I mean, are we going for Lovecraft here, twisted eons, even death may die? Probably not. It's just an odd looking marketing blurb, but hey we live in an era where Microsoft knowingly marketed into a press release where people came out of it going 'Ah yes, the Xbone' rather than giving their console a name that didn't shorten into a phallic reference. C'mon guys, it isn't hard. You just look at the words and go 'can this be shortened into a penis joke?'
Then again, it worked for Nintendo. Maybe dongs are the new hotness. Or wait, maybe they were when the Wii was burning up sales they were and now Microsoft is riding coat tails of a dying trend? I'm getting sidetracked here. Darksiders 2: Death Lives. Terrible title. And honestly, after finishing Darksiders itself, terrible sequel concept. I mean right from the get go you end with this super bad ass moment and instead you swerve, make a U turn, and get to work on a Death-centric parallel prequel? Death the guy, not Death the concept, which is centric in like 99% of video games.
It's not all that difficult to look at stuff like this and realize why the game was, to my understanding, a bit of a failure. I'm not trying to rag on the Vigil boys, because they seem like cool dudes, but rather the marketing team that dreamed this one up. Ugh. Seriously, Death Lives? Death Lives where? Detroit? The other decisions rapidly scale up to form a game more cobbled together, less unified, but none of them really stand out like that.But this is probably the last true Darksiders game, unless the IP ends up back in Vigil crew's hands over at Crytek. Granted, that doesn't mean the next game will be bad - Assuming it exists at all, which it probably won't. I guess Death doesn't live. (The Nordic guys did comment here here but that's well into the territory of All Well and Good, But)
Darksiders 2 took me a long, long time to finish. There's a couple reasons behind this, which I'll knock off right quick because they highlight the biggest issues the game has and why you should or should not play it.
The biggest problem with this game is a difficult one to explicitly state. The best way to demonstrate it is that feeling you get when you're going to the kitchen to get something. You look up and suddenly think - What was I doing? What was I trying to get? Something in the game's design, and I'm not entirely sure what it is, inflicts this sensation on me constantly. For me, this doesn't really bother me so much as bore me. The game just doesn't grab, instead it does the opposite, so I just wander off or go play something else. Sessions with this game were consistently brief because of this and the next reason. If I'm not bored, I'm trying to figure out not so much a puzzle but where to go next. Maybe I haven't played enough action-adventure games and I'm just a novice messing up, but I found trying to figure out what to do next teeth grindingly dull. Even trying to play the game with peeking at walkthroughs is a chore, the game is so loopy even someone explaining where to go refuses to make sense. This is especially bad when doing a boss fight.One thing that honestly worsens this game is the raw, unadulterated amount of unnecessary collectibles and what not. The game is a constant battle between trying to figure out where you're actually supposed to go and going down side paths to find loot you don't care about. I understand that loot was pushed into the game but I'm still kinda baffled as to why. As a result, we run into the other big issue...
The game isn't done. Flat out. It has this unfinished, loopy feel to it. When it isn't crashing or freezing, I'm struggling to find where to rebind controls. I had an issue where the game would stall on start up, but it only lasted a couple weeks and I have no idea what changed. Previous to that I spent a couple days trying to figure out why it had developed an error where it would go through the first time set up over and over. All in all between the game's loopy interrupted feeling and constant problems with just getting it to run on a system that is about solid as a rock on everything else it is just hard to recommend this game. I'm not saying the game is bad, I'm just saying there's a very relevant set of issues that might punish you if you don't accept this sort of stuff.
On the other hand, approaching neutrality, Darksiders 2 suffers in part for its ambition, but its ambition is also some of its biggest charm. Darksiders the first is often compared to Zelda, which I can't back up since I'm not a fan of Zelda games past LTTP. Darksiders 2 feels to me a great deal more like someone tried to build a 3D version of Super Metroid - At least insofar as the movement style. Death is agile and almost bizarre in the insane amount of movement tricks he can pull off - he bounces, climbs, skitters, leaps and flips all over the place. When the parkour stuff is on it is totally on and it feels strange they didn't make the game more about it. Death is extremely well animated, stylish and surprisingly likeable. Sure he's the usual gloomy anti-hero archetype, but he doesn't really push it so hard and thankfully he doesn't seem obsessed with revenge or he needs to murder 113 men to blah blah. He just wants to save his brother from an unjust sentencing. He doesn't seem excited to kill people, you're just in his way. The voice acting in the game is overall high, but Death himself has the same half-smirk glibness that makes you appreciate Geralt. The only complaint I have about the voice acting lies in the change between one of the supporting cast from the first game, whose new voice actor is quite competent but lacks the slight edge of insanity the original version of the character possesses.
The graphics quality is somewhat into cartooning, but there's a huge range of interesting and often surprisingly unique environments to go through. You can feel some of the first game's influence, but DS2 is much more willing to do tranquil and beautiful. Basically the game is good to the eyes, with a good grasp of visual aesthetics and the right mix of sombre into tranquil into gloomy into desolate. There's also a very intentionally chopping between combat sections and jumping puzzle stuff, which works really well to showcase the world design. I will note that the camera, which ties into the next thing, is pretty outright terrible in parts. It's often very good and often very bad, as it is a custom viewpoint for each area. I've died a couple times to the camera straight up not facing what I'm fighting and instead just wandering into nonsense territory. Combat against larger enemies borders on requiring intuition over working eyes, which is downright silly.Combat is ... Eh, it's pretty good but it isn't quite as solid as the first game. There's definite intention here, Death is lighter on his feet and feels like he's supposed to dodge, jump and sidestep into enemies rather than just mash his face forward like War. Death feels less powerful, but more dangerous. Death really shines when it comes to the boss design however, as once you get them down they feel fantastic and really creative. Even little minibosses have more of a sense of licking at their weakpoints and getting their flanks rather than putting a pot on your head and mashing forward as War did. Combat isn't necessarily a high point, as enemies do have a bit too much health, but it's largely acceptable and at times quite enjoyable. The only really big issue for me is the camera, which like I said can make some fights very strange.
There is a section of the game that is almost entirely combat, and it's absurd how terrible it is. I don't want to spoil the plot at all but you get to this point and an NPC says "after you go here, you might be mad about it" for various reasons. And like, the reason you're mad is it sucks. Strangely though, it's almost all gun combat, which is just weird.
Combat and parkour are two parts of the three parts that make up the game - Well, I guess plot and dialogue play a reasonable component, but the third major part is the puzzles. Puzzles in Darksiders 2 are in many ways the same as the first game, and while in some ways very satisfying, you often get stumped less by "I don't understand what I'm doing" and more "I have A, I have B, where the devil is C?" The visual element of the puzzles is extremely frustrating and while I imagine were I younger I might have the patience, I really don't care about trying to pick out where I'm supposed to be looking to see element C to combine with the other two. It really stands out how much harder it is to put together the pieces in Darksiders 2 as opposed to Portal, but then you remember Portal 2 had these incredibly shit terrible moments where you spent five minutes staring at the 'normal' terrain (not a puzzle room) and realize the problem is that Darksiders 2 is very busy visually. One giant mistake is they should absolutely never mix a puzzle with treasure in the middle of the puzzle process. It creates this confused interuption in thought where you suddenly aren't sure which step along the way you're at. Are you done? Do you need to regress, change things up, or just continue? Basically, it's bad game design. Mind you I don't think there's anything wrong with doing puzzles for loot, but the progression gating puzzles with loot in the middle add unnecessary steps that weaken the enjoyment of the puzzle.
But like I said, by far the worst point in the game is the tour of duty with no puzzles at all. I also sort of wish the puzzles had something of a sense of purpose to them, like you were fixing something broken in a way that makes sense or whatever and internal logic could be demonstrated into a meaningful solution. I think, looking back, that Dead Space did that a couple times and it makes solving puzzles feel so much more reasonable. Still, I enjoyed about half of the puzzles and only really hated a handful. There's a couple puzzles, far too few, that revolve around the late game powers Death gains and some of them really charming. Splitting your soul into pieces and then moving the petrified form of your avatar by shimmying it around is just strange and delightful. Playing catch with yourself is silly, but it actually feels like a reasonable solution in ways others do not.
The plot of the game somewhat lets down the voice acting and glib nonchalance Death, as a character, brings to the table. I feel fair comparing him to Geralt - The voice acting is about as good, though obviously Death is a far more shallow character, but I enjoy his motivations and sense of measured impatience. Anyway the story clearly works as a parallel to the first game and isn't really a sequel at all. The first part - Death seeking a pardon for War - is actually pretty funny when you contrast the timeline of the first game - but it's really earnest and not executed in a manner I find repulsive. Death doesn't blather on about how he's obsessed or how he's going to murder everyone in his way. He doesn't feel like a straight out of the 90s Anti-hero, but rather just a neutral arbiter who is acting on his sense of justice.
The larger story arc that hovers over Death's motivation is, to be honest, rather dismal. I don't want to talk about the deeper plot because it's honestly rather drab and never resolved in any meaningful manner besides Death punch last boss rawr. Death hints at past events but you're never really given more than a short wikipedia page worth of plot. I wish they'd spent less time talking about that arc's output - "Corruption" as they repeatedly call it - and spent more time talking about Death's sense of remorse, his past, whatever. There's lots of story hooks made available and then they just don't really work on them. Worse as a core motivator to events it feels oversimplified. Can't it just be elements of the false End War, discussed in the first game, damaging and disrupting creation? It feels unnecessary, overwrought and under explained. If not for Death honestly giving it little concern, even letting a little laugh at its completion, and it just sort of wraps itself up.
To conclude this little write up, Darksiders 2 is surprising in length but it's best enjoyable a little here and there, rather than a grind into as other games are. It does over stay its welcome in parts, but that just leads back to what I said: It works as a game you put down and play something else, then come back to. It really isn't a great game, but the mixing of elements is mostly successful and it matures a ton as you go. The only thing I feel strongly against is the DLC - I have no idea where the DLC stuff was and the game was very long to begin with. I appear to have bought two pieces and I'm not sure I'll ever get back to replaying the game to look for them.Actually, to end on an odd note, Darksiders 2 is surprisingly diverse in its environments and even more shocking the female characters in the game all represent a variety of body types. A warrior angel and a hulking smith round out the cast, with them all on the most part not being ridiculously oversexualized. Hell, even Lilith is pretty tastefully dressed for a demonic seductress or mad scientist or whatever she was, and had a great overall style. I'm disappointed she didn't show up more - again, I'm still not sure why the game spent so much time vaguely talking about Corruption when Death's relationship with Lilith, his brothers, so on were all way more interesting.
The oddest thing though is one enemy, which is called a wraith or banshee given it's an undead abomination, had a huge exposed bosom as it appeared on screen. That was a little weird, but then the camera swung around and her two giant green glowing globes of ghetto booty came into view. Given this is attached to a shrieking, snarling zombie thing without much of a face it was one of the most bizarre, out of character moments in the game. Someone just had to slip some neon zombie ass
into the game, or something. I'd like to know who finds a soulless monstrosity with such adornments attractive, but then you know, I probably don't.I do have hopes Darksiders will get a third game, but it's hard to imagine the necessary meshing of elements done properly. Ideally it would allow for up to four player coop, while still having the combat/puzzle/parkour mix going. The loot system, kind of weird in this game, would actually really favor a coop game. Not sure it's ever going to happen, but I'm not too upset since the closer Darksiders gets to a world ending huge plot and the further it gets from the personality of its characters the worse it gets.
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