Reviews
[Review] ‘Darksiders 3’ is a Devilishly Good Adventure Spoiled By Its Many Technical Sins
Does the third entry in Gunfire Games’ apocalyptic saga do enough to atone for its sins? Or has its day of reckoning come? Find out in our Darksiders 3 review.
It’s been six years since Darksiders 2 was released. In that time THQ and Vigil Games (the teams responsible for the first two Darksiders) were sold or closed down, which made it seem unlikely that we would ever see Darksiders 3. THQ was acquired by Nordic games and became THQ Nordic, while many of the Vigil team found a new home at Gunfire Games. It only makes sense that Gunfire Games would be the team to develop a third Darksiders game.
Darksiders 3 brings us back to the apocalypse and introduces us to the third horsemen, Fury. A mage who wields a whip as her main weapon and can change between force forms known as hollows. The Charred Council was founded to make sure that the eternal battle between heaven and hell is never won. Whenever there is an upheaval in this balance, the Council brings in one or all four of the horsemen to investigate and exact retribution. Darksiders 3 lets you hack and slash your way as Fury to stop the living manifestations of the seven deadly sins from disrupting the delicate balance between good and evil.
An interesting thing about the Darksiders games is that the stories aren’t traditional sequels, the games all take place roughly in the same time frame. As our story starts we find the protagonist of the first game, War in chains awaiting judgment from the Charred Council for starting the Apocalypse. Fury is unmoved by her brother’s imprisonment and could care less that he was set up, she wants to be the leader of the Horsemen and War is one less obstacle she would have to deal with in her social climb.
Fury has fast become my favorite of the Horseman, her combat style reminded me a bit of Bayonetta and pre-ax Kratos. She is a fun and challenging character to master with plenty of tools of destruction that can be enchanted and upgraded, retaining the RPG feel of the past games. Controlling Fury is very user-friendly and fluid, fights are executed with simple button mashing attacks and dodging. With that being said, the game is quite difficult, you will die several times but it’s oh so satisfying once you finally learn the rhythms of the Sins and which of Fury’s weapons and abilities are needed to defeat them.
Equally important as knowing your weaponry, is becoming one with Fury’s Hollows. Not only are they instrumental in traveling throughout the Darksiders 3 world, but they also give Fury different powers and movements when equipped. I don’t want to get too in-depth with the Hollows here, it’s so much fun discovering their uses on your own. Switching between them is a breeze, which is good as you sometimes need to string them together in battle and travel.
One thing that took me a lot to get used to was the fact that there is no map to give you direction. Instead, a single skull acts as a point of interest on a compass to help lead you to where the Sins are located. This forces you to explore and get lost, which leads to discovering hidden loot or areas that you may have missed. I can understand and respect the lack of maps, but playing under the constraints of a timed embargo really made me long for a map. Luckily, our old friend Vulgrim is back to offer his services of wares, a soul exchange for upgrades program, and Serpent Holes which act as fast travel points to past visited areas.
Another little Darksiders 3 quirk that takes some adjusting to is the sometimes wonky camera angles and tiny FOV. It especially becomes claustrophobic when locking on to an enemy, you can see very little of what’s going on around you.
Now, it could just be that I’m a graphics snob, but the PS3 looking graphics of Darksiders 3 makes me wonder if production on the game started at Vigil shortly after the second game. The artists and level designers have done a fine job of creating a lovely environment but graphically the game doesn’t look up to the current gen’s standards despite the fact I was playing on a PS4 Pro and a 65” 4K TV. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not hideous, nor does it detract from gameplay and could probably be fixed with a shiny new 4K / HDR patch in the future.
The musical score is very minimalist but usually kicked in at the proper times to heighten suspense or the threat of danger. The sound effects were very good, I could hear the crack of Fury’s whip as well as the direction danger was coming at me. However, I did experience an issue with the sound where it would break up or becoming static throughout the entire game.
Unfortunately, the sound was not the only issue I had with Darksiders 3. You know, I can look past the frame rate drops and the occasional freezing but for me, the game was nearly unplayable as I began to experience crashes about the time I reached the Hollows. These weren’t just ordinary crashes, what I experienced nearly broke the game for me as once I restarted, I usually lost big chunks of my gameplay, including boss fights. The crashes lessened as I progressed but after backtracking through hours of gameplay, I lived in constant fear that it would happen again. It also appears that the game performs worse on the PS4 Pro than it does a standard PS4.
Even with all of the issues that plagued my play-through, I love Darksiders 3. I had so much fun with it that it kind of breaks my heart because I know that it is so much better than the final score I’ve bestowed upon it. I truly hope they patch the game soon, I would be willing to re-evaluate my score at a later date if the proper fixes are patched in.
The Seven Deadly Sins not only provides super cool boss fights, but it is also the perfect plot point to introduce into the Darksiders lore. Darksiders 3, in my opinion, was the most coherent and interesting story of the three games. Fury is a great character that we not only see her grow physically, but she also showed great character development by accepting the importance of the humanity that she once looked upon in disdain. I didn’t feel the two previous Horsemen showed as much personal growth. The ending definitely leaves the door open for Darksiders 4 starting Strife, but what I want is more Fury.
It’s flawed, it has issues, and it doesn’t reinvent the series, but Darksiders 3 is fun, and isn’t that why we play games in the first place?
Darksiders 3 Review code provided by the publisher.
Darksiders 3 is out November 27.
Reviews
“AHS: Delicate” Review – “Little Gold Man” Mixes Oscar Fever & Baby Fever into the Perfect Product
‘AHS: Delicate’ enters early labor with a fun, frenzied episode that finds the perfect tone and goes for broke as its water breaks.
“I’ll figure it out. Women always do.”
American Horror Story is no stranger to remixing real-life history with ludicrous, heightened Murphy-isms, whether it’s AHS: 1984’s incorporation of Richard Ramirez, AHS: Cult’s use of Valerie Solanas, or AHS: Coven’s prominent role for the Axeman of New Orleans. Accordingly, it’s very much par for the course for AHS: Delicate to riff on other pop culture touchstones and infinitely warp them to its wicked whims. That being said, it takes real guts to do a postmodern feminist version of Rosemary’s Baby and then actually put Mia Farrow – while she’s filming Rosemary’s Baby, no less – into the narrative. This is the type of gonzo bullshit that I want out of American Horror Story! Sharon Tate even shows up for a minute because why the hell not? Make no mistake, this is completely absurd, but the right kind of campy absurdity that’s consistently been in American Horror Story’s wheelhouse since its inception. It’s a wild introduction that sets up an Oscar-centric AHS: Delicate episode for success. “Little Gold Man” is a chaotic episode that’s worth its weight in gold and starts to bring this contentious season home.
It’d be one thing if “Little Gold Man” just featured a brief detour to 1967 so that this season of pregnancy horror could cross off Rosemary’s Baby from its checklist. AHS: Delicate gets more ambitious with its revisionist history and goes so far as to say that Mia Farrow and Anna Victoria Alcott are similarly plagued. “Little Gold Man” intentionally gives Frank Sinatra dialogue that’s basically verbatim from Dex Harding Sr., which indicates that this demonic curse has been ruffling Hollywood’s feathers for the better part of a century. Anna Victoria Alcott’s Oscar-nominated feature film, The Auteur, is evidently no different than Rosemary’s Baby. It’s merely Satanic forces’ latest attempt to cultivate the “perfect product.” “Little Gold Man” even implies that the only reason that Mia Farrow didn’t go on to make waves at the 1969 Academy Awards and ends up with her twisted lot in life is because she couldn’t properly commit to Siobhan’s scheme, unlike Anna.
This is easily one of American Horror Story’s more ridiculous cold opens, but there’s a lot of love for the horror genre and Hollywood that pumps through its veins. If Hollywood needs to be a part of AHS: Delicate’s story then this is actually the perfect connective tissue. On that note, Claire DeJean plays Sharon Tate in “Little Gold Man” and does fine work with the brief scene. However, it would have been a nice, subtle nod of continuity if AHS: Delicate brought back Rachel Roberts who previously portrayed Tate in AHS: Cult. “Little Gold Man” still makes its point and to echo a famous line from Jennifer Lynch’s father’s television masterpiece: “It is happening again.”
“Little Gold Man” is rich in sequences where Anna just rides the waves of success and enjoys her blossoming fame. She feels empowered and begins to finally take control of her life, rather than let it push her around and get under her skin like a gestating fetus. Anna’s success coincides with a colossal exposition dump from Tavi Gevinson’s Cora, a character who’s been absent for so long that we were all seemingly meant to forget that she was ever someone who was supposed to be significant. Cora has apparently been the one pulling many of Anna’s strings all along as she goes Single White Female, rather than Anna having a case of Repulsion. It’s an explanation that oddly works and feeds into the episode’s more general message of dreams becoming nightmares. Cora continuing to stay aligned with Dr. Hill because she has student loans is also somehow, tragically the perfect explanation for her abhorrent behavior. It’s not the most outlandish series of events in an episode that also briefly gives Anna alligator legs and makes Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian kiss.
“Little Gold Man” often feels like it hits the fast-forward button as it delivers more answers, much in the same vein as last week’s “Ava Hestia.” These episodes are two sides of the same coin and it’s surely no coincidence that they’re both directed by Jennifer Lynch. This season has benefitted from being entirely written by Halley Feiffer – a first for the series – but it’s unfortunate that Lynch couldn’t direct every episode of AHS: Delicate instead of just four out of nine entries. That’s not to say that a version of this season that was unilaterally directed by Lynch would have been without its issues. However, it’s likely that there’d be a better sense of synergy across the season with fewer redundancies. She’s responsible for the best episodes of AHS: Delicate and it’s a disappointment that she won’t be the one who closes the season out in next week’s finale.
To this point, “Little Gold Man” utilizes immaculate pacing that helps this episode breeze by. Anna’s Oscar nomination and the awards ceremony are in the same episode, whereas it feels like “Part 1” of the season would have spaced these events out over four or five episodes. This frenzied tempo works in “Little Gold Man’s” favor as AHS: Delicate speed-runs to its finish instead of getting lost in laborious plotting and unnecessary storytelling. This is how the entire season should have been. Although it’s also worth pointing out that this is by far the shortest episode of American Horror Story to date at only 34 minutes. It’s a shame that the season’s strongest entries have also been the ones with the least amount of content. There could have been a whole other act to “Little Gold Man,” or at the least, a substantially longer cold open that got more out of its Mia Farrow mayhem.
“Little Gold Man” is an American Horror Story episode that does everything right, but is still forced to contend with three-quarters of a subpar season. “Part 2” of AHS: Delicate actually helps the season’s first five episodes shine brighter in retrospect and this will definitely be a season that benefits from one long binge that doesn’t have a six-month break in the middle. Unfortunately, anyone who’s already watched it once will likely not feel compelled to experience these labor pains a second time over. With one episode to go and Anna’s potential demon offspring ready to greet the world, AHS: Delicate is poised to deliver one hell of a finale.
Although, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How do you expect to be a good conclusion if this is what you’re chasing?”
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