April Gold: Darksiders Update

I have been playing Darksiders for the Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility about an hour a day for about a couple of weeks now and I wanted to update my thoughts on the game so far. I have also provided a link to my most current Video as of 4-24-17.

Having completed the second dungeon and acquired a few new weapons and abilities I can say the Zelda comparisons are becoming stronger all the time. There are a great deal of platforming based puzzles that simply result in getting to a higher elevations or opening a specific door. In addition to a boomerang I also now have a pistol, a power glover for breaking down Ice barriers, and the ability to slow time in specific areas to get past timing based hazards. With each new weapon I acquire I also have the ability to buy upgrades and new moves for it (ala Devil May Cry) from the creepy traveling shoppe keeper (ala Resident Evil 4)  I have received enough "heart containers" now that I have 5 health bars (unlike Zelda, Darksiders gives you a additional health bar instead of a heart).

The combat system is not as good as Devil May Cry (which I consider the gold standard at this point) as it can be rather clunky at times. It is more satisfying than most Zelda games (whose strength was never really in combat). I found that used the execute move on a enemy when the "B" shows on screen has the effect of stopping other enemy attacks on you for the duration of the animation. Like in Devil May Cry I find myself only buying and upgrading the handful of Moves I think I will use (although I have purchased some rather dubious abilities) It seems unlikely that a single play through will give you enough currency to buy and upgrade all the moves for all the weapons all the way So I am sticking with ones that are most similar to those in DMC.

Jumping is not as reliable as I would like as there were times that even though I pressed Jump my character would walk off the ledge. Jumping requires a firm pressing of the "A" button, which is quite different from DMC.

Overall my opinion of Darksiders continues to improve the more I play it. My daily videos are now reaching an hour and a half up from the half hour videos I did at the start. This fact tells me that the games starts rather poorly but gets better over time. I hope it continues to get better the more I play it

Thanking you for reading
Gangway

April Gold: Darksiders

As part of an effort to increase the usage of this Blog I have started a video series in which I play through some (or all) of a Game that is part of the Games with Gold line up for the month. This month I have started playing through Darksiders for the Xbox 360 via backwards compatibility on the Xbox One. I will probably only do one game a month this way and will choose the game based on what I find most interesting. I call this series (this Month's) Gold, in this case it is April Gold.

I first heard of Darksiders back in 2010 as basically a Zelda clone with a dark twist and some elements of a few other games thrown in. I always had some interest in trying it out but never enough buy it myself. Games with Gold has given me the opportunity to try some games like this without having to shell out money for them. I have already posted a handful of videos on my Youtube account Gangway Gamer which I will link to below.

Darksiders: April Gold 2017

My first impressions of Darksiders is that I did not see the comparisons to Zelda. I saw a much closer comparison to God of War or Devil May Cry than anything. this came from more than just the dark tone of the game, the combat system in Darksiders  is much closer to God of war in that it even features on screen button prompts to finish off enemies that are weakened. The game also seems to feature a store that allows you to buy weapon focused abilities and upgrades much like Devil May Cry.

Darksiders starts out with you, the Horseman of War, with all of your powers and strength in a brief intro sequence that ends with a confrontation with what looks to be the final boss. Something goes wrong and you lose all of your powers. War spends the rest of the game re-acquiring these powers.

You do not see the first dungeon in the game until a few hours in and only then do the comparisons to Zelda become apparent. This is when you start acquiring additional weapon and abilities as well as solving environmental puzzles. While in dungeons when such a puzzle is solved the camera will pull away to show a door opening or a path clearing with an accompanying jingle. From the first Dungeon I have acquired a Boomerang that very much functions like the one in The Legend of Zelda: the Windwaker in that it can lock onto up to 5 targets at once. After defeating the first Dungeon Boss you receive a skull which acts as a heart container extending your maximum health bar. you also find throughout the game pieces of skull where when 4 are collected for a whole skull.

I will continue playing through Darksiders daily and writing about it here occasionally. I wanted to make sure I jotted a few things down here while it was still fresh in my mind. as of this point the first 7 episodes of Darksiders: April Gold have been uploaded and the above link takes you to the playlist of them.

Thanking you for reading this,
Gangway