Where Darksiders II starts to get good

Posted by on August 16, 2012 in Games

The original Darksiders started slowly. What’s more, it took its time unfurling bits of gameplay. You’d be near the end of the game and it would basically say, “Wait, hold on a sec, I’ve still got this nifty gimmick to show you! It’s right out of Portal, but I saved it up until now. Here!” That these gimmicks were borrowed wasn’t the slightest bit troubling. I’ll take a game that knows how to borrow over a game that thinks innovation is inherently better any day. Darksiders II also takes its time getting good, although the borrowing doesn’t seem so obvious this time. In fact, Darksiders II feels a lot more like its own creature.

However, unless you veer a little from the main storyline, Darksiders II may take longer than intended to get good. I was plowing through it, just hitting the waypoints for the main storyline, ignoring the side quests — that blacksmith can get his own dang hammer and who cares about all these collectibles? — and making pretty good time. I was mostly unimpressed, but content enough. But then I got sort of stuck and decided to explore. At which point I realized all those glowing blue stones I’d been seeing were for something I’d skipped because I didn’t talk to someone by the side of the road. And those tokens I could spend with Vulgrim are actually useful. And when you go out of your way to figure out how to reach that chest, you have a lot more treasure to feed your possessed weapons, which are suddenly a lot more useful. And it’s a pretty trivial matter to get enough money to learn all the combat moves. Darksiders II gets really good once you stop playing to finish it.

However, even if you do just follow the main storyline, even if you are just making a beeline to the end, Darksiders II gets good once you come to the Eternal Throne. If you’re not sold at this point, which is fairly early in the second world, you’re probably never going to be a Darksiders II fan. The basic concept of the Eternal Throne — which I’ll let you discover — has been done in a few different games, but this bit of Darksiders II is an epic fantasy set piece at its best. Leave it to the developers at Vigil Games to take their time wowing me.

  • anon

    It’s beginning to grate that they still can’t do better than a bare bones PC port… At least it wasn’t late this time.

  • tomchick

    Ouch, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m on the 360, so that hasn’t been an issue for me. What’s wrong with the PC port? Does Vigil do the port themselves?

  • Chris

    You discredit yourself as a reviewer by saying you rush through things. I came here to read your bad review of Sleeping Dogs since it was the only negative one and now I know to take it with a grain of salt.

  • Nightgaunt

    This is an interesting assertion. Vigil allows players to steamroll through the storyline. Is it bad to have a reviewer tell you what that experience might be like (not that Tom has written that review yet)? If it’s subpar, is it the reviewer or the other players’ fault, or is it the design?

  • amanda_chen

    I can’t believe you’ve given this game a score of zero stars.

  • Mygaffer

    I am always surprised to see how butt-hurt people get over game reviews. I shouldn’t be after all these years but I am.
    Especially when so many other, bigger sites hardly tell you anything interesting or honest about their experiences (slight exaggeration I know).

  • EyebrowsMulligan

    I know it’s cliche, but why not take most every opinion with a grain of salt? The honesty to admit plowing through, though I didn’t take it as negatively here as you did, would make me appreciate what’s written all the more.

  • Josh

    If I recall correctly, Vigil were meant to develop the PC game in parallel with the console. The PC was meant to have extra graphics options by way of a configuration file, which it doesn’t have (as yet?) despite being promised. The PC version also looks terrible graphically. Blocky shadows, low resolution textures, it looks like a game released 5 or so years ago in my opinion. http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/576712309191966212/5AD246B9E50DA7F23A7E6D66221667D94A1A69B1/ is my one first example from the start. Sure, get past the graphics, and what I’m finding is what can be best described as a solid game. Not fantastic, I’m not racing home from work excited to be able to sit down and play it, but I do like it. The combat feels much more smoother, slicker than what I experienced in Darksiders 1. It also means I’m getting lost with the combos, and wishing I had the more deliberate actions that War had. But as I get more experience, I think it will improve. I really like the evasion right now, contrasted against War where I had to have the right stick in dead centre and pressing the (R) shoulder button to do a counter block.

  • Peter Michelsen

    I’m interested to see where this goes. The original Darksiders stole from others, without putting any of it to good use. This sounds like it might actually be good?

  • http://profiles.google.com/matthiaswatkins Matt Watkins

    I remember reading all those negative reviews of DS1 saying basically: “It just steals from Zelda and God of War and even Portal. Total ripoff” and thinking to myself, “I love those games; how can a mashup of them possibly be bad.” For me, it was one of the most entertaining games of this console generation (though, of course, it still holds no candle to Dark Souls.)

  • http://www.swiftthought.com Drakkheim

    ” Darksiders II gets really good once you stop playing to finish it.”
    I think that is probably really true for a lot of games. Saints Row 3 for ex.. storyline was ok.. but if you skipped all the random crazy, you really missed out on the game.

  • Mercanis

    Death’s scythes ate all the stars and absorbed their power.

  • JamesH

    Here you go,

    http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/darksiders-2/1225740p1.html

    That explains what’s wrong with it. Vigil issued an apology and said patches will hopefully be coming. So let’s see where it goes

  • http://twitter.com/jdhas jdhas
  • amanda_chen

    Or Tom’s waiting to hear from his paymasters what the score should be. Hahaha.

  • Peter Michelsen

    My problem is that I’ve already played those games, and while it obviously comes down to the individual, I’m just not in the market for a reskinned pretender. If it actually manages to become more than the sum of its parts with this one, count me in.

  • luke

    Tom, Brandon at No High Scores says enabling the automatic loot pick-up option improved the pacing of the game for him. I can’t vouch for it from personal experience, but if you’re still tired of the mandatory post-combat loot sort that you mentioned on the podcast, maybe you’ll benefit from it.
    http://www.nohighscores.com/2012/08/14/deaths-grand-design-ten-hours-with-darksiders-ii/
    I love the idea of a Zelda game with a robust loot system to variegate combat and exploration rewards, but you brought up a number of potential negatives I never even considered during the podcast. I’m eager to read more of your impressions..

  • anon

    Pretenders can often execute better. For instance, modern Zelda games are tediously easy, though I doubt Darksiders has much harder Zelda-like elements in this case.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Cfolliot Dan Sorenson

    My friend was very excited about getting Darksiders II, so I figured I would give the 1st one a shot while he played the 2nd. Granted, I didn’t get very far into it, because I thought it was just another button masher God of War clone, so I stopped playing. However, I watched him play the sequel, and I was hooked. I love the RPG & Diablo aspect to it along with the more open world parts. I grew up with Zelda (the original & sequels) and I don’t get why people say it’s Zelda-esque. I’m just really enjoying it though.