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.
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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