Darksiders 3 – Review

Third time lucky for the Darksiders franchise?  The Darksiders franchise really can’t find it’s own identity in the hack and slash genre. Darksiders 1 was a linear, pretty average, clunky adventure, whereas Darksiders 2 turned into a more boring RPG type game, so it was with huge personal interest to see where the new Darksiders 3 went.

Current gen consoles have been starved of decent linear 3rd person hack and slash games. Apart from RYSE, God of War, Hellblade, the remasters of DMC games, the underrated Japanese fun festival series that is the Samurai Warrior games, and of course, the HD remasters of Darksiders, that’s pretty much been your lot for 5 years. During last gen, the hack and slash was filled with many 3rd person linear titles, (God of War, Dante’s Inferno, DMC, X Blades, Ninja Gaiden, Darksiders, Beowulf, Conan, Castlevania, Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, Enslaved, Heavenly Sword just to name a few off the top of my head ) and ironically last gen is the first thing you’ll think of at first glance of Darksiders 3. It looks horrible! Frankly, it’s an insult to call this a current gen game, let alone PS4 pro or Xbox one X enhanced one. The settings are bland, of just caves, bombed out buildings and much more of the same, with very limited textures, definition, detail, and interest.

Character models move in a very stiff manner, both enemies and the character you play; Fury. However, bad graphics don’t break a game for me, as if the gameplay is tight, then it doesn’t matter if you’re having fun. But, to add insult to an already ugly picture, with not a great deal to look at on the screen, the player also has to suffer the ignominy of constant screen slowdowns, low frame rates and occasional game crashes too. This is most perplexing considering what can be achieved graphically these days on the same console.

Then we have the story itself.  Set during the same timeline as Darksiders 1, you play as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, “Fury”. Fury is tasked with bringing the seven deadly sins to justice ( whose justice is not clear ) and if she does she will then become the leader of the horsemen. Angels and demons, deadly sins, Horsemen, it’s actually pretty difficult to understand who’s fighting who and why in this game, which again leads itself into a lack of identity. Should you feel empathy for Fury’s task, or not? An incoherent, uninteresting storyline from this series, doesn’t engage the player for yet another missed opportunity. Fury is much like Kratos from God of War, very angry, but at least with Kratos, you know why he is. Here Fury just seems angry for the sake of it and not for any plot services.

So off you trot, not really knowing why, or being interested in what you’re meant to be doing or looking at for the, ahem combat.

Sigh…….

Again the game here has an identity crisis. There is nothing wrong with a brutally hard game ( see Dark Souls ), but mix that with a combat style of pure attack like God of War, ( minus the blocking ability )  doesn’t combine for a fun gameplay experience. The combat has many, many balancing issues.

Fury, again like Kratos, has a weapon ( a whip ) on the end of a long chain, and one button press ( X or Square ) for various different attacks. Pauses and different combinations of X result in different stylish moves. For example, X pause X is a hit, then a pull an enemy towards you hit. Two hits of X something else. Later in the game, you start to acquire new weapons which can be used by pressing Y or triangle. Build up your attacks to fill two types of gauges to then unleash two other types of super moves. Although the combat is a tad sluggish, it is with weaker enemies, actually fun to mess around with. What isn’t fun though is that you have no blocking ability and the dash is of a pathetically short distance, as to be almost utterly infective.  Brutally hard enemies who can kill you in just a few hits, that themselves need many hits, can quite easily, and often do just walk right at you, or follow you, smash, your dead. The fact that you can’t block or dodge far enough out of the way, is at odds with the style of gameplay. Your character wants to attack with reckless and fun abandon, whereas your enemies want you to study, learn and watch what they do over time, but you simply don’t have the ability or tools to get out there way or defend yourself to do so. Add to this you don’t have any ranged weapons ( unlike the enemies ) to whittle down enemies health from afar, whilst you learn their moves.

Add the brutal difficulty which is at odds to its own in-game fighting style, together with the third gameplay issue of lack of save points, is just a recipe for utter disaster.

After the 2nd boss fight, you then enter a place called the Hallows. From the second checkpoint, I had to fight my way through three hordes of enemies, a mini-boss, 3 more waves of enemies, another mini-boss, a puzzle, a cutscene, more waves of enemies, and then jump surprise enemies, who killed me, with no sign of the next checkpoint in sight. Rather than go back to just before the previous encounter, I had to go ALL the way back to the last save point, and do it all over again. After the third time of repeating the same 20 minutes of gameplay, not learning or finding anything new, it got boring, and frankly, it just isn’t fun. So I reduced the game difficulty, and still died at the second mini-boss ( who on easy only needed 4 hits to kill me. ) After the 6th go, and still no further, and having wasted the last 2 hours just trying to get to the next save point, I’d had enough.

The game feels like it’s been designed that you already know the enemy locations and moves before meeting them. But obviously you don’t, so you have to find out via repetitive trial and error method in how to progress. This soon becomes really frustrating, annoying and disappointing that any small gains you make can’t be saved. Boss fights you win by the skin of your teeth have to be done all over again. Even if you have a stock of health items, Fury’s in-game animation to use them means, in mid-fight, she stops still to use them. In the midst of a frantic battle, the last thing you need to do is stand still.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, a third of my deaths were simply due to awful camera angles, not letting me see what or where my character was. Even with you using the dash, the dash is over such a short distance the enemies just walk and follow you, and by the time your character has regained their footing, they are still well within range of even the most basic of enemies, let alone massive bosses who can move quickly.  

Finally, because the graphics are so poor, it’s really hard to even distinguish what the bosses are actually doing? Are they getting ready to jump, swing their weapon, teleport right behind you ( extremely unfair gameplay advantage ) or die, you really can’t tell.