So we’re taking it back to where it all began with Darksiders: Genesis. My experience with Darksiders basically ended after the first one because while I liked it, I’ve said previously that I’m not a big puzzle guy and therefore the Zelda-like elements in the game was a liiiitle bit of a turn-off for me so I decided to skip Darksiders 2, then read not great things about Darksiders 3 and skipped that, and now here we are.

What drew me to Genesis, you ask? Well mainly in the trailer I saw it looked like they were trying to make this one more of a Diablo game, and I really like Diablo and Torchlight, and so I thought “you know what, Ed? Let’s see how this one shakes out.” And you know what? I think it works great, I had a lot of fun playing it, and I wish the entire series was in this same style.

So let me get this out of the way early. The game has the same look as a Diablo clone would with the fixed isometric camera, but it still plays like Darksiders. You’ve still got attack combos and a few special moves, there’s still puzzle solving, and it’s not just getting swarmed by tons of enemies for you to waste without thinking like you’d expect when seeing it look like this. There’s still strategy to the fighting and the game can be challenging at times so you can’t just blindly play. Even on casual and normal setting I thought the game still gave me a reasonable challenge, just enough to still be fun over the 15-18 hours it took to play through it.

So storywise I won’t give much away but you play as the horseman Strife, who’s the newest of the 4 horsemen to be introduced, and returning horseman War, the main character from the original Darksiders. It’s a nice mixture of old and new as they make an uneasy alliance with the demon Samael to take down another demon named Moloch and figure out what Lucifer’s newest scheme is. The story doesn’t have a ton of meat to it, and it feels more like a journey that’s an excuse to get better acquainted with Strife and War than anything else, and personally I was fine with that. It has some buddy cop movie qualities to it as War plays the straight man to Strife’s many, many one-liners and funny observations througout the game. Some of it feels forced, as if we need to be reminded that he’s the comic relief, and other times his jokes land and the game is better for it. Personally by the time I beat it I knew I was on board for a future numbered Darksiders game starring Strife. Most of the game’s story is told through comic style cutscenes other than the opening cinematic. Some people might care, personally I don’t as long as the story is told well. The art quality is great and I didn’t feel like anything was lost by it not being some big budget CGI stuff.

If you’re playing single player then you have control of both characters and can switch them on the fly to solve puzzles, or if one dies you’ll control the other automatically while the other is on a refresh timer before getting a chunk of their health back. Strife is a ranged fighter with a low health pool who specializes in crowd control, while War is more the tank of the duo with his reliance on hard hitting melee attacks and defensive boosts in addition to a large health pool. Each have different gadgets they use to get through obstacles so you’ll be switching between them to get through the game.

If you’re playing single player then you have control of both characters and can switch them on the fly to solve puzzles, or if one dies you’ll control the other automatically while the other is on a refresh timer before getting a chunk of their health back.

Speaking of health and gear, enemies will drop what are called Creature Cores, medallions that you socket into various slots that allow you things like attack and health bonuses, and more unique abilities like leaving behind a trail of lava when you dash, or randomly spawning a hellhound that attacks enemies. Collecting multiple cores eventually levels them up to give you greater boosts. You can buy more creature cores, combo upgrades and stat upgrades from shops owned by demons Vulgrim and Dis with souls you’ve collected. The whole creature core system is fun to mess around with and by the end of the game you’ll be able to fill all the slots and then you can start really experimenting with your builds to suit your playstyle.

So the game itself has lots of different locations all culimating in a dungeon you explore to fight a boss. Some of the levels are only to fight a boss, which personally I like because I’m that guy that enjoys Boss Rush mode in games that feature it. The locations vary from deserts, snowy mountains, lava filled dungeons, and more. Each area has side quests to complete that net you rewards and there’s also side quests that take place over the whole game which coincide with the achievements or trophies on whichever console you’re playing it on.

Aside from progressing through the story you’ll get the Arena unlocked about halfway through the game, which is also a nice distraction if you want to just jump in and play something for a short session. It’s 10 waves of enemies that progress in difficulty and you get some pretty nice rewards. Personally if I’m playing multiplayer with someone, it’ll be to play Arena matches.

Speaking of multiplayer, you can go to one of these fancy stones and start up a co-op game and play splitscreen. I brought Mrs Controller on for this one and while we had a lot of fun, the view feels really limited and despite our character’s symbols being on each other’s screens for convenience, we got lost a lot and that took us out of the whole experience. And getting lost is something you’ll find happens pretty frequently in this because there is not marker for your character on the map, it just highlights the section you’re in and that’s it. I don’t really need my hand held in games these days and the maps aren’t that huge that it’s a big detractor from the game, but it was just kind of annoying.

Also annoying is the platforming you’ll have to do and the fixed camera angles that’ll make you fall off ledges all the time, sometimes even due to obscuring your view. I fell off the ledges in this game a lot more often than I thought I would and I partly blame the fixed camera angles not really working with the platforming sections all that well. Like there’s jumps I’m 100% positive I should’ve made that I somehow would not land, and I’d just glide down to the bottom where my character would disappear and have to restart again. Enemies also take advantage of this and while many times they ignore the damage you’re doing, they’ll take one good swipe at you and knock you back off a ledge. Remember the 2nd level of Castlevania with all the medusa heads knocking you off? It’s kinda like that at times.

One last thing I encountered that I want to mention is that this game has some pretty prominent audio bugs in it. Nothing game breaking but there were several times where the sound effect for selecting something would just repeat itself really fast and non-stop until you exited out of the game, and also the music in the next to last level just kept playing even after I finished it, tried backing out to the main menu, and ultimately I had to quit the game and restart. So just weird stuff. I probably came across audio bugs over a half dozen times over my playthrough that were all like this.

So ultimately I really enjoyed playing this. Brand new it’s $40 and you’re going to get a couple dozen hours of fun out of it and you can play with a friend. Other than some weird bugs and some of the platforming that needs refining, I think it’s a great buy and if you’re on the fence, feel good about picking it up. Also this’ll be a fun time-filler for you before all the great titles coming out in March and April release.