Darksiders is a mash-up of a bunch of different elements you’re familiar with from past games. If you’ve played a Legend of Zelda game – one of Nintendo’s prolific franchises – than you will definitely be familiar with a lot of what Darksiders has to offer. But even though it takes most of its gameplay elements from other games in the past, the game still happens to be really additive and fun, resulting in a great game to start 2010 with.

You play as one of the four Horseman of Apocalypse, War, as you are sent to earth as Hell and Heaven are waging war. Caught up in the middle of it, War finds himself alone, without the other 3 Horseman, and eventually dies. The Council is a bunch of dudes that look over the entire universe, and they sense that the entire war between Heaven and Hell was caused by War himself. With nothing else to do, War sets off to the destroyed and decaying Earth to find out what really happened.

The game’s pace is similar to that of the Legend of Zelda’s. You will go to a temple, find a special item, defeat a boss for their specific item, then go on to the next temple. But what Darksiders does pretty well is keeping you interested. What I mean is that you’re walking around a post-apocalyptic earth with destroyed buildings and decaying environments, but the way the dungeons are set up are pretty clever. One temple for example takes place inside a hollowed (pun intended) subway station.

There are many aspects of Darksiders that you’ll feel being very derivative, but the end result actually turned out to be better than expected. War gets himself a boomerang and hook-shot, but the way their used are actually more clever and way better than you’d originally think. I felt that the Zelda formula was getting a bit stale at the release of Twilight Princess in 2006, but after beating Darksiders, I can see the formula being pretty awesome, but only if done right.

As a package, Darksiders is what we like to call “good”. It packs a fun 15 hour campaign with lots of treasures and collectables, but also features a nice looking graphics engine. The game may not blow you away like Gears of War or Uncharted, but the art design and the use of colours make the game shine brighter than a game set after the apocalypse would make you think. The Xbox 360 version of Darksiders does suffer from heavy screen tearing, and when turning the camera in intense situations, you might get irritated by it.

While visually pleasing, I didn’t care for the audio. While the voice acting and sound effects are done fine, I thought the use of music was almost none-existent. I liked the music when it was (rarely) played, but temple music – like seen in most Zelda games – was totally missing from the game, and would’ve made it better.

When all is said and done, Darksiders is a great game. I definitely have some significant gripes with the game, but looking past all of these is easy considering how fun and engaging the game eventually gets. It’ll take time to grow on you, for sure, but Darksiders does a lot of the Zelda formula right that some Zelda games themselves have failed to do. Darksiders is an action adventure worth checking out.

Rating: 8.0/10