You say you want a revolution: Darksiders & Darksiders 2 (360)

When I last spoke of Darksiders, I was preparing myself to re-engage with this enormous game, starting anew on the 360 after abandoning the PS3 to a horrible spider-boss. A horrible, horrible spider-boss.

I had forgotten how far I had made it into the game when I rounded to that point again a full 20 hours into a 35 hour game. With a lowered difficulty and a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics (and a youtube video or two) as well as some minor experience with Dark Souls, recognizing and avoiding the boss patterns was easier this time around, but still frustrating.

Darksiders is very much a collage of gaming’s greatest hits, wrapped in comic book inspired art and story. War, one of the four Horsemen, is tricked into a battle that devastates Earth and destroys humanity, despite the Seventh Seal remaining unbroken. Heaven and Hell use the ruined planet as a battleground as War is resurrected and sent, much-diminished, to set things right. A ghastly specter is chained to his wrist functioning as a guide through the game and a narrative driver, pushing War through the story.

Essentially nothing more than a series of fetch quests, Darksiders embraces whole-heartedly it’s homage of Zelda/Castlevania style RPG’s stitched to God of War style combat. As abilities unlock, previous areas become more accessible, allowing for more abilities to unlock. Homage becomes flat-out theft when blue-orange portals appear in the late game, allowing War to traverse increasing complex puzzles without incorporating Portal’s more sophisticated mechanics. Like most of the lifts in the game, the idea is sound, the implementation is unpolished.

Despite its Frankenstein nature, Darksiders results in far more than the sum of its parts. The combat is endlessly entertaining, as are the increasing abilities including a hookshot. The story is compelling enough to recommend finishing the game and while some of the boss fights are brutally pointless the final battle is extremely satisfying, especially as it leads to an epic ending promising so much more to come…

…a promise Darksiders II fails to address much less keep.

Told concurrently with Darksiders, DII feels like do-over, an attempt to make the game originally planned but not built. The narrative is empty as little is done to tie the two games together other than the story’s initial spark: Death seeks to clear War of blame in the destruction as earth.

Playing the games back to back was a revelatory and unsettling experience. Without the separation of time between them, the differences are stark. Darksiders had an overly complex and plodding menu system, while the menus in D II are direct and functional, without any style. This clarity is much needed, as D II is literally an RPG, combining the GoW combat with Prince of Persia traversal and Diablo style damage and loot.

Unlike the first game, weapons are named and given stats, and leveling occurs both at the character and the weapon level. Cursed weapons are rare, and can be fed other weapons to level them further. In an embarrassment of riches, the economy of the game is insanely generous, and I finished with nearly $500,000 unused. Leveling weapons becomes unnecessary as there is always a better weapon not far away.

Floating hit points flare off everything, muddling the screen as abilities animations pop off filling the world with sparkly effects. There were moments where literally nothing was visible but smears of color and numbers in group or boss battles.

Fetch quests dominate the game, and Death is virtually impotent against the forces of these worlds, to the point that the character himself voices his annoyance with being lead around by the nose.

Graphically denser, D II improves on the art style with far more impressive and expressive animations and a far more vibrant color palette. Each world is massive and MMO like, but eventually funnels down into dark dungeons and linear paths. Abilities are unlocked, but back-tracking is far less encouraged than in Darksiders, including a throw-back level on a destroyed earth. Improvements are far more apparent in this familiar backdrop as this earth is far denser with detail, as a back-drop to a Gears of War third person shooter inspired section.

Darksiders II is iteration not evolution of the series, essentially a retelling or addendum to the original game. With an ending that is entirely meaningless to the larger story and in fact negates itself instantly, it feels like a side-step in preparation for a much larger experience. Unfortunately with low sales to date, that experience may never come.