Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition

I bought Darksiders 2 after playing the game in the past, however the Deathinitive Edition has two massive problems. A) If you play with a controller, forget about seeing the buttons you are supposed to press. Sadly, they just show as black squares. Good luck being anything but useless in QTE. B) Graphic artifacts when scaling walls. The game turns to poo-poo graphics, with shadows being 40 polygon squares. I cannot recommend buying this version of Darksiders, unfortunatelly.

I really enjoyed the first Darksiders game, so I thought this would be more of the same awesome experience. Quite contrary. Right now, as I write this review, I have only advanced halfways through the first chapter and have found too many problems that really bothered me to just leave it at that. These are the worst offenders imho: 1. Considering the game is one of those games that are imho best enjoyed using console controls, I tried to use my gamepad. Too bad the game did not recognize my pad at all. Even using x360ce, it would never find the pad which usually works fine and also did so for the first installment. I sought the web for solutions and couldn't find any yet. So I'm stuck with the horrible mouse + keyboard controls, which feel really awkward. This seriously interferes with the game's feel. 2. I have seen lots of loading times at inappropriate points of the world. I can usually feign ignorance when encountering loading times when, say, opening a door, loading a video or applying large changes to gameworld areas. But I won't ignore a (intended) loading time while traversing a corridor. Similarly, some tutorial tooltips appear in the middle of a maneuver, throwing the player off the action he's about to perform. Again, the mouse and keyboard controls I'm saddled with and tied to make much of the platforming way more frustrating than should be for an avid platforming-gamer as I fancy myself. 3. The crashes seem the smallest of the issues, as the game does not crash all that often, but often enough to make the difference between being mildly annoyed or moderately pissed off. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when or why the game will crash. On the positive side: If someone else can get his gamepad to work or enjoys playing this kind of game with mentioned controls, it's can probably compete with the first Darksiders (though I found that one a bit more beautiful), but the issues seriously detract from the experience,my immersion and worst: My fun.

I played this game as an alternative to God of War. Actually loved the game and the play time is long if you want to. Adventure and world are the best. Character voices are great. Skills and weapons are abundant, and boss fights are not easy yet not impossible. I went back and played Darksiders I. It's not bad, but this is definitely better.

This takes the original and adds RPG elements and a loot system. On top of that, you play as Death, who is less a big brick that gets into fights, so he is much more lithe and nimble. With that, along with scrambling up walls, leaping between poles, and wall-running, movement just feels GOOD. This gets even more interesting once you start getting differnt tools, which are integrated very well into the level design. It's not without its frustrations, especially with the direction on your dodging while locked on, but overall, the gameplay is excellent, and builds on the first game. The visuals are absolutely stunning; while the first game was mostly a barren post-Apocalyptic wasteland, this game has some very unique and visually striking locales. The starting area (and intro) are fairly generic countryside, for the most part, but once you get past the first map, otherworld beauty just radiates from every location. Some of the weapons are a bit over-designed and silly, but with the fact that you can see every weapon AND ARMOR on your character, I can't complain too much. The soundtrack does a great job at enhancing this, too; it's not something I'd necessarily want to hear out of context, Jesper Kyd does a great job at drawing me right in. Even the voice acting is pretty solid; there's a lot of subtlety to Death's character that is conveyed through the way he speaks. The writing is also a big improvement; it's not quite so GRITTY GRIMDARK AND SUPER SERIOUS. It does play it straight, but doesn't go too hard, so it fits pretty well. The plot is pretty intricately woven, but not so much as to be convoluted. In fact, some of the cutscenes had me cheering later on, for how badass they were. The ending is a bit ambiguous, but the series is meant to be one long narrative, so it's fine.

Awesome game, had problems before like controller black squares but after pathes everything is smooth :)