Darksiders 2

Rating: 2 out of 3 Stars (why only 3 possible stars?)

Genre: RPG; Sub-genre: Platforming, Puzzles

ESRB: M (cartoony blood, feels more like a T)

Estimated hours of gameplay (thorough play/quick play): 40/30

Developer: Vigil 

Wiki page

If there was ever a way I could show people how much better games are now than they used to be, I think this might be it. To say that THIS is what counts as an "alright" game is absurd compared to games of my childhood. There's just so much stuff in this game and I'm indifferent because I'm so damn spoiled now. In my defense, I made a list of about 25 problems I found with this game. I'll tack that on to the end since it's mostly nit-picking, but I found enough general stuff wrong that I didn't want to give it a strong recommendation.

Although if you want a game where you look like Casey Jones from TMNT, this game's got ya covered!

I put that the primary genre is RPG, but honestly most of the time spent in this game is platforming and figuring out puzzles. I know developers are afraid of putting a bunch of grinding in their games, but avoiding having nice long fights is a mistake. The only time you get in meaty bouts is if you do side stuff like the Crucible or the Soul Arbiter's maze. Not that I felt the combat was perfect. I really found myself wishing they would have just stolen the combat system from the recent Batman: Arkham games. But it does seem like there was a lot of attention spent on it. A big problem I found was with the talents. All they add are a set of secondary spells. No passives to make Death better at using guns, or open up different combat styles. The two trees offer either "a couple summons" or "a couple more melee moves." And holding LB to bring up the spell list and the length of the casting animations felt clunky. But overall the talents are functional. The platforming, on the other hand, is complete garbage. Death is too damn slow. I found only one time where the game put my skills to the test, and the goofball kept jumping up when I had him running sideways along a ledge. From what I could figure, he needed to be at the very edge of the ledge AND he needed to do his little looking animation before he would accept jumping in the direction I was pressing. It sounds trivial, but all of his platforming skills are like this. And his ability to jump is virtually nil. The puzzles are more of the usual from a modern game being what I call "non-puzzles." But at least this game will test your knowledge of the mechanics, instead of just forcing you to search for what is clickable.

I really don't like this skill tree.

I'm not sure what I can say about the story in this game, good or bad. I find it reminiscent of what are known as "cosmic" comic books. There are no set rules in this world. Everyone is some kind of angel, demon, deity, guardian of some element of the universe, that kind of stuff. Earth is already destroyed, so all the things at stake are entirely intangible. And the ending is rather nonsensical, too. I can't talk about why without giving it away, but it has to do with exactly what I'm talking about: magic powers and cosmic mumbo jumbo. The levels don't help either. I do appreciate their decision to stick with purely "video game" levels, as opposed to putting any effort into making them resemble places where people might actually live or perform some manner of function. But while that helps gameplay, it keeps the story from being understandable, too. I think my final call is overall positive, if only because it has to be so much more creative than other games because it has no solid ground to place it's feet on. How do you tell a story about a man trying to save his brother when that story has no people in it? So philosophical.

Some people find all this philosophical gibberish as headache inducing. I like it just fine!

Conclusion:

A game that's derivative of a lot of other games, but does so with a little style. Not strong enough to stand out of the crowd, but worth a shot if it's your style. I would probably recommend other games before getting to this one.

Time once again for bitching!

1. Quests that cannot be completed at time they are given. For example, a quest from Thane at the beginning of the game can only be completed roughly 15 gameplay hours later. I find this frustrating having it stare at me from my quest log for so long.

2. Dodge move has no invincibility frames. I just always want 'em, dammit!

3. Combat too hectic. All I can do is dodge and poke, fight the camera in smaller places.

4. Button press memory? No! Do the thing I am currently pressing! I don't care that I pressed X three times, I'm pressing Y now! Do Y!

5. Kind of a lot of buttons. LT for targeting isn't very useful. LB for spell list is hard. LB+RT for Reaper form feels unnatural (what's wrong with X+Y or another face button combo?).

6. Dodge then X move is horrible! When I'm dodging, I'm trying to move in and out fast. Do not want slow move here!

7. Stats make no sense. At no point does the game bother to explain any of them. What does "Arcane" do? How am I supposed to know!?

8. Too many moves syndrome. I only use like 2 or 3 of these combos. What a waste of time on these animations.

9. Boss that is inexplicably level 20? Was I supposed to know that fighting all the level 18's along the way?

10. Usefullness of reaper mode?

11. Usefullness of executing?

12. Usefullness of fast secondaries?

13. Reaper form plot convenience. It lets Death fly and one shot people at will. Why is he not in this form at all times?

14. Keeps gun out for too long. Have to dodge to get him to put his hand down. What is the point of this?

15. Delay before reloading gun. No explanation here. Why not make the reload slow and the delay non-existant?

16. Two dead lords glitch? I rescued one and it gave me two. Then when I rescued the second, I still had two.

17. Slow speed of dead lords.

18. Vulgrim does not sell general items!!! Why is he marked as such on the map?

19. Hookshot bad targeting. Even when the RT prompt comes up, he still will fire the hookshot at nothing.

20. Axe training cannot be learned. Obvious bug.

21. No enemy variance until second zone? Why? First zone has only two enemies, rest of the game has plenty.

22. Speed test! Platforming in this game officially FAILS! F! F! F! F! F!

23. Assigning a button to swap to gun/hookshoot dumbness. Hookshot and the gun are the only two items/powers with use in combat. So it's advisable to have both mapped. But why doesn't the game let you make it just one button that switches back and forth? I don't have enough buttons for all my spells because of this!

24. Camera needs to pull back a little bit.

25. Instead of wrath pots, reaper pots! In general I wanted Wrath to be handled differently: lower spell costs, faster regen, stuff like that. This version is kinda boring. Usually potions are meant to save your life. Health potions do, obviously, but Wrath ones... not so much.