So Darksiders

My free copy arrived today and I've been playing for about an hour.

The story is fucked beyond comprehensibility. Heaven and Hell don't like each other much, so they fight. But then they make a truce or something, and agree not to fight again until seven arbitrary seals are broken, and during peace time humans evolve, and they're important for some reason. I dunno, it hasn't been explained. Anyway, cut to present and Heaven and Hell decide it's time to fuck shit up again. The Four Horsemen meanwhile aren't allied with either side and apparently are just there to make sure Heaven and Hell's war take place according to schedule, or something. So War drops into the middle of this... war (where else would he be?) and starts killing things, but none of the other 3 lazy fucks turn up.

Turns out the seven thingies aren't broken and Heaven and Hell just hate each other a lot, or whatever. Well, no problem right? It's War's job to punish them for fighting at the wrong time right? Well, I thought so, but apparently not. War's boss is pissed that War somehow mistook a war between Heaven and Hell for the Apocalypse (easy mistake to make). So what happens? War gets stripped of his power and sent back to Earth to stop the forces of Heaven and Hell (although it's mainly hell by the look of things). Um... Wasn't I doing that in the first place? I was killing angels and demons at the start. What went wrong? Now I have to do it again but with less powers? Seems kind of counter productive.

I mean, Heaven and Hell agree not to go to war until the right time or War and his buddies will fuck them up. Heaven and Hell proceed to go to war at the wrong time, War comes in and fucks them up. But because the other 3 don't show it apparently the entire thing gets blamed on War for some reason, as if he started the war (wouldn't put it past him to be honest). So he gets sent back to Earth to do what he was doing in the first place, only now he's less able to do it. Plus he has some demon stuck to his arm to keep an eye on him.

Speaking of which, said demon had a very familiar voice. I couldn't remember where I had heard it before, and it was driving me nuts, so I looked it up. It's only Mark motherfucking Hamill. The Watcher thing sounds like the Joker would if he was a snake.

Ah fuck all that shit anyway. Gameplay is pretty damn simple at the moment. Press X to jump, press square to kill things, etc. Square is my only attack button so far, which means I have two combos. One for when I'm on the ground, and... the same one but in the air. Exciting. I have an uppercut move done by holding square, but it doesn't exactly add a ton of variety. Kill things, collects souls, open chests, and so on. I met some demon I can buy upgrades from, it's all pretty standard.

Oh, and why does the game need to load for a second every time I bring up the map or inventory? Seriously, why?

God damn I forgot how twisted and circular the levels could be in these games.

Just beat the first major boss. Died a couple times, but once I got the hang of the first bit I beat her with plenty of health remaining. It's the switching between normal and aiming mode that's tricky.

lmfao
that is the greatest plot synopsis ever i wanna play it just to see that now

Might as well talk about the controls a bit, because there sure as hell is a lot of them and some of them seem pretty stupidly set up.

Square is your basic sword attack button. Push it 4 times for a basic combo. You can buy moves and such for it, which involve pressing square with various different timings, or pressing another button and square.

Example: R1 + Square is a single power hit. R1 + square + a direction is a dashing strike. Holding square is an uppercut. Square, pause, square starts a spinning combo thing. And so on.

You also have Wrath moves, which use up your Wrath (gained by collecting yellow souls). Pressing L1 brings up your quick menu for wrath moves and items. There's 4 slots, each assigned to a face button, and you assign your moves to these. So you hold L1, and then press whatever to do a Wrath move. This same quick menu is also used for stuff like health items, which I would imagine will be very annoying by when I have more items and moves, especially since I don't seem to be able to use health items from the pause menu. I have to equip them first apparently.

R1 is your dodge/block button. Pressing while still will block, pressing it along with a direction will dash/dodge. Pressing it just before you're hit will counter at attack.

R3 (I think, I actually can't remember for some reason) enters aim mode, for your long range weapon, which at the moment is a throwing star thing. The camera moves in over War's shoulder, controls shift to a more first person like setting, and you can't dodge. You move the reticule around to aim, press R2 to throw, and holding L2 will lock on to something when your reticule passes over it. You can hit multiple things with one throw.

Triangle is your secondary weapon. It works exactly the same as square as far as I can tell. At the moment my secondary weapon is a scythe.

Circle picks stuff up, but you press R2 to throw. I know R2 is used for throwing your weapon, but when you pick something up with circle I instinctively try to throw it with circle.

X is jump.

L2 is your lock on.

R2, as well as throwing stuff, uses your Gear item. You can use the d-pad to quick select the gear item. At the moment I have the throwing thing and a horn used to open gates.

Oh, and all the demons and stuff are pretty cool looking. It's somewhat challenging too, at least for me. Died a few times. There was also a really really shit flying (ie vehicle) section. Hope that doesn't happen again.

War looks a bit... brighter than I expected too. He's all vivid red and bronze and light blue.

this doesn't sound too bad

It's alright. It's fairly heavy on exploration and puzzles as well. Lots of backtracking across the same area about 3 times collecting various items to open a door and such. It reminds me of the first DMC quite a bit.

i played the demon..it was long as fuuuuuuuck fought tiamat the bat queen as boss XDDD

want this game if nonny desides to chunk it I GOT DIBS!

no i do

i got the cheapest postage cost D:

There's only one way to settle this, a duel. So what'll it be? Pistols at dusk?

Oh and circle is also your quick kill button, for when enemies are low on health. I really like how smoothly the quick kill animations integrate with the normal fighting.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

It's alright. It's fairly heavy on exploration and puzzles as well. Lots of backtracking across the same area about 3 times collecting various items to open a door and such. It reminds me of the first DMC quite a bit.

Sounds more like Legend of Zelda.

Well I've barely played any LoZ games. DMC is the closest thing to it in my gaming experience.

I've played a few.

Mind you, the only one I've finished is Twilight Princess.

Superbuu3 wrote:

no i do

i got the cheapest postage cost D:

*shoots in the face*mine now bitch

Travis Touchdown wrote:

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

It's alright. It's fairly heavy on exploration and puzzles as well. Lots of backtracking across the same area about 3 times collecting various items to open a door and such. It reminds me of the first DMC quite a bit.

Sounds more like Legend of Zelda.

its meant to have ripped off a lot of games

Another thing. Nothing in this game seems to have a health bar. War has one and that's it. I didn't see one for Tiamat or any of the mini-bosses, so I had no idea how long the battles were going to last.

Travis Touchdown wrote:

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

It's alright. It's fairly heavy on exploration and puzzles as well. Lots of backtracking across the same area about 3 times collecting various items to open a door and such. It reminds me of the first DMC quite a bit.

Sounds more like Legend of Zelda.

Oh, don't even get me started on how many ways this game rips off Zelda...

It even has fucking Bomb Flowers!

Kimarous wrote:

Travis Touchdown wrote:

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

It's alright. It's fairly heavy on exploration and puzzles as well. Lots of backtracking across the same area about 3 times collecting various items to open a door and such. It reminds me of the first DMC quite a bit.

Sounds more like Legend of Zelda.

Oh, don't even get me started on how many ways this game rips off Zelda...

It even has fucking Bomb Flowers!

This game is 100% original by every definition of the word

Well, I'm having a problem in Darksiders that I haven't had in any game for years, which is running towards the edge of a platform and pressing jump only to walk right off the edge and fall down. I don't think I've had that happen since the first Tomb Raider.

A_Nonny_Moose wrote:

Well, I'm having a problem in Darksiders that I haven't had in any game for years, which is running towards the edge of a platform and pressing jump only to walk right off the edge and fall down. I don't think I've had that happen since the first Tomb Raider.

Lucky, I run into games that do that shit a lot.

God damn this game is more puzzle based than I expected. I mean, puzzles are okay, but when you're WAR, you want to just bash people on the head and be done with it.