Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition

The Short


Pros
- One of the first Real Time Strategy games, and paved the way for an entire genre
- Host of missions, maps, and units
- Two playable races with (some) unique abilities
- 3D movies to play between scenarios
- Full voice acting, including all the units
- Fight on water, air, and land
- Cartoonish, pixelated graphics still look good to this day
- Fantastic music, both the DOS version and the revamped Battle.net edition
- Solidified what would later become one of the most popular game universes ever

Cons
- Race differences are mostly cosmetic, with a few slight changes in spells and abilities but not much else
- Could only select a limited number of units at a time. On the DOS version you couldn't assign hotkey groups
- Siege units friendly fired more often than not
- Some later levels had balance issues
- Expansion opened up a lot of mythology but its overarching story was dull
- That aforementioned voice acting is so bad it's actually sort of good

Before Starcraft, there was Warcraft.

The Long

[Note: this is a review of Warcraft II: Battle.net edition, the re-vamped rerelease that has the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal and enhanced music and online play. I have played both this and the old DOS versions, though, but consider the differences so negligible it doesn't merit twin reviews]

Warcraft II has another (vaguely) interesting story behind it. I was actually given this game as a birthday gift from a friend when I was eleven, and my parents wouldn't even let me open the box. They deemed it "too violent" and made me give it back, and I ended up getting Age of Empires and I think Heroes of Might and Magic II instead. Anyway, in order to play this game as a child I had to sneak over to my friend's house and play it on his computer, which I did quite a bit. So even now, as an adult, I get a sort of weird, guilty feeling when I play it on my own computer, like I'm doing something wrong.

So I booted it up again for this review, the last time I had played it around 2007, and you know what? This game holds up pretty good. It still has a lot of flaws, but unlike some other games of this era, Warcraft II has withstood the test of time and can still provide a fun, if at time frustrating, RTS experience.

On with the review! And keep in mind that, like with all my retro reviews, I'm reviewing the game as I experience it now, not as I experienced it then, but still with a hearty amount of rose-tinted glasses going on.

Building a mighty orc/troll/ogre army

Warcraft II set a framework that will be very familiar to anyone who has played RTS games in recent years. You start with a main hall and a batch of peons or peasants, which you send off to harvest wood or mine gold. You then uses these resources to build more buildings, which in turn build military units and unlock further structures. You have to manage your workers, your military, and your buildings in order to murder everybody else off the face of the earth.

Something worth noting about the single player is the mission variety: there is a lot of different types of missions. Whether it's rescuing captured units and taking them back safe, racing to harvest a set number of resources, raiding a camp and claiming it as your own, or delivering a captain to a certain location; Warcraft II kept the variety up. Which is worth noting, as some games that are released now don't do as good a job with mission variety as Warcraft II did. But it also did well at keeping these different objections tied into the core gameplay: You'll still be building a base and micromanaging units. Good stuff.

The story is presented by read-text between missions (for the orcs, that voice that reads it is the best voice ever and can make anything you read hilarious if you use it) and a few cutscenes. There is no story stuff presented in missions, at least not dialogue or text. You can play as either humans or orcs, and whichever you choose changes both the missions you play as well as the ending outcome dramatically. I suppose the "canon" ending is the humans winning, but the orc ending was way better anyway.

To battle!

The graphics and voice acting are top notch, and you can see from the screenshots that even though this is obviously an old game, the vivid art design sticks out. I still think this game looks really good, with the pixelated units and animations awesome, and the buildings still having a great deal of detail. The environments also look pretty good, too. The voice acting, while goofy for the story bits, is also charming for the units. Each unit has their own voice (standard now, not so much then) and it started the whole Blizzard "click on a unit a lot of times and they say funny things" fad.

The music is amazing. I think most games around the early era of RTS (Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Starcraft, C&C: Red Alert, C&C: Tiberian Sun) had some really killer soundtracks. That's sort of gone away since then, with it just being generic background noise, which is too bad. One of my biggest disappointments with booting up Warcraft III was the fact that the totally kicking Human theme wasn't there anymore. It was so good. 

Seriously, this song was a big part of my childhood. So good. Also, it's the re-vamped version; the original was the same but more "midi" sounding

The game did have its flaws though, ones that are only more noticeable now that the genre has evolved (though not by much, which shows you a lot about how much Warcraft II pioneered). You could only select nine units at a time, and since you'd often use more than that it could be a major pain. In the original DOS version you couldn't even assign them a number hotkey, which was extremely obnoxious, but they fixed that in the Battle.net edition. Pathfinding for units (how they determined to go where you ordered) was pretty dang awful, with them frequently getting stuck on stuff. There was no unit building queue (that was invented in Starcraft) so you could only have one unit being built at a time, or one tech researched at a time. Any units that did splash damage also did friendly fire, meaning if you built a squad of dragons they'd love to blow each other up. 

The two races weren't particularly unique, either, especially on a basic level. Up until you get to Paladins/Ogre Magi, you are essentially fighting with the exact same units. Sure, the trolls and elves have a different "unique" upgrade, but it isn't nearly enough to make a difference. Aside from Paladins and Ogre Magi having healing vs bloodlust (protip: bloodlust is WAY better) and the Magi and Death Knights having maybe two different spells from each other (blizzard and death and decay are the exact same spell), there wasn't any real differentiation between the two groups besides aesthetics. I understand this maybe helped with balancing, but it still is a bit lame. Again, this was the norm at the time (and was also completely changed when Command and Conquer and Starcraft rolled around) but is still annoying.

Things could get bloody. Which is why my mom didn't let me keep the game. 

Despite a few issues (the nine unit control limit being the biggest issue in this day and age), this game still holds up really well. Taking the battle to both land, air, and sea (and introducing the third resource oil, only to have the whole third resource thing totally axed from all future Blizzard RTS titles) provided different, unique fronts to wage war (they took water out of Warcraft III! What the heck?). The game is still both a lot of fun and quite difficult, with creating the ideal army and then micromanaging the hell out of them both strenuous and exciting. To this day, I'd say it's worth playing.

The Battle.net edition of the game is exactly the same except it has slightly up-rezed graphics, an improved musical score (less DOS sounding, more Windows sounding), works on Windows 95 and future machines, and had online matchmaking through Battle.net. That being said, nobody is playing this game competitively anymore, but if you have some friends on a LAN you could get them all together for some awesome, ogre vs knight stomping fun. 

One of the best openings of any game. That VO is so...bad. But the music kicks butt!

I was actually worried going into this, because I was afraid Warcraft II would suck after all these years (and the dramatic shift the universe has taken with World of Warcraft) and I'd have to give it a bad score. But I was pleasantly surprised: Warcraft II is still an extremely solid and very fun RTS. Even without online competitive multiplayer (which is the biggest draw for this genre these days), the massive single player with its fun missions more than makes up for it. Whether you've played this game years ago or never delved into the world of Azeroth, Warcraft II is worth picking up and giving a spin.

You'll probably have to shell out $15-$20 for the Battle.net Edition, which is certainly worth it. I don't think you can buy it off Blizzard's store anymore, which sucks. But it's certainly worth the purchase (and it makes me glad my disc copy still works). 

Overall? Four out of five stars. Even after all these years, Warcraft II is still a fantastic game. 

Alone in the Dark

The Short


Pros
- Has the best, most realistic fire effects I have ever seen in a game
- Soundtrack is pretty good
- Graphics look decent
- Filled with gobs of great original ideas

Cons
- Most of those original ideas are executed on a range from "poor" to "abominable"
- Controls are clunky, muddled, and a mess
- Tries to combine genres (open world, driving, horror, third-person combat) with horrid results
- Has almost no ties whatsoever with the previous Alone in the Dark games
- Speaking of which, since you spend most of this game a. In a lighted area and b. With some girl, you are neither "Alone" nor "in the Dark" for 90% of this game
- Gratuitous swearing doesn't make your game "edgy" or "mature," it makes it just gratuitous
- Final "fetch quest" that then becomes a longer final "fetch quest" might be the worst ending sequence in the history of modern games

The fire in this game is literally the best part about it

The Long

This may sound like I'm a horrible judge of character, but I was really looking forward to Alone in the Dark. The developmental stuff they showed portrayed it as a better Resident Evil 4 with an insane number of gameplay innovations. It had some great music, the graphics looked nice, and all their innovations were ones I thought would be cool. It actually reminded me a lot of how I felt about Dead Space, where they touted a bunch of new, crazy features (like the integrated hud in Dead Space) and I got super pumped and actually watched developer diaries which I never do because that crap's boring.

Well, Dead Space ended up awesome, and Alone in the Dark ended up garbage. I guess it's the universal law of balance: one had to suck for the other to be good. 

The first sign that this game was going to be crap was it's obvious attempt to make it "hardcore" and "edgy" by adding a bunch of pointless f-bombs. Again, I'm fine with swearing in my media if it serves a point, or at least fits a character (aka Kaine from Nier). Alone in the Dark is clearly just doing it to prove that "This ain't your grandma's Alone in the Dark, with its Lovecraftian horrors and actual scares." Combined with a butt-stupid plot about demons and a prophecy and the end of the world (yawn), a horrid script and bad voice acting, and hey...recipe to suck. 

The inventory was one of those cool things I was looking forward too. Sigh...

The second big tipoff was the fact that it controls horribly. Now, Resident Evil 4's Leon isn't exactly super nimble (at least not in cutscenes), but you could tell his design was deliberate and the game was created around the limitations the game presented. Alone in the Dark just controls bad. The camera is especially awful, with a weird shift between first and third person that I swear makes no sense, bad aiming, and just...it's bad, ok?

And then you have the inventory system, which really makes me sad this failed. Basically they wanted to pull a Dead Space and have most of the game actually integrated without need of a ton of hud. So when you go to your items, Edward (your PC) pops open his coat like a flasher and you get to look down at what you are carrying. You can then mix these items (in a sort of makeshift crafting system) and experiment to improve your bullets, make molotovs, and more. In theory, this is a really sweet idea. It's often an unexplained mystery as to how video game characters hold all that garbage they pick up, and this was a cool feature. Unfortunately, there are two problems. 1. The game doesn't pause when you do this, meaning you are looking down your shirt and then all the zombies can bite your face off and 2. "Realistic" inventory system means you can't hold enough to sufficiently fight back. I could see this working if they ramped up the "survival" in the "survival horror" aspect of the game, cutting back the enemies (and making the fights more dangerous) and forcing you to rely on using very little to go a long way, but they don't. It just sucks, which really makes me sad.

Alan Wake also had DVD menus. Except that game was a lot better than this one. 

Another cool idea they had was with injuries. Similar to the "coat inventory," they wanted the way the game showed you that you were hurt to be as realistic as possible, so you actually see cuts forming on your character's body and then have to manually apply bandages, sprays, etc. to them. Far Cry 2 sort of did something like this, and I wish more games did, but in this game the fact that 1. You don't have enough inventory space and 2. The game doesn't pause when you heal rears its ugly head again. As a bonus, the wounds look more like textures pasted on, like temporary tattoos or iron-on stickers, so it isn't believable.

Something that does work as advertised is fire. For a game about being in the dark, there is a lot of fire in this game, and the only way to kill zombies is to blast them in their "fissures" (aka "weak spots") with a fire-based weapon. You can also just burn crap down, which is more fun than the actual game. The fire crawls and licks up walls, spreading and leaving scorched, burned wood behind in a realistic manner. It's really good looking and reacts like real fire does (instead of just sort of sitting there until triggered by a planned event, like most fire in games). It's just too bad they don't really do anything with this fire other than make it look pretty. Again, a real "survival" horror game where you had to escape from a real-time burning building would be awesome, but even the one time this happens in the game seems overscripted and overplanned. Boo.

The graphics aren't bad, but forcing you to switch from third person to first to shoot is a horrible design choice.

These little shines of good ideas (which are squashed by bad execution) are then completely destroyed by the game it's put in. Mandatory driving sections look cool, but after doing the first one something like 8-9 times on hard, dying over and over because the controls are awful and one mess up kills you, I was ready to throw my controller out the window. Requiring you to go from third person to first person for aim is also an awful, cumbersome system. The fact you have to use fire to kill your enemies is neat, until you have to go through the stupid inventory system in order to make "fire bullets" to finish them off.

Tacked on the worst ending sequence in any game ever and a horrid ending to the story, and you have an overal abysmal experience. The ending sequence is especially awful: the game forces you to go back all over the park you've been journeying to burn a bunch of evil tree things, then after you finish it's like "Good job! Here's like fifteen more!" You know what? Screw you game. 

Yep, your game sucks. Don't look so surprised. 

Alone in the Dark had potential, but it falters on every step. Even its good ideas are ruined by total design incompetence, putting this game squarely in the "garbage" category. I can't suggest a purchase at any price, even the "enhanced" Alone in the Dark Inferno edition on the PS3. 

Still, the fire is nice. Have a pity one out of five stars, Alone in the Dark. Maybe somebody will take your ideas and make a better game out of it.

Dark Sector

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, bloody third person shooting
- Glaive throwing is fun and violent
- Uses glaive with environmental elements for puzzles, attacks, etc.
- Melee and glaive-play is fun
- Graphics still look decent, if a bit dark
- A good way to relieve stress and kill time

Cons
- Repetitive
- Apes a bit much from Gears of War without doing much original
- Story is stuuuuupid
- Game can be really glitchy and have unfair deaths
- Final boss is a massive pain in the butt
- Level bosses are also pains

Gears of Sector

The Long

Dark Sector went through a lot of changes before becoming the game we have today. Announced waaaaay before Next-Gen consoles came out, it was originally slated as a sci-fi stealth game. But something happened between then and when Dark Sector came out, and that something was Gears of War. 

The game saw a radical shift in tone, style, and generally everything (though the "liquid metal" sci-fi look stayed the same) resulting in a game that is, well, Gears of War with a glaive. And while this isn't bad, it certainly is less unique among the billions of third-person shooters that popped up after Gears of War came out, while had it remained a stealthy space game (with a liquid metal glaive) it might have been a more memorable experience.

This game still looks pretty good now, four years later

The story for this game is rocking stupid. Hayden is a whiny emo-boy who somehow got put into the secret forces, and is sent on a stealth mission (which might have carried over from the original design) to mess up some terrorists with an eco-bomb or...something, I dunno. Anyway it infects him and turns his right arm into Liquid Terminator (essentially) and lets him spawn a big, nasty glaive that flies back towards him like a boomerang. Personally I think he got an awesome end of that deal, but Hayden just prefers to whine about everything.

So yeah, voice acting is awful, story is dumb, and is basically an excuse to "kill hella dudes," to quote Jeff from GiantBomb. Which I'm fine with; I started skipping the story segments near the end, so who knows: maybe there was some amazing plot twist in there that I skimmed over. But odds are not in Dark Sector's favor. 

Dismemberment is the order of the day

Since it's story is balls, Dark Sector has to rely completely on its gameplay, and it's actually...not awful. At it's core, this is Gears of War. You have the ability to slide into cover, vault over cover, blindfire, "roadie run," and perform melee finishers when close. Wait, that last one wasn't in Gears of War. That's fine; the finishers in Dark Sector are bloody, violent, and awesome. It's just too bad that (like any canned execution) there aren't more of them. 

The only real twist between this and Gears is that you have a GLAIVE, which the game actually uses pretty decently. You can just sort of "toss" it out there for a stun and minimum damage, you can chain it between people ala Zelda's boomerang, you can do a rad slow-mo camera view where you directly control it into a guy's arm/head/leg/whatever and show them what they get for trying to hide behind cover, or you can shoot it into a nearby flame/electricbox and add that element to its attack. The latter thing mentioned is also used for puzzles, such as charging the glaive to power doors, or put it in fire to burn enemies only weak to fire, etc. It can also pick up guns for you if I remember correctly (it's been a while since I played this game), but I only used guns like how I used them in The Darkness: if my magic demon powers (aka glaive) didn't reach them. 

Executions can be pretty grisly

That, in a nutshell, is Dark Sector. There are a few really great parts (slicing dudes up with the glaive, getting close executions, etc) but there are also some pretty awful parts. You fight some big beasties that are only weak to elements and are difficult to dodge. For some reason, stupid Hayden still moves like a tank (aka Gears) even though he's clearly slender and unarmored, which makes no freaking sense. The final boss is also obnoxious, and while the glaive is cool often it can bounced off stuff in weird ways or not do what you want it to, which is really annoying, especially considering I played through it on Hard and you die pretty quickly.

You also drive a vehicle because, you know, why not. 

Graphically, Dark Sector actually looks pretty decent. It has that whole "grainy brown and gray" that seems to permeate every single game to come out this generation (again, I think this is Gears of War's fault), and the enemies look a little plastic, but the character models and dismemberment/blood are quality, and since it runs on the Unreal Engine (like every freaking game this generation) it has texture bump-mapping and all that stuff that makes games look better. Again, for a four-year-old game, it is certainly not bad. They do love their motion blur, though.

Fire glaive will mess you up

As it stands, Dark Sector just sort of exists. It has a lot of neat ideas and moments, but it's wrapped in a shell that is just like every other game to come out around that era. It's glaive idea is a cool one, but it's restrained by the trappings of the cover based, third-person shooter genre, where if they'd just done their own thing it might have actually had an opportunity to grow into something really unique. Still, it's a pretty neat little game, and the fact it's $5 brand new at Gamestop (less used) makes it a complete steal at that price. It isn't going to blow you away or anything, but I enjoyed my time with it, and even writing this review has made me want to pick it back up again and do another round of glaive-induced dismemberment.

So as it stands, it would earn a three out of five. And at the price mentioned above, if you enjoy these kind of visceral, third-person cover-based shooters, you really should just pick it up. 

The Darkness

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, visceral experience with a mix of shooting with guns and using the titular Darkness
- Voice acting is fantastic throughout
- While script gets wonky at times, it is extremely solid
- One of the few games that knows when to slow down for its emotional scenes
- That being said, there are some genuinely heartbreaking scenes in this game
- "Open-world" with a variety of side missions, unlocks, and powers
- "Creeping Dark" is an awesome power
- Darkness/Light powers are unique and very cool
- Jackie is the first antihero that's actually an antihero: you are very sympathetic towards him despite him clearly being an awful person
- Really makes you feel like a badass

Cons
- Side-missions usually net you nothing but collectibles
- Parts of the story go from "awesome" to "weird" really quickly
- Of the four darkness powers, you'll only really use two (spike tentacle and creeping dark)
- You'll also almost never use Darklings, as they are essentially useless since you are an overpowered monster
- "Open world" really just means "you get to walk a lot on empty streets"
- Lots of dead time between your main objectives that seem to be just padding the length
- Graphics are decent but everything has that "shiny plastic" look of early high-def games

Fun fact: This game is M rated. Who would have thought?

The Long


The Darkness was a game that snuck out relatively unnoticed back in 2007 and didn't sell any copies until years later. Now considered a "cult classic," the game is based on a comic book regarding the life and times of mob-boss-in-training Jackie Estacado, an young italian who, on his 21st Birthday, inherits a supernatural, parasitic demonic badass known only as The Darkness. Which is great timing, considering it was just about this time that his jackass Uncle Paulie decided he wanted to off him, seeing as Jackie is next in line to be the big boss. What follows is a bloody adventure through both New York and (surprisingly) Purgatory as Jackie tries to both off his Uncle, discover the truth behind The Darkness, and rid himself of its corrupting, evil powers once and for all.

Of course, this isn't until after he's told The Darkness to brutally murder hundreds of people, but hey...you have to use what you've been given.

You get both guns and The Darkness. Uncle Paulie is totally screwed. 

The Darkness (the game, not the character/demon/whatever) is essentially a limited open-world game combined with some wild shooting sequences and an occasional drop to the linear Purgatory. Because it tries to blend so many genres, it falls short a bit by never doing any of these things excellently, but it is perfectly content on doing all of them well. Darkness powers are especially fantastic to use, especially when you unlock more of them, because they are both brutal, disgusting, violent, and awesome. Basically you have The Darkness with you at all times (except it's retracted when around civilians), and it absorbs power when you are in the dark, and burns away into nothing if you are in a light. Which means keeping an eye out and shooting up lights is an essential part of gameplay. It sounds annoying, but actually it works out pretty good, especially when the standard thugs flip out whenever you turn out a light and then impale them seven feet in the air with a massive tentacle of pure darkness. 

The Darkness (the power, not the game) is limited, however, to short distance attacks. You do get a bunch of oddities to your arsenal -  a black hole that takes all your power but makes a big portal that sucks dudes up, a pair of 'darkness guns' which are pretty much useless - but the only two I used were the impaling tentacle of doom thing and "Creeping Dark," which gives you the creepy perspective of a darkness head as it crawls about the ground, and you can sneak up on people and EAT THEIR HEARTS OUT OF THEIR CHESTS for an instant kill. Oh yeah, and how you gain power-up/level-up is by eating the hearts of enemies you've killed for some really nasty animations. Like I said: this game is M rated for a reason.

The Darkness (both game and character) is exceptionally well animated throughout.

The shooting is passable, with duel-wielding being the order of the day, though it isn't anything to write home about. Killing people with The Darkness power is much more satisfying (and easier), so I usually only used guns for shooting out lights or the occasional jerk who was too far away for me to rip his heart out from a distance.

The open-world elements are probably the worst bits of the game. Essentially The Darkness (the game, not the character) really wanted to have a bunch of side-quests but had no idea how to reward you if you finished them, seeing as the hearts of mortals is the only way your Darkness powers up. So instead it just gives you crappy unlockables like concept art, which was great until we developed the interent three decades before this game's release where you can get all that stuff with a simple Google search. The areas you go to, if you don't have a specific quest assigned there, are totally empty, bland, and not worth visiting. It's like everybody went inside and closed their doors because a big Jackie with demon arms popped out of the subway station. Who would have thought?

The point being is that The Darkness (the power, not the game) is a blast to play, the shooting is passable, the main story missions are captivating and fun but the side-missions and anything to do with the open world are boring. This is only accented by the fact that Jackie has no sprint button and likes to meander about at his own pace, so if you play this game ditch every side quest and just do the main stuff. Because the main stuff is really, really good. 

Plus The Darkness (the power, not the game) can lift cars and seriously mess stuff up. 

Here's something I bet you didn't expect: The Darkness (the game, not the power) has a really, really good story. Yeah, I know, right? We have this super-violent first person shooter seeped with bloody demonic executions and taking place in the seedy, mob underbelly of New York, and the story actually has a lot of heart to it? It's true!

The main "heart" of this story comes from Jenny, Jackie's girlfriend who he genuinely cares for. In many other games this would be a contrived, sappy, garbage romance but in The Darkness (again: game, not power) their relationship is handled...well, realistically. There is very few sappy quips or melodramatic lovey-dovy moments. There's even a part in the game (that has since been brought up by any fan of this game as an example of excellent in-game storytelling) where you simply sit on the couch with your arm around her (in first person still), watching To Kill a Mockingbird on TV as she slowly falls asleep. You can literally watch the entire movie with her if you feel like it. It's a quiet, tender moment that makes you wonder why the hell movies have been able to do this forever, but games are so scared to have any sort of emotional scene without bludgeoning you with how you should feel about it. What happens with regards to Jenny in the story only further push this whole thing into "heartbreaking" and "holy cow this is told really well" territory, and while the story itself really isn't that groundbreaking, it's the execution that really shines. 

Parts of the story get really weird, and without getting to spoilers I'll just say this: you spend about 2/3 of the game in New York, and 1/3 in Purgatory. As in, literal Purgatory. See, Jackie's story is about both needing The Darkness (the power, not the game) to fulfill his goals and not wanting it to corrupt him further. So he has to figure out how to get rid of it, and can only do that in Purgatory. It's a story based on a comic book series, ok? It's going to be a bit...out there.

The game doesn't look particularly great, but it's passable so whatever. 

Something that is great is the voice acting, which is fantastic throughout. You don't really notice good voice acting (unless it's paired with an equally great script, like Portal 2 or Nier), but the voice actors in The Darkness (the game not the...you know what? I think you are smart enough to figure it out) really pull no stops. The Darkness itself is voiced by Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More, and his growling voice and leering threats are executed flawlessly.

 It's also really cool how, during loading screens, Jackie monologues on screen about his life while smoking a cigarette or messing with a pistol. These little loading bits are actually really well written, and I just wish there had been more of them. They do change as you progress through the story, however, which is another amazing touch.

Graphically this game won't turn any heads, except maybe the extreme gore when The Darkness (you know which one) rips a heart out of some guy and eats it right in front of you. Everything looks a bit...heavy and plasticy, like most early Xbox 360 games did. It certainly isn't bad, it just lacks style. Luckily they seem to have fixed this in The Darkness II, which has more of a "graphic novel" look about it with its incredible cel-shading, but The Darkness still looks fine if a bit dated. 

Also, whoever did the cover art for The Darkness II should get a prize. That just looks...awesome. Some loyal reader should buy it for me so I can play and review it. :D

So...the final verdict? I really enjoyed my time with this game. The story, the voice acting, the great Darkness powers...all of it came together in a package that was a lot of fun. It does have some frustrating gunplay, especially at the beginning, and on Hard the game actually is...well...Hard, but despite the assortment of minor problems plaguing it, The Darkness is still a very solid game. Considering you can grab a copy for about $8 used from Gamestop, I'd really suggest picking up a copy if any part of this game has interested you. It's a fascinating anomaly in a world where most games prefer to just stick to their genre trappings, and it looks like its sequel is just as good.

Were I to give it a score rating, it would be a four out of five. 

Darksiders

The Short


Pros
- Successfully apes the Zelda formula in an adult setting
- Terrific art design and graphics
- Dungeons are clever and have unique puzzles, including one that uses an honest-to-god portal gun
- Wide assortment of weapons and side weapons that flow well in combat
- Loads of secrets to find (ala Zelda)
- Suitable story paired with some exceptional voice acting
- Ending is FREAKING AWESOME
- Killing angels and demons is visceral and fun
- Finishing moves don't require quick time events on regular enemies. I'm so glad we are finally killing that trend.
- Bosses are fantastic
- Incredible setpieces
- Your horse is awesome and can be summoned from anywhere
- If you grew up on Zelda, you'll probably love this game

Cons
- Combat is shallow. It gets a little deeper later, but restricting most attacks to one button was a mistake. It's still better than the last eight versions of the same Zelda game, though.
- The aforementioned portal gun dungeon is seriously the longest dungeon in human history
- That being said, there aren't very many dungeons
- End of the game turns into a fetch quest to go back and find stuff in order to "unlock" the final boss
- Story is decent but gets really convoluted
- Has a fairly weak first couple of hours (gauntlet challenges are never fun) that are only exacerbated by the mediocre starting combat
- Rips off Zelda with such precision you wonder if Vigil's design document was just a copy of Ocarina of Time
- Boxart is fugly. Who picked that color scheme? Urine yellow on gray? Ugh.

War and his absurdly massive sword have come to mess you up

The Long

Darksiders is another one of those games I've bought multiple times for some inexplicable reason. I bought it on release day on a whim because it looked like Zelda meets God of War (which it is), beat it twice (and got every achievement but two), and then traded it. I then really wanted to play it again about a year later so I bought it for $5 on OnLive for some inexplicable reason (I've since gotten over my OnLive love) and burned through 90% of the game again. Knowing how bad I am at restraining myself when it comes to games I love, odds are I'll pick it up again when it hits some Steam sale for $5 or less just so I can see how it looks with ultra graphics settings and max resolution, because I'm an idiot.

All that aside, Darksiders is a game that sort of came out of nowhere and was completely fantastic, if only because it copied a classic game's formula (read: Zelda) to a "t." However, digging a little deeper into Darksiders reveals a handful of significant changes to that formula - most of them for the better - which help Darksiders carve a unique niche despite it being less of a "homage" and more of a "dark photocopy."

But literally nobody rips off Zelda these days except the next Zelda game (THEY ARE ALL THE SAME GAME PEOPLE), so hey...we'll take it.

Can you tell this game was made by a comic book artist? Or maybe a toy designer?

Darksiders follows the story of War, one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, who goes down to earth to start Armageddon, the three-way battle between heaven, hell, and the world of man. To say this game follows the Bible's interpretation of the apocalypse would be overstating it by a long shot. It's clear that they took the general gist from the book of Revelations (which, to be fair, is pretty indecipherable anyway) and then wrote some comic-book style fanfiction. What else explains the fact that two of the horsemen are now "Strife" and "Fury," and one of them is a lady. I guess War in Pratchett and Gaiman's Good Omens was a lady, too, but at least they gave a reason to change Famine to Pollution; I have literally no idea why they swapped them out. Well, whatever, on with the story.

Basically War was confused or something because, despite the fact that angels and demons were battling it out on earth when he arrived, this wasn't the real apocalypse, and was somehow started either by accident or as a trick. So the Council (which I guess is God? Or...not?) who are sort of the overseers of all this strip War of his powers and send him back to earth to find out what the crap was going on. The catch is they send him back 100 years after the big war, so all the puny humans are now dead or zombies and it's just demons and angels down there.

Anyway, it's interesting enough and has some neat characters, but stuff really gets convoluted near the end, to the point where I was just nodding and shrugging and letting stuff resolve itself. After a third playthrough it kind of made more sense, but they really need to learn to stagger their reveals, or at least find some consistencies with their mythology to present to me before revealing a staggering "twist" that I literally do not understand.

Luckily every voice in the game is fantastic, with War (also Weiss from Nier) and the Watcher (Mark Hamill from...you know who he is) being standouts, but Samael the Demon and the Scottish titan/smith being exceptional as well. The script is also decent throughout, with the Smith and Samael getting the best lines, while War just sort of grunting and being a badass, which is too bad because Weiss is one of the wittiest and best-executed characters in gaming history.

I guess this lady is in the game too, but she's not particularly interesting. Or sane. 

So enough about the story, what about the game? Well, I can actually be pretty brief here and just say it's every 3D Legend of Zelda since Ocarina of Time, since all those games are the same. Your first sub-weapon is a boomerang that can attack multiple targets, though the fact that if you charge it the boomerang will hold enemies in place as it attacks them makes it infinitely more useful. You also get a hookshot which can be used to either swing around or yank enemies towards you, a gun (instead of a bow), and you use these items in the dungeons you find them to solve puzzles and then beat a boss. There are bomb-plants but you never get any actual bombs, you get big punchy-fists (aka hammers) that are used to smash up rocks, and you get a...portal gun? That shoots orange and blue portals? Come on, you people aren't even trying.

Despite ripping Zelda off in exactness, Darksiders actually works for two reasons. First, because the Zelda formula is a pretty decent one, which is why Nintendo hasn't bothered to change it since 1998. And second, because (unlike Nintendo), Darksiders makes enough changes to both the pacing of the game, combat, and world to essentially improve on this formula, the biggest changes being in combat. This is pretty much Zelda for people who grew up on Zelda but are now twenty-somethings, and would like a game that is more action-oriented and actually lets you jump.

There are lots of changes to the formula that improve it (jumping being a big one), though my personal favorite is the inclusion of platforming puzzles ala Prince of Persia or the Uncharted games. This adds a vertical element to the dungeons that doesn't exist in Zelda since you can only climb sometimes and only jump if you run off the side of a cliff. This makes the dungeons much more interactive and interesting than most Zelda dungeons, though I'll admit that Nintendo knows how to use their self-imposed limitations to make cleverer puzzles than Darksiders pulls out (probably because its the same limitations they invented on the N64!)

Plus you can mess up some robo-angels. 

Anyway, it's a pity there are only 4-5 dungeons in the game, though some of them are so long and have an open-worldy feel that I guess we could count them multiple times. The final dungeon in particular, where you get a portal gun, is stupidly long. While the idea of a portal gun in a Zelda game is actually pretty awesome (and they make some changes to the portal gun, like the ability to shoot portals through portals) and makes for some incredible puzzles, they drag it on for like three hours. Pacing, Darksiders! Learn it!

Come to think of it, pacing is actually a pretty big issue with the game. It starts out great: you fly down during the apocalypse, chucking cars at angels and demons and generally being a massive jerk to both sides. Then you are thrown back into the world all weak where little baby zombies are more your match, and after running around for a bit you have to do some "challenge rooms" for poorly explained "plot reasons." I think it's secretly a tutorial for their paper-thin combat system, but whatever; it slows the game down. Once you finally get to the first dungeon the game picks up, only to be slammed back into low-gear at the end where it tasks you with running back across the world to pick up pieces of a final weapon. Why would you do this? Urgh. 

Suffer not an ugly beastie to live. 

As for the combat, it's better than Zelda, which peaked in the incredible Wind Waker and then forgot all the awesome things it had (counters, fast combat, dodges, enemy weapons) and got dumbed down again, but I guess Wind Waker had the problem where they gave you all these new moves and kept the enemies weak as balls so...anyway, enough of me bagging on Zelda (I swear I still love the games despite my naysaying). Darksiders feels like a dumbed down God of War or Devil May Cry, the "dumbing" being that it only uses one button through most of the game. It sort of works once you finally get some combos that you have to buy from the store, but it suffers from that Viking: Battle for Asgard syndrome of locking all the fun combat early on in an attempt at "progression." The one-button combat can be accented by equipping a second primary weapon (to the "Y" button vs the "X" button), as well as your sidearm (boomerang, gun, etc.) but none of these weapons combo into each other. Still, given the ability to dodge and the difficulty of the enemies, once you adapt to the somewhat clunky combat it becomes quite fun, and adding more moves helps tremendously.

This is an "M" rated game, FYI. 

Graphically the game looks fantastic, with a unique, flavorful art design very reminiscent of comic books or those Warhammer toys. While I'll admit it's all sort of a big goofy - with ugly demons wearing skulls on everything and metallic, gleaming angles - it all fits a unique theme that you'll either totally love or think is just passable. The architecture of the world is especially grandiose, making the majority of locations pretty to look at (with the exception of a few "post-apocalyptic" streets, which fortunately there are very few of) and being quite colorful and, again, fitting that comic-book theme.

I like the look of War particularly, even though his sword is stupidly massive and his hands (or whole body, for that matter) are way bigger than his tiny head. I will say the overuse of skulls all over the place makes the game less "hardcore" and more "goofy." Again, this is M rated Zelda, I get that, but having you collect "skull pieces" instead of "heart pieces" to increase your overall "skulls" is more akin to what a 12-year-old Hot Topic shopper defines as "cool" than actually being "adult."

War ain't afraid of no demons

Despite all my complaints I really loved the crap out of Darksiders, as evidenced by my stupid multiple purchasing decisions. While not exactly the evolution of the Zelda formula one would hope for, it makes excellent strides in the right direction, and provides a fun and violent experience that is mostly familiar with a dash of freshness. Here's hoping the upcoming sequel, Darksiders II, evolves further and presents more new ideas to solidify this series as a true Zelda competitor. 

You can get the game for $20 on the high end, which is absolutely worth it. It's also on every system known to man (except the Wii), so you really have no excuse to not buy it. If you had any sort of fondness for Zelda you'll at least glean a marginal amount of satisfaction from the game, or you could be like me and love it silly.

It's a solid four out of five game, and one of my favorites this console generation. Bring on Darksiders II. 

Dance Central 2

The Short


Pros
- Keeps the same precise detection from the first game and makes it better
- Now you can dance with two players!
- Adds voice control/options from the menu
- A new career mode
- Gives you the option to remove that silly "freestyle" option
- Over 40 songs on disc, can import the 32 from Dance Central, and plays all DLC
- Improved Break it Down mode fixes the minor issues from the first version
- New characters and locales
- Difficulty levels are improved; easy is a lot funner and has more variation, while hard isn't just the same as previous difficulties with a few extra moves pasted in
- Changes to the scoring system are an improvement
- Improved sorting options for your song list, and you can now make playlists
- The things the dancers say are substantially less stupid

Cons
- Cut the Lady Gaga wanna-be character. She was my favorite! Well, besides Mo.
- Despite the things said being less stupid, they still are pretty dumb
- Career mode is welcome but hardly necessary or in-depth
- Justin Bieber? Whip My Hair? Why?
- Nothing is fundamentally different from the first Dance Central (except two player play)

Dance Central's back. And it brought friends. 

The Long

An easy review of this game could be this: Dance Central 2 is to Dance Central like Rock Band 2 was to Rock Band. Is there anything substantially different with the core mechanics between Dance Central 2 and the first game? No. Does it revolutionize anything the way the first game did? Not really. But Dance Central 2 takes many, many steps in the right direction, improving the already impressive framework established by Dance Central, and in so doing making what it easily the best game on the Kinect to date.

Graphically, not much has changed between games. I think the animations for the dancers are a bit smoother and easier to follow, the locals are better-looking and actually rotate between various versions of a scene (for example, you'll dance in a subway station, then on the subway, etc. during the same song). They axed a few dancers and put some new ones in, but as a whole the game still looks fantastic. They did make the character's outfits look a little less like plastic, which is appreciated. 

Angel's new sailor outfit makes him look like he'd be the entertainment at a bachelorette party. 

So instead of harping on what's stayed the same (since that's silly; read my Dance Central review for the fundamental mechanics of the series), I'm going to focus on the changes. And the first one is a big one and probably the main reason to pick this game up over the first game: two players. 

Yeah, this was kind of a big oversight in the first game, one I think I remember them saying they cut in some interview because of the pressure to release the game as a launch title. Well, they've made good and now you can dance two player, and as a bonus you can each dance on different difficulties. Let me just say: this doesn't sound like a big deal on paper, but it is huge. Remember the difference between Guitar Hero 1 and Guitar Hero 2? How they added the ability to play two-player in that? It went from being a game you played by yourself to a crazy party game (which was then doubled again when Rock Band added two more players to the mix). Adding another player to Dance Central 2 does this for this game as well, making the game more approachable for those shy friends ("You can just dance with me! It won't be as weird!") as well as just being more fun. 

Some new characters like Bodie (left) are surprisingly not obnoxious

The improvements in Break it Down mode are also worth noting. While it's still only a single player affair, you now have the option to skip moves you already have down (either because you've mastered them in this song or in another song), record yourself doing the move and watch it next to the actual performer to see where you are going wrong, work on just a specific section, and more. Considering the only way you'll get good at the hardest songs in the game is by breaking the moves down into pieces, this improvement is much appreciated.

Speaking of moves and difficulty, Dance Central 2 is much better than the first game with regards to picking moves for you to dance to. Similar to how Rock Band 2 had better musical charting when compared to Rock Band, Dance Central 2 adds tons of new moves. In the first game it was common to see a few moves crossing multiple songs, especially on Easy (where you basically just repeat the same 3-4 moves over and over. Boring!). In Dance Central 2 each routine is very unique, with very little crossover. This is both good because it adds variety, and bad because you'll have to learn a lot of new moves (which makes jumping between songs a little harder). Easy mode is also much better, with less repetition and instead mixing up handfuls of easier techniques. Hard difficulties before seemed like they took the framework in Easy and just swapped out harder moves in certain sections, but the dance was the same overall. Not so in Dance Central 2: Hard on most dances is a completely different beast. It's a little thing (I honestly don't think any other review online points this out) but it shows they put more time into figuring the moves out this time around.

It still goes all "neon" when the both of you hit a 4x multiplier. If just one of you has it, the associated player's avatar's hands will glow instead, which is a nice touch. 

There is also a career mode, though it seems...tacked on. Basically all the dancers in the game are paired up and put into "groups" (or "gangs," I guess), each with their own musical preference. As you can guess, Mo (aka the best character from the first game) has the best taste, with all the Daft Punk and techno/electric stuff, but the rest of the dances are good too. Baby's Got Back is just as raunchy and awful as it has always been, and the inclusion of Justin Bieber and Whip My Hair is really questionable. Luckily it makes up for it with more Lady Gaga (yeah...I think she's ok. Got a problem? Her dances are the best in the game, too) and a variety of other songs, so I guess it's forgivable. At any rate, career mode is just playing through a set number of songs to collect stars, then dancing a "boss" dance. Aka it's the same setup that we had back in Guitar Hero 1. We asked for a career mode, and they dropped back to the oldest setup in music games. Way to go, Harmonix. Do I have to wait for Dance Central 3 for you to add challenges and perfect the system like you did with Rock Band 3? Seems that way.

As stated, you have a good assortment of songs, made better by the fact you can export your entire Dance Central library into the game, as well as all your DLC. The DLC goes on sale constantly (I think we own all of the Dance Central 1 DLC, and got it all for around $30 total) so if you are aching for more songs this game has you covered. It's not as crazy as Rock Band's 3,000 song library, but it's still more songs than I'd ever want. 

The inclusion of kid dancers is weird, though. Mo, why you hanging out with that twerp? Almost everybody else at least got a lady partner. 

Everything else plays perfectly. The menues are still slick and very easy to navigate. The game's detection has actually improved between games (it was great before, but it seems even better now), which is good because the first game could never detect me right when I did moves that required me to walk around in a circle. It also seems to be more pickier on the harder difficulties vs the easier ones, which might just be my imagination but either way, I like it. There are some genuinely crazy dances in this game (though Teach Me How To Jerk from the first game is still the hardest damn song in the game...and Rihanna's Disturbia) and they cover a massive range of dance music (I'm really glad to see Daft Punk in here, and I hope they add more as DLC), so just about anybody will find something they like. The changes are subtle but really improve the experience, making this a game that, if you own a Kinect, you really have no excuse not to own. 

This is one of three game we bought last year on release date for the full $50 (though now that I think about it it was off Amazon...and it might have been $45...and I think they gave us a $10 Amazon credit...and $10 in MS points to export our songs from Dance Central...I love you, Amazon), but it fluctuates in price really weird. It was $15 on black friday along with Kinect Sports: Season 2, which is a freaking steal. If you liked the first game, grab this game at whatever price you find it at (it's $40 on Amazon right now). If you played the demo but are skeptical, I'd say $30-40 is still a safe point to test it out. It seriously is the very, very best reason to own a Kinect right now, and it's a total blast to boot.

A very deserving five out of five stars, should I be inclined to score it with stars. Keep making 'em like this, Harmonix, and hopefully other developers will stop making garbage Kinect games and follow your lead instead. 

Week in Review for 2/5/2012 - "Dark" Week

Welcome back to week in review! It was a double dose of trends this week: I reviewed both every Rock Band game as well as every Kinect game I own except one (Dance Central 2; expect that shortly), meaning retro games got put into the backburner. Fear not, for I have more magical old-school for you reviews coming up soon. Maybe I'll even do a full week of them sometime! Who knows.
So I tackled 15 games this week, throwing the total up to 48. Not too bad. Considering I probably have hundreds to go, I suppose I should pick up the pace. But hey, this isn't that bad considering I'm currently also writing a novella, editing a novel, going to work, and doing an internship. So yeah, busy busy.

My thoughts for this week: comparing review scores. Here's something I want to point out with my reviews: while the star scores are helpful, they aren't the "end all" for these games. I also rate games based both on the experience, what system they are on, and generally if I feel they are worth looking into. For example, I gave Kinect Sports a four out of five, but also gave Persona 3: FES a four out of five. Do I think these are the same quality of games, since I gave them the same star rating? No way (Persona 3: FES is better), but given my experiences with these games, I'd say both were worth purchasing if you have the systems for them. I figure out scores when I finish writing out my thoughts; I rarely go into reviews with pre-conceived stars decided. So if, in my mind, the text I wrote indicates this is a four out of five star game...I give it to it. I also judge games differently based on what they are and what they are trying to do. Kinect Sports wanted to create a fun Kinect experience that worked, and for the most part it pulled it off. Persona 3: FES wanted to create a fusion of dating, pokemon, and JRPG grinding and for the most part, it pulled it off. One could argue Persona 3 is being judged on a more severe scale than Kinect Sports, but it's more of just a different scale. So keep that in mind if you are just looking over the stars; the text is all there for a reason.

That being said, here's this week's reviews.


Rock Band 2 - 5 / 5 Stars
Lego Rock Band - 2 / 5 Stars
The Beatles: Rock Band - 5 / 5 Stars
Green Day: Rock Band - 4 / 5 Stars
Rock Band 3 - 5 / 5 Stars
Terminator Salvation - 1 / 5 Stars
Ninja Blade - 2 / 5 Stars
Warhammer 40k: Kill Team - 3 / 5 Stars
Kinect Adventures - 2 / 5 Stars
The Gunstringer - 4 / 5 Stars
Dance Central - 4 / 5 Stars
Child of Eden - 3 / 5 Stars
YourShape: Fitness Evolved - 3 / 5 Stars
Kinect Sports - 4 / 5 Stars
Kinect Sports: Season 2 - 2 / 5 Stars

See you all next week!