ones we already know? And furthermore, the gameplay itself begins to devolve. The dungeons get less focused as you go on, and the worlds stop being developed. By the time you get to a demon area, late in the game, it's like the designers stopped caring. There's ONE character for you to talk to, and ONE dungeon. However, in the first world you go to, there are Four, with two extras. Why? The game definitely suffers again from the lack of variety later in the game. Early on, things are good, and hitting their stride. Why not make the worlds more balanced so you're seeing different places more? It just doesn't make much sense to me.
And now to get to the BETRAYAL of the ending that I talked about before. Now, this does get into spoiler territory, so if you desire to purchase this game even after all this I'll keep this in spoiler text. Hi-light it to read it.
Now, over the course of the game, you are constantly told that Death is one of the last of the nephalim, spawn of angels and demons who threatened the balance of the cosmos long before humanity ever came into the picture. Now, the four horsemen (Death, War, Famine, and Strife, as they're called in the game) turned on their brothers and swore to uphold the balance. Death, however, has misgivings, and refused to destroy their souls so they could never be revived, and kept them in his soul-reaper amulet. Early on, this amulet is implanted into his chest, and is visible on Death no matter WHAT armor or equipment you acquire. It's Always visible, constantly bringing to mind the fact that Death has a choice. The ONE demon you speak to in the demon world tells you this. Bring back the nephalim, or bring back humanity. He could only choose one. This choice is constantly on your mind as you go through, and Death seems to take it pretty seriously, and all through the game I was weighing what I would choose and evaluating which I would take first, as that is the one that counts. This choice is built up through the ENTIRE game, and is the main reason for your quest: Make it to the Well of Souls and revive humanity to clear War's name.
Now, imagine my surprise. I beat the final boss and make it to the end, ready to cast my vote for the future, and get a chance to see what world my choice created...
BUT NO
You do NOT get a choice!
It automatically chooses the "Good side" ending (Reviving humantiy) for you, and you have NO options! It just happens, with no player input at all.
No!
THIS IS WRONG!
Don't jerk me around like this, game! You built up the choice *I* as the player would have to make the ENTIRE game, well over 20 hours, and then you don't give me the one choice I get? The major one that determines the fate of the universe?
WHY?
How much of a problem would it be to give me a text prompt and a BOX OF WORDS if I choose the other one? I'd be fine with that, at least allow me to make a decision if you built it up. I'm not picky, I'd be okay with it... A bit disappointed, but okay if I got SOMETHING that acknowledged this build up the entire time. But the way it was handled goes against every rule of design I know of... And it drove me MAD. I seriously screamed "WHAT?!?!?" at the top of my lungs when the last cutscene played and the credits rolled. I seriously think I damaged one of my vocal cords.
And truly, I was raging about that for HOURS.
*Sigh*
Just thinking about it makes me upset.
Anyways, that's pretty much it about this game... I don't want to go back to it. In fact, if I had the chance, I'd erase it from my memory so I could still hope for a game that's a bigger, awesomer Darksiders I instead of Darksiders and Diablo/World of Warcraft combined.
Darksiders II recieves a score of BUY IT BARGAIN. If it wasn't for the awesome soundtrack and some fun parts of gameplay, it would recieve our first ever DON'T BUY IT. It was really that close.
This is Nev with IIWYM, signing off. Whew. Finally glad I got that review done.
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