Darksiders review

Plumbers and electricians don’t like to be called out unnecessarily and neither does War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Instead of just issuing the powers that be a bill for a callout, he’s decided to get revenge for this unnecessary trickery by working for The Council and ripping out the hearts of some big beasts in the form of some brutal if a little easy boss fights.

Darksiders is a third-person action adventure and if you’ve played Devil May Cry or God of War then you’ll see the similarities here. War has a number of different weapons which he can use in combat and as he makes progress, he can then use these new weapons and their abilities to get to new areas in the world he couldn’t get to before to open chests and find the goodies inside. Souls are collected every time he kills something and these can be traded with a demonic shopkeeper for new abilities which he can assign to weapons in a sort of mini role-playing kind of way.

Even though we’re talking about the end of mankind as we know it, it’s nice to see a colourful game here with some beautiful worlds whether you’re swimming under water, avoiding falling into lakes of fire or trudging through the desert.

You’ll spend the majority of the game collecting the afore-mentioned hearts for a demon called Samael who bares more than just a passing resemblance to Tim Curry in the movie Legend. Then it’s off to the Tower where the story takes a bit of a u-turn as you solve a number of light puzzles to free the angel Azrael.

You also get to ride on horseback halfway through the game. You can summon the fiery horse Ruin to gallop you between areas and your sword swings are much more powerful when you’re fighting on horseback. This is one of the those games that gets better the more you play it. Fighting to begin with doesn’t feel too great but when you start to string combos together with your sword, scythe, gauntlet and pistol, the carnage on screen is a joy to watch.

The game hasn’t got quite the gravitas of God of War, nor as good a fighting system as Devil May Cry, but it does provide an entertaining romp with lots of things to collect and plenty of places to explore. If you just can’t wait to play with Kratos in God of War 3 then this makes a more colourful substitute. Darksiders gets an excellent 8 out of 10.

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Related: Devil May Cry, God of War 3, Darksiders review