toblix

Darksiders & Darksiders II

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All the hoopla surrounding Darksiders II made me buy Darksiders, since that was apparently great as well, according to the Giant Bomb podcast, which I assume gives sound advice. I've played a little bit of it, and I'm not really hooked. It seems quite simplistic, and based on what I can see in the store, is based on button mashing and combos, things a fan of which I'm not. Is my impression in line with reality? Does it have interesting aspects beside what I assume is a satisfying combat system?

What about the sequel (I just bought that, too?) (not really sure about punctuation always being inside the parenthesis ...) Is it more of the same? For some reason I got the impression these games were almost RPGs, but those elements seem pretty light, at least in the first game.

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Your impression is in line with my reality. I have the first game but stopped about 3 hours in. It was pretty dull, seemed like God of War but with less tight gameplay. It was enjoyable enough but, as you said, didn't hook.

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(not really sure about punctuation always being inside the parenthesis ...)

It depends whether the punctuation pertains to the text inside the parentheses (for example, the period at the end of the surrounding sentence does not). If it does, the punctuation goes inside the parenthesis (see what I mean?), but this isn't always the case.

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I completed five or so dungeons of Darksiders II and I suspect that I will never touch the game again. I was expecting a great Zelda like adventure, but I soon realized that I simply wasn't having any fun playing the game. It's a real shame as well, because the ingredients (Zelda, Prince of Persia, God of War...) were right.

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I've only played Darksiders 1, and I had a massive break in the middle of the game. It because too tedious, all those small arena fights and backtracking. I eventually finished it. But from the sounds of Darksiders 2 is much better. I should pick it up some time.

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I played an hour of the first game a while ago and haven't gone back because I couldn't see what was supposed to be fun about it. It just seemed like a really obvious God of War clone, except I enjoyed God of War (though I only played the first one) and this I just found boring. I didn't even realize the game was supposed to have Zelda elements, maybe I'll go back at some point and play more, but probably not any time soon.

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Your impression is in line with my reality. I have the first game but stopped about 3 hours in. It was pretty dull, seemed like God of War but with less tight gameplay. It was enjoyable enough but, as you said, didn't hook.

Did you get far enough in to see any of the dungeons? The real draw of Darksiders is when it starts feeling like a Zelda game with its big and elaborate environmental puzzles.

I really liked Darksiders, but the things i've been hearing about 2 have been causing me to stay away from it. The idea that it's more of a loot-driven action game with a lot of unfortunately gnarly bugs isn't really what i was hoping for out of that sequel.

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Is that an Armored Core avatar Sno?

Toblix, there is a thread about Darksiders here. Some people liked it.

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Jesus, I searched for a thread but didn't see it. CLOSE THIS THREAD PLZ

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I got pretty far into DarkSiders 1 and I got SO bored of fighting groups of the same enemy, and finishing them off with the same slow-mo fatality animation every time.

I could re-make that animation from memory, I saw it like 200 times.

It's really reminiscent of an early PS2 game or a game based on a Disney movie or something. It really taught me what "sleepwalking through" a game is.

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@ Sno Nice, is it the opening cutscene to Armored Core IV perchance?

As for Darksiders, I very much enjoyed it, the combat served up as a means to break away from the puzzling (that I did enjoy more). Something just clicked with that game and everything just felt intuitive. There was enough variety and mix up in what was expected of you that I was utterly hooked for the time I spent on it. I kept it on the hardest difficulty as it was way more fun that way (the combat was far too easy on Normal to the point where you didn't really appreciate it).

I loved Darksiders and was very keen to play Darksiders II, unfortunately I haven't knuckled down and finished it. I played the sequel for about 5 hours and it hasn't clicked with me in the same way. It is still a lot of fun and they have definitely improved many of the elements I just have too many things to play right now. I suspect that Darksiders 1 might have suffered the same fate if it had not come out in January.

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@ Sno Nice, is it the opening cutscene to Armored Core IV perchance?

It is, yes. I always felt that AC4 had some really striking, awesome-looking mechanical designs.

A pretty deeply flawed game though, like many of the AC games, but i think For Answer made good on it. ACFA is a personal favorite of mine.

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I finished this yesterday and it was enjoyed! It's super formulaic and doesn't have an original bone in its body, which doesn't sound like an endorsement, but it does nothing terribly. It just kind of... Exists... and it's a decently sized game with some meat to it. The biggest flaw is its Star Fox Adventures syndrome, where their main mechanism of moving the player forward in the game is based around collecting a MacGuffin. And once you got it? Congratulations, go to this place now and meet another guy WHO WANTS ANOTHER MACGUFFIN.

I made a critcical hit/critical damage build that pretty much broke the game for me. I had 30% crit chance with my main weapon and 20 with my secondary, but then there's the skill that gives you a strength boost, crit chance and damage boost AND had a chance of landing a blow twice. Activate skill, destroy anything the game throws at you in record time. :D

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It's a really cool thing when singleplayer games allow themselves to be broken like that. It's the pinnacle of the system mastery loop a lot of gamers feed off of.

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I'm really not digging Darksiders II so far, the dungeons feel tiny and unisteresting and each time I find a chest it just ends in dissapointment.

Joe Madureira left the company, right? It figures that the guy who started Battle Chasers and never finished it now did the same to Darksiders. This is starting to become a trend that I don't like a bit.

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I made a critcical hit/critical damage build that pretty much broke the game for me. I had 30% crit chance with my main weapon and 20 with my secondary, but then there's the skill that gives you a strength boost, crit chance and damage boost AND had a chance of landing a blow twice. Activate skill, destroy anything the game throws at you in record time. :D

The interesting thing about Darksiders II is that everyone seems to say that they found a build that breaks the game but I strongly suspect it's balanced so that it's very easy to break if you build it in any intentional direction. For instance, I built a health steal/wrath steal build that makes me basically invincible, and before that I was using a critical hit/damage build.

While I had some problems with it - it has some pacing issues, for instance - I think I liked it a lot more than Skyward Sword.

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Was anyone actually able to follow the story in Darksiders 1? It came off as such self-indulgent writing with so many dumb "twists" that I by the end I didn't know if something was or wasn't a twist and who half of the characters were in the greater story context.

That said I think the premise of playing as the four horsemen is awesome and I am enjoying Death's story more, with the idea of resurrecting humanity being both interesting and simple to follow. And the game play is leagues better then Darksiders 1.

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I more or less followed it - the characters were super super obnoxious with the sole redeeming feature being War's surly "badass" response to every situation becoming a plot point.

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For about a month I've had a Darksiders II save file at the door to what I assumed was the final dungeon in the game. I'm used to the last level of a Zelda-alike being this big sprawling thing that will take me hours, so I'd been saving it for an afternoon that I had to kill. Currently staying in a different province with my folks, and had a whole day ahead of me, so I thought "now is the time!" and fired it up. Turns out, there is no last dungeon. There is only a door, then a boss fight. It's not even that impressive a boss fight. Took him down easily my first try. Then credits. A month of waiting to finish that game for a 10 minute experience. Oh well. Overall, I think I liked Darksiders II. I opted to enable my save for an eventual New Game+, and may do that some day if I have a week off and nothing better to do. I liked 1 a lot more though. Still, pretty good.

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