Review

Darksiders Genesis

It can be hard to be a fan of middle-tier games like the Darksiders series. After Darksiders III flopped cross-platform, it felt like that would be the end of the riders. Then it was announced that the series would make one more return, but with a hefty overhaul to something that is, presumably, “safer”.

And by safer, they meant the multiplayer, overhead action-RPG Darksiders Genesis; something in the vein of the endless line of games that spawned from Diablo. It was a disappointing development for those of us who actually really liked these games. I came to Darksiders in the middle. I had tried the original but didn’t gel with the slower pace of its lead, the hulking grunty War.

It took the far more vigorous and otherworldly adventures of Death to hook me. I loved Darksiders II, so much so that it made me appreciate the original more. Death’s adventure was a wild, bizarre trip through alien landscapes that seemed to have jumped out of trippy 70’s rock albums.

The third game introduced Fury because apparently no one involved was too eager to play as Famine. It got across-the-board middling scores, yet ended up being one of my favorite games of the year. Fury is a great character and, for a variety of reasons, I loved the story and the gameplay. After putting 60 or so hours into Darksiders III, I was definitely on board for more.

Which leads us to Darksiders Genesis. Finally, gun-toting Strife gets center stage…and has to share it with War, who is still a gruff, cranky, slow-paced bugger. Genesis moves the third-person, heavily platform-based action to a much more simplistic genre. That’s not to say there isn’t still platforming here, just that the overhead camera now makes it a lot sketchier. It’s hard to judge angles and distances at this angle, so the game’s focus is decidedly more on combat.

Genesis feels as its core was shifted/changed midway through development. The landscapes and geometry look very much like the third game, the combat system is largely the same, and character building/upgrades work the same. It leads me to hope that somewhere in all that code is a secret mode enabling the old third-person camera.

Be that as it may, this is a multiplayer-focused fight through hell. Two players assume the roles of Strife and War to battle a fantastic array of demonic forces. Switch puzzles, hidden goodies, and epic boss fights all make their return in Genesis and despite my overall objections to the game-style shift, this is still a Darksiders game.

Playing alone lets you switch between the two characters at will and each has very distinct strengths. War is a tank who rushes in and out of combat to inflict giant sword pain. Strife has his pistols and a much quicker, if not as impressively huge sword. There are also new special weapons to acquire that work as both mechanisms for solving puzzles and the infliction of violence.

Playing on the Xbox One X, the visuals are generally solid, but thanks to the longer distance from your characters, they occasionally get lost in the often-muddy colors of hell’s landscapes. Voice acting, ambient effects, and the score, however, are impressively well done.

With the fixation on two characters, the story tries hard to be an Odd Couple-style pairing. Strife is the joker to War’s straight man routine. Sometimes, the jokes work, other times not so much. The world of Darksiders still remains fascinating with its wonderfully bleak take on popular mythology concepts.

So, I’m still not wild about the departures Genesis makes from the rest of the series. Just the same, for those who have stuck with the series because of the characters, story, settings, and combat, it’s worth your time even if the perspective has changed.