Posted on: June 9, 2016
classic-gamer
Verified ownerGames: Reviews: 3
Ruined by technical and design deficits
You can read about the story and gameplay of Darkiders almost everywhere. So I will tell you about some serious deficits. Let's begin with the technical ones: controllers with DInput haven't got a native support, only those with XInput like the X360-Pad. You can circumvent this with X360CE. A shame for a game of 2010. The controls are very well in 95% of time, but distance fight aiming is bad, especially hectic distant fights and in boss fights are annoying. It wouldn't be such a big deal if you could switch between Pad and M&K ingame. But you have to disconnect(!) the controller and restart the game. This also means that you'll have to play the whole sector with M&K, because you can't save everytime. Alt-Tab isn't supported by default, but you can find some information how to enable it. I don't know if this or X360CE are causing several crashes, most of them in the second half of the game. The most serious deficit is the fact that an installed video codec pack or LAV Filters could(!) prevent playing rendered videos and you won't unterstand the story. Problems like this are known by old (Win3.11/95) games, but not for a game released in 2010. There are also some smaller deficits in gamedesign: the balance isn't very well. E.g. the arena fights at the beginning of the game can be very frustrating and winning thems seems to depend on you luck. Also some of the harder enemys at the beginning could be less hard. It wouldn't really matter if you could change the diffiulty during the game. You'll have to start a new game to do this. The second half seems to be easier, especially if you visit some levels again and again, because you can reach some upgrades only gradually. The later Bosses also seem to be easier to beat that the Bosses in the first half. Well, you get the impression getting stronger and stonger, IMHO to extreme. Except the cons the game makes a lot of fun. The fights are ok, the puzzles are not to hard but in the endgame annoying. There are a lot of secret artifacts and upgrades. The artifacts can be traded off at the dealer Vulgrim and you get souls. With this souls you can upgrade your weapons. The upgrades give you more capabilities (e.g. for your weapons) or increase max. health or rage. So it makes a lot of sense to explore every corner. At regular intervals you get some abilities such as blowing up ice walls to get access to areas that were out of reach so far. Unfortunately this has the disadvantage that you have to visit each region twice or even more. There are a lot of boss fights. Every boss has another vulnerability which requires another tactics. After beating the final boss you can seach for artifacts and upgrades you didn't find so far. If you find the right one of the 4 legendary upgrades every location of those will be shown on the map of the current region. Nice. Because of all those deficits I'll deduct 2 stars. "Only" 2 stars because of the fact that this will not affect everyone. All those who don't care this can add 2 stars and expect a great game.
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