Darksiders 2: Death Lives (Update)

Dark Siders II: It’s a game made for gamers by gamers.

With August right around the corner, THQ‘s Marketing Team decided to throw fans of the up and coming game title, Darksiders, a bone. This bone consists of a new trailer and a set of screen shots. I always found Darksiders II to be a promising title, as the franchise already laid out a successful foundation with its predecessor, “Wrath of War”. With a predecessor already in place, the staff of THQ had less to worry about in regards to story, which led to more time working on game mechanics.

For those of you who didn’t read the original article, click here– for those of you that did, I believe you will find this trailer to be quite the treat as it reveals not only completely new faces, but also the return of familiar ones.

The Story

While we know a little bit about the story, I believe that the THQ team has been holding a great deal of info from the fans. I mean, for gamers that played ‘Wrath of War’, I am sure many questions about what goes on between the prologue and the actual game are ripe in your minds. It is in mine. What happens to the humans? What is it like for Death to fight Heaven and Hell when the Apocalypse is still going strong? How did Sammael get imprisoned? When did the Destroyer start running the show?

While I am sure some gamers went through the first game without giving these subtle story details any thought, I am just as sure that many gamers are as curious as I am about the circumstances that made the world what it was in War’s mission.

In the new trailer we see Sammael and Uriel for brief moments, leading us to believe that they do in fact make appearances, which presents the potential of closing holes in the story. We even catch a glimpse of War in the trailers, or at least a specter of him, similar to the shadow War that gamers fight in Eden in the first game.

With the lore already stated for the game, developers had more time to work on the ‘here and now’ aspect of the game’s story, which gives it a more in depth feel, while also satisfying the over all arch.

Game Mechanics

I know that in my previous article I touched on the looting and leveling tree aspects of the game, however there is one aspect that I failed to cover, and that is with specifics to the looting system and weapons. If you watch the trailer below you will see that players gain access to what is known as a possessed weapon.

The inclusion of the possessed weapon feature reminds me of the atrocious game ‘Two Worlds‘ -which had an even worse sequel- which allowed for a similar weapon stacking feature, allowing for a weapon to grow more powerful when fed ‘lesser’ or ‘equal’ weapons. I believe the inclusion of this feature will give Darksiders II an edge in regards to gameplay originality, and allow for the idea of weapon stacking to go further. This, along with the loot system, and skill tree makes me down right giddy to get my hands on the sequel of War’s adventure and test it out. Will these new features help or hinder the game? We can only wait and see.

Anyway, while this trailer teases us, we get a full taste of the main course in less than a month. Are you ready for it?\

Check out Gamerant’s Article on the trailer and screenshots here: http://gamerant.com/darksiders-2-trailer-screenshots-death-brian-160826/

____________________________________

I hope that you enjoyed this article; feel free to leave comments of your thoughts below and remember to like the post, follow the blog and our twitter (@TheNerdNexus) for further updates.

Darksiders II: Death Lives- Better than the First

That which starts with War ends with Death.

“The End of the World Began with a Lie”

What came before: Synopsis

First came War, on his mighty red stallion; with him came the final conflict, Armageddon, when Heaven and Hell fought on the Earthly plain. However, War came too early (that’s totally what she said), and mankind, the third species who was to participate in the battle when they came to full strength, perished from his folly. As a result of his insolence and presumed treachery, War was sentenced to imprisonment by the Charred Council, a group which maintained the balance between the Kingdom of Heaven, the dominion of Hell, and the realm of Earth.

This was the introduction to Darksiders: Wrath of War, the first game of the series. The game allows you to play as War, who is on a path to redeem himself and find the perpetrators of his act of misjudgement. However between War’s imprisonment and the events of Darksiders I, there lies 100 years of mystery, where mankind perished and demons overran the Earth. Rather than being a sequel, Darksiders II is a prequel of sorts, occurring between War’s imprisonment and the events of Darksiders I. Rather than playing as War, gamers are now given the privilege of controlling the oldest and most powerful of the Four Horsemen, Death.

In Darksiders II Death is attempting to save humanity from the destruction brought by Armageddon, while also redeeming his brother, War. However upon this path, Death discovers that there was something far worse than Armageddon occurring, and an ancient enemy threatened to overwhelm all three races.

Analysis- Is this a God of War Rip off?

In general, it sounds like a pretty interesting concept, but we all know that cool concepts can still be turned into a crappy game. Some people are skeptical as to the value of the Darksiders series. This is due to numerous misconceptions that have popped up around the gaming community, particularly slander coming from PS3 loyalists who claim that the game is a rip off of God of War with worse graphics. As a player of both of these games, and a user of both systems, I would like to think of myself as neutral on the subject, so here is my opinion (which I assume you want, as you are reading my blog and not IGN or something along those lines)

While Darksiders and God of War have many similarities in regards to the playing style and its use of ancient religious lore, Darksiders is not a carbon copy of the Playstation franchise; at least not entirely. While God of War focuses highly on the pre-existing historical/mythological details of ancient Greece, Darksiders lore is mostly original in its content. While there are numerous references to judeo-christian mythology, especially in character names(Abbadon, Sammael & the Four Horsemen), these characters are a far cry from their real world mythological inspirations. Even the four horsemen are unique in their own sense.

While Death and War are based upon real horsemen from the book of Revalations, their fellow horsemen Strife and Fury are original characters. Along with this, the very nature of the horsemen are unique. They are the few remaining members of the ancient race known as Niphilim (the name is based on Christian lore, as the Niphilim are children of angels and humans).

Analysis- The Character

Darksiders: Wrath of War was a pretty decent game, though it was far from original in any aspects except its story, yet even that can be related to tons of game stories in some way or another. As War, players acted as a generic tank character, cleaving through hordes of demons with an iconic-albiet cliched- super huge sword (Chaos Eater). War was fun to play with, especially once you unlocked the fancy new toys that the game offered to you. Even so, the game got old rather fast as it was a repetitive cycle of hacking, slashing, jumping and dashing.

Developers are promising a different kind of game with Darksiders II. Where War was a tank who bulldozed through everything with his brutal unrefined force, Death is a more agile, sleek, refined fighter. With Death, angry fan boys lose a lot of the claims that they have to Darksiders being a carbon copy of God of War. While War could easily be paralleled with Kratos, Death is an entirely different character with his own unique playing style and story, which makes him wholly unique.

Analysis- Game mechanics

Along with this change of character, Darksiders II has implemented various changes to the game-style. While in the first game, things were fairly linear (beat a level, get a cool weapon/power but no leveling up), the sequel implements new systems such as a looting system,  an inventory with interchangeable items (armor, robes, etc) and even a leveling system.

The path that developers took with this sequel is oddly reminiscent in the method which Assassin’s Creed used to bolster it’s franchise. While it kept interesting elements that attracted fans, it also rebooted many things and implemented features to allow for smoother game play. Darksiders II even implements a radial wheel for weapons and powers, similar to the wheel that Assassin’s Creed implemented (I am not saying they stole this extremely common inventory display, I am merely noting similarities in sequel alterations).

Conclusion and Ending Remarks

While the staff from Darksiders made a great deal of improvements to the game mechanics and stories, I still can’t help but be less than impressed with the graphics of the game. While the graphics are not horrible, I know that they could be so much better. Perhaps the development team thinks that the game looks nice in it’s cartoon like appearance, yet I am sure many fans can agree that if they gave Darksiders the graphics of games such as Grand Theft Auto IV or Skyrim, it would look SO MUCH SEXIER!…I am getting a chubby just thinking about it.

Anyway, we can’t get everything that we want, especially in the first sequel of a franchise, but Darksiders II looks like it has the potential to being a great sequel that will build the game into an even stronger franchise. Be on the look out for Darksiders II: Death Lives, which hits the shelves on August 16th.

(Sorry for the commercial, but the trailer is pretty epic so it’s worth a short wait)

____________________________________

I hope that you enjoyed this article; feel free to leave comments of your thoughts below and remember to like the post, follow the blog and our twitter (@TheNerdNexus) for further updates.

Check out a second article here: Darksiders II (Update)