Fires blaze and the city's building are reduced to rumble. The sounds of chaos echo through the desolate streets. A lone creature travels the forsaken land. It appears to be a rather substantially large human, who is cloaked in crimson and encased in unworldly armor.
Suddenly, the once uninhibited streets are filled with ghastly demons, the wanderer is surrounded. He pulls from his scabbard a two-hand sword and he plunges into battle.
He is War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This epic adventure is THQ's Darksiders: Wrath of War. The game was released in January, 2010 in North America, but has a parallel sequel that is set to release on August 14. So here is a retrospective review for those gamers that haven't played Darksiders yet, but are interested in the sequel.
Many publications have described the game as an Adult Zelda game, and that is kind of true. The game is definitely inspired by Nintendo's classic franchise, but also pays homage to a few modern games like Devil May Cry and God of War.
Darksider is about protagonist War's return to post-apocalyptic earth, where all of mankind is either dead or zombies. Reverence to Zelda is given through the Darksiders' dungeons, which included many similar gimmicks and devices as the Zelda games. While the puzzles and exploration aspect of the game are very Zelda-like, the combat system and its subsequent kills are very much like God of War. The kills are violent, brutal and often end in a lot of little portions flying everywhere.
Darksiders plays great, is entertaining, visually appealing and has a single-player campaign that last just a little over 15 hours. The game is filled with a wide arrangement of collectibles including gear, weapons, combos and more. Some of the games environments are breath taking and truly enhance the sense of worldwide destruction. In closing, Darksiders: Wrath of War is fun and entertaining, I give the game an 8/10 and cannot wait to see what the developer does in the sequel.
Here is the latest trailer to the Darksiders II...