Much like the other Darksiders games this game mimics the gameplay of other popular 3D titles of its day. Although I've never played any of the Souls games it seems reminiscent in its mechanics of respawning at checkpoints and having to fight your way back to your currency that you dropped upon death. Personally I think this added to the frustration of the game, but some people may like it due to the added difficulty. I found the character design stellar and very well thought out. I constantly found my expectations being defied to delightful surprise. The story is great as well. They very much compliment each other as they ought to. Characters grow, learn, and change. Gameplay is good, the controls are tight and dodging feels good. The game is incredibly difficult when you start it, even on a relatively easy difficulty but it gets better once you start to get better at the game. Puzzles are fun and not impossible to solve, although two puzzles late in the game were a bit aggravating. My only criticism is that the swinging mechanic was a bit unintuitive even though in game text described how to do it, it took me several tries to figure out what I had to do. Additionally there's a run button (left-stick click on an XBox 360 controller) that is required for a few puzzles that was never referred to in game that I could recall. Perhaps very early on. 1.0 was very buggy, and caused multiple crashes. Updating my drivers helped, but really 1.1 made the game much more stable. Still it crashed after a difficult boss fight and forced me to do the thing all over again. All in all I think the game is worth it, especially when all the bugs are ironed out. Good work THQ Nordic for reviving the series and giving us fans the hope that we'll see all 4 horsemen.
I happened to have picked up this game shortly after it's 1.0 release having heard about it in passing before it finished development. I have been playing it on and off since then. Probably many hundreds of hours at this point. As you can imagine it's a crafting, building, survival game focused on space travel and exploration. An addiction combination! I've found many people will intensely enjoy this game for a brief period of time, especially multiplayer, until they finish the story portion of the game. Usually then they quit. I'd say that period is about 20-30 hours. For those into building and collectathons you are in for a loooooooong time as there is more than enough to do on that front. The community and moding scene is thriving even years later and one of the most fantastic features is what the community calls "custom items." Custom Items are user defined items which require no mods but can do drastically different things. The benefit of these items are that they're multiplayer friendly, so if you'd like to bring your mech repair tool, exploding box of donuts, or seed vending machine to your friend's universe YOU CAN! This also means you can make a weapon uniquely your own with the proper knowledge of JSON. It's a really neat system and I wish more games did it. It bothers me a that many negative reviews on this game are based off of their expectations from the in development period for the game post release and not actually to the game as is. I imagine it's some means to punish the developers for not living up to their expectations. All in all it's an excellent game, worth the price, worth your time. Play with friends for maximum enjoyment. Good community. Plenty of mods.
