Darksiders: Wrath of War Review

Darksiders is the tale of the youngest horseman of the apocalypse, War.  In this game

Darksiders owes much of its unique look to the influence of Joe Madureira Solid writing throughout Darksiders gives the voice actors great material to work with, and they pull it off beautifully.  Perceptive gamers might recognize Mark Hamill among the excellent voice cast, as he portrays the Watcher, War While the controls seem overly simple early on in the game, Darksiders manages to slowly phase in the control scheme over the course of gameplay.  A common control setup is to have your four buttons act as light attack, heavy attack, jump, and use button.  Darksiders changes this up by having the square button be used for your sword attack and the triangle be used as your secondary weapon.  This makes you a little more careful in your attacks, as you don

The story of Darksiders starts off with a bang, as War is thrust into the middle of the apocalypse on Earth, battling both demons and angels and generally laying waste to everything he sees.  This ends up being a great way to introduce the various abilities that War has and shows the gamer how to interact with the environment.  The player is shown all the standard gameplay elements, what walls can be climbed, how to target enemies and how to execute the quick time events for the special kill animations.

This is one of my few complaints about Darksiders, as calling these actions Darksiders manages to present a game that is both linear as well as an open world.  It is easy enough to stay on track with the main story (just follow the glowing yellow dot on the mini map to your next objective!) but also provides an easy method to go back and explore previous areas in new ways.  This combined with the amount of collectibles and power-ups that can be found gives the diligent gamer quite a few extra hours of gameplay (and trophies!) and makes this game an even better value.