- [Daemon] We haven't seen many pure action games like
Darksiders III in the past decade or so.
It's not as visually impressive as other recent games.
And it's designed philosophy doesn't coddle you.
It's a third person action gave that isn't afraid to
grind your progress to a halt for an hour or more,
until you figure out hot to beat a seemingly
impossible boss.
But the combat is satisfying, and, you know,
maybe not every game seems to be a giant open world
with a million things to collect, and a never ending
supply of side quests.
(techno music)
Your appreciation of the characters and stakes
of this roughly twenty hour story will get a boost
if you've played at least the first Darksiders.
Each game puts you in control of a different
horseman of the apocalypse in a unique
and interesting setting.
A ravished earth world war between angels and demons,
has pretty much left humans extinct.
Your horseman this time around is Fury, but her debut
isn't especially memorable.
Her cheesy dialogue and bland voice acting, don't do much to
punch up paint by numbers task of hunting down and battling
the seven deadly sins.
(female character roaring)
- [Narrator] As for the graphics, while there have been
games this year that have really stunned me
with their beauty. Darksiders III, is not one of them.
The stylized cartoonish characters are plopped into
a pretty generic looking world that lacks detail.
It's in the hacking and slashing that
Darksiders III really excels. This is no mindless beatama.
Every enemy needs to be studied, until you have written
a compendium in your mind of all of the various beasts
and their subtle tails and attach patterns.
Putting in the effort and dominating your enemy
is the most satisfying part.
Fury's ever expanding arsenal includes lots of fun toys,
and it's up to you to decide which ones to power up
and rely most on .
In my case, that was the chains of scorn
because they set my enemies on fire.
Along with her weapons Fury gains new movement powers
they give her access to areas.
Once you've unlocked them all, it's fun to switch between
all her different forms to find the right tools
for the various combat jobs and obstacles.
One annoying thing is that no matter how powerful
Fury becomes, basic enemies could still kill her
with just a few hits at any point.
Level scaling is not a design choice I appreciate.
It's much better to feel like an all powerful god,
after putting in all that time and effort.
(techno music)
- [Narrator] The bosses in Darksiders III are
not messing around.
While the first couple might not pose much of a threat,
they are all highly very tests of both combat skills
and environmental puzzling.
Eventually, you'll encounter one that doesn't
seem to respond to any trick or tack you've learned
up to that point. And they are not above cheating.
It can be frustrating to suddenly have the tables
turned on you to be sure, but with persistence
satisfying success eventually comes.
Boss checkpoints could have been tweaked though.
In one case, loosing to a boss sends you all the way back
to a checkpoint with all sorts of enemies blocking your path
back to round two.
In another, you have to spend a few minutes running back
to the boss with no enemies to fight.
The bosses here are tough enough that these inconveniences
add up after a few failures.
Instead of open world, I describe Darksiders III as a
connected world game.
The series of smallish rooms connected by
hallways and tunnels, and the nearest deadly sin is always
marked for the skull on your radar at the top of the screen.
So, playing Darksiders III means running down hallways
from room to room, keeping that skull centered,
and fighting any monsters in your way.
That's 90% of it, with environmental puzzles
making up the ramainning 10%.
These are a nice break from the action
and one are two were tough enough to stomp me for
more than a few minutes.
That doesn't leave much room for rewarding expiration
but I did enjoy hunting down the upgrade items
that are hidden all over the place, behind corners,
and just of the beaten path.
(techno music)
The straight forward simplicity of Darksiders III
is a refreshing change of pace, after exploring so many
dense open world games.
That simplicity doesn't refer to the combat
or boss battles though, as they are complex and almost
startlingly unforgiving.
Its throwback philosophy is comfort food for action gamers
of a certain age.
But it would have been nice to see the third game
in a series introduce some new concepts, to relaunch
Darksiders in the modern age.
For more on Darksiders III, check out 16 minutes
of gameplay. And our list of the series best bosses.
And for everything else stick with us right here at IGN.
(techno music)