Other M More Like Any Other Game Please

Other M is kind of notorious for being an amazingly bipolar game.  If you have read any reviews about the game, you already know what I'm talking about.  It's like they developed the gameplay and the story in two completely different areas, and then smashed them together and called it a Metroid game.

If you haven't played a Metroid game yet, let me sum them up as best I can.  The (best) Metroid games are lonely affairs; you play as bounty hunter Samus Aran, and for a large part of the series, you are the only human in the game.  You're on an alien world hunting metroids, parasites that latch onto creatures and suck away their life force.  After the first and second games, they are supposed to be destroyed, but since there are ten games with the name 'Metroid' in them, you have probably guessed that they keep unexpectedly popping up.

You can't kill 'em, they're like Space Herpes!

In five games, there are other characters, and only in three of them are they human.  Interestingly, the ones with humans are the least well-liked games of the series.  Hey, do you know which game had the most humans in it?  Metroid: Other M of course!

(Disclaimer: I actually haven't played Metroid Prime 3: Corruption yet so that one might have more humans but let's just go along with it okay?)

Other M just shoves characters at you and says "Here you go I hope you like them because Samus knows all of them and will be referring to them by name."  I'm not kidding, they even throw in these goofy character intro screens that go by way too fast to see what it is each guy does for the team.  There was one guy that was pretty cool, and that was just because he had more than 30 seconds of screen time, and for the most part I called him Token.  Guess which one he is.

Pictured: three characters I care about.  One of them is dead, just the way I met him.

Any time I was playing as Samus, shooting bad guys and exploring a space station, I was having fun.  Even with a four-directional D-pad in a 3D world, Samus was easy to control.  The shooting was fun, and the dodging-then-quick-charging a shot was really cool.  I did have a problem with the lack of health pickups (even when you could refill your health, you had to do it by standing still, not shooting, and only while you were at about 20% health), but overall it was a fun experience.

THE STORY THOUGH.  THE DAMN STORY.  You know what was great about the other Metroid games?  Even when there were other sentient beings, the action and the adventure carried the story.  The planets and space stations were fun to explore, the tension was ever-present, and even the ridiculous sci-fi power-ups made sense in that world.

You know what doesn't make sense?  An independant bounty hunter turns off her best weapons because an old commander of hers tells her that her weapons might give his men boo-boos.  They do that with Power Bombs, which actually makes sense, because they state in-game that Power Bombs can vaporize a human being. I can get behind that, you are pretty unlikely to want to instantly convert a man into gases via heat.  You know what doesn't vaporize humans?  Her missiles. Even her super-missiles don't do that.  Hell, they don't kill most enemies in one shot.  But let's give Samus the benefit of the doubt and say that yeah, she is respecting the wishes of an old friend and waiting for him to clear the use of her more dangerous weapons.

Why, then, is she keeping her armor at the weakest setting she has?  In the most ridiculous way to get an armor power-up I have ever seen, Samus fights a radioactively-corrupted Space Pirate giant.  She kills it and it falls on her, corrupting her suit and protecting it from radiation.  That happened in Metroid Prime, and I loved it.  Didn't care how ridiculous it is, it was still sweet and the suit looked cool.

More of this, please!

In Other M, you don't fight monsters for stronger armor.  You don't explore ancient Chozo ruins and find things they built for your suit.  Some guy Samus had a crush on a while ago tells her she can go ahead and activate the upgrades.  That's it.  "Oh thanks Adam, for letting me activate my heat-resistant armor after I am THREE-QUARTERS OF THE WAY THROUGH THE FREAKING VOLCANO LEVEL!!!"  I get that they wanted to address the resetting-powers problem that people have with Metroid (and God of War, and Zelda, Saint's Row, Mass Effect, and any series about building power in any way), but this is not the right way to do it.  At best, you make Samus an obedient little girl, and at worst, you make her legendarily stupid.

A lot of people like to cite this game in their arguments for sexism in games, and I don't know if I fully agree with that.  The common targets are Samus's dependence on a man to issue her orders and the fact that the mother overtones are just shoved into your face in this game (don't even get me started on how much they call back that damn baby metroid from Super Metroid). I can understand where those arguments are coming from, and they might have some merit to them.  But to me this isn't sexism, it's just bad writing.  The sexism arguments imply that the game is pointing at Samus's gender and making fun of how weak it is, and how she has to wait for male approval to use her weaponry.  But really, all I see is a poor handling of story progression and an attempt to shove a motherly theme into the game.  Adam could have easily been a respected female CO and the game would have been just as stupid.  If anything, Other M implies that Samus is just antisocial and is better at going by herself than trying to work with others.

The game's story is way too bad to be taken as seriously as to call it sexist.  At one point, Ripley appears (because he's almost as persistent as the damn metroids) and Samus just freezes as if she is scared out of her wits.  She almost dies, and that almost kills Token, the only other likeable character in the game, and possibly the only one with a fully-functional brain.  Note that she has fought Ridley about a half dozen times at this point, and that every other time she sprang into action without a thought that didn't involve shooting Ridley until he dies.

They tried something different with Other M, but they failed to capitalize on what makes a good Metroid game.  Rather than explore what made the series great, they succeeded in creating the worst case of fixing what isn't broken.  They fleshed out the world in ways no one really cared about, and created what actually turned out to be kind of an offensive game.  If you weren't offended by the game's take on Samus as a woman, then you sure were offended by it's take on Samus as a character you wanted to play as.

Kid Icarus: Uprising

More like Kid Icarus: Uprising to My Top 5 Games List!

Look, I know the joke was bad, but throwing things is only going to get your monitor dirty, not mine.

Really, though, Kid Icarus: Uprising is a very, very good game, and I'm surprised I haven't heard a lot about it.  I didn't even get it because I had heard any strong recommendations or anything. I was just looking up a sale Best Buy was having because I heard Paper Mario: Sticker Star was on sale.  I checked the website and noticed that Kid Icarus was only $15, so I picked up both games.

When I booted up the game, my first impression of the game was, "Why am I playing Super Smash Bros Brawl on my 3DS?"

Masahiro Sakurai, director of Super Smash Bros Brawl, was the head of Project Sora, the development team for Uprising.  The menu definitely takes a cue from Super Smash Bros Brawl, but in no way do I mean that in a bad way, because if you copy anything from a Smash Bros game, you're doing it right.

...maybe

So I played the single-player portion of the game first, because if I ever play online multiplayer, I need to have every move and control mastered beforehand, lest I bring shame upon my family.  I was ready for a strange control scheme, because that was what I had read in many of the reviews for the game (and don't get me wrong, flicking the stylus across the touch screen to rotate the camera does feel a bit strange), but everything actually flowed very nicely for an adventure game with only one control stick.

The game has two main modes, a flying mode and a ground mode.  The flying mode actually plays a bit like Starfox 64; the goddess Palutena controls your flight path, since Pit seems to be the only character who is unable to fly on his own in this game, and only for five minutes at a time.  You fly on a preset path through surprisingly diverse environments and fight with a ton of different weapons, each with different abilities as far as close- vs long-range combat.  Visually, it's kind of beautiful, and this is where the gameplay shines the most, but mostly if you're using a long-range weapon.  The close-range ones can reflect incoming fire and do massive melee damage, but have very little ability to hurt any enemies sniping from afar.

On the ground things get more complex.  The gameplay can get muddled here, because there is a lot of exploration to be done in every level.  Pit's base stats are pretty low, so a good amount of your chances for survival depend on the weapon you choose.  Each weapon has unique stats that increase things like your health, speed, and power, and sometimes getting as specific as only aiding certain kinds of attacks or walking speed vs running speed.

What surprised me most about the game was the story, though.  The ads for this game depicted Pit as a generic angelic hero, which is more or less forgivable, but I'll be damned if I wan't bothered by Pit's generic "PREPARE TO MEET THE LIGHT!" line.  You kind of have to remember that this universe had not existed for a couple decades, and those decades happened to be the most crucial ones in forming voice acting and dialogue as we know it today.  With that awful commercial in mind, I was  very surprised to see that when they named one of the first bosses of the game, Hewdraw, they showed a picture of him in 8-bit form from the original Kid Icarus!  Then when the three-headed Hydra shows up, each one of them (with a unique voice and personality) just bickers at one another about who gets to attack Pit first and in what way in goofy voices (one has a British accent!).  I think that's about the moment I had this reaction.

And it just got better and better.  The music is incredible, ranging from your typical Battle-of-the-Gods orchestral fare to the Spanish guitar theme of one of the main characters.  Every level is memorable in its own way, and I don't think I noticed any environments recycled at all.  This is especially noteworthy in regards to the game's length; I was stunned that there was more and more story to play through.  The voice acting is above and beyond what I thought I would encounter, too.  I swear that Thanatos, the god of death, sounded like Choose Goose from Adventure Time.

The online multiplayer is pretty cool, too.  It always takes place on the ground, which is slightly unfortunate, but multiplayer would be difficult with fixed-rail shooter.  There are two main modes: Dark Vs Light and Free-For-All.  You get to use the weapons you unlock in single-player in this mode, but the more powerful they are, the more points the other team or individual gets for beating you.  It's an interesting take on balance; you want to use those weapons you worked so hard for, but you better know how to use them!

Things can get hectic on the small screen, but for the most part it's a nice kind of hectic.

If you're looking for critique on the downsides of this game, you have to understand that this is one of my favorite games.  I wasn't prepared for it in the same way I wasn't prepared for Chrono Trigger.  And I love it in the same way.  Seriously, if you have a 3DS, I will loan it to you. I'm not even kidding.  This is a game that I want everyone to play, because I enjoyed it that much.  The ground portions can be difficult to get used to, and I often took more damage from the environment than the enemies, but I love this game.  It's flawed, but it has so much character that I have no problem looking past them.  Get a 3DS and buy the game, or at least let me loan it to you.  I am honestly very surprised that I don't see this on more "Top Games" lists.

Super Mario 3D Land

Super Mario 3D Land is a strange beast.  I wasn't keeping a lot of tabs on it because I had played New Super Mario Bros and NSMB Wii,  and while they were fun, it didn't really do anything for me.  The gameplay was polished, but it was like playing all the old games I've already played .  Multiplayer in NSMB Wii was a fun, hectic addition, but overall, there wasn't a lot there to keep me playing after I beat the game.  In fact, it mostly made me want to play the old Mario games again.  The diffuculty in the Mario games had tapered off remarkably, and while I'm not one of those Nintendo fans that demands that everything be as difficult as Castlevania on the NES, I do like some challenge.  It didn't help my impressions of 3D Land when I saw this video:

Despite what I wrote about loving really difficult games in this blog, I do not consider myself a 'hardcore' gamer, because it carries a connotation with a lot of really stupid qualities.  I don't triumph over those worse than me, and in fact, I love co-op games because I can help my partners if I am better than them.  I don't teabag in Halo ( I mean I'm not saying I haven't done it in the past, but you know...), I don't swear at the twelve-year-olds playing with me, I just normally play to have a good time. That video, though.  He's on the second level.  And while I didn't jump on a Koopa shell for infinite lives, I was getting coins and lives like they were just handing 'em out.  Because Nintendo just started handing out coins and lives in Mario games.  In general, Mario games start you out with about 4 lives.  I think I was in the double-digits by the end of the second level, and if not then certainly the third.

In very few levels did I end with fewer lives than I began.  Since Nintendo has long abandoned points in Mario games, the time leftover in each stage becomes coins; you get one coin for every ten seconds left on the clock (so finishing with 247 seconds lands you 24 extra coins at the end of the level), plus coins or 1-ups based on where you land on the flagpole at the end of the level.  You can easily get 30 extra coins just for finishing the level.  I don't think I ever got below 99 seconds in any given level, even the really difficult ones; no one but the most insane gamers will search every single corner for some extra coins and begin to run out of time.  And in case you ever thought you might run low on a long level, these seemed to pop up: 

Look at those watches up there.  Each of those blue watches adds 10 seconds to the clock, and there are green ones that add 100.  And those green ones would often pop up at the end of a level, making me question why they were even there, besides adding more coins to the game, of course.  (Note: having beat the game, I have still not figured out why they were placed where they were.)  And if you do start to lose a lot of lives on a level, you'll be greeted with the Golden Leaf.  It's like a combination star and leaf, turning you invulnerable and letting you float down from all your jumps.  But because you have to do so poorly to get it, I saw it as a mark of shame.  The guys at Penny-Arcade saw it that way too.  In my playthrough, I finished the game while seeing it three times, and I never took it.  That would mean admitting defeat.

Remember: click for full size.

But despite all my complaints, I loved Super Mario 3D Land.  It's still an incredibly polished game, even if it does kind of like to point out how much inspiration it took from Super Mario Bros 3.  The 3D is used very well, too.  It adds a nice layer of depth, and Nintendo avoids getting too gimmicky with it.  The main gripes I had with it were that it was incredibly easy, and that there were only four or five playable levels on each of the eight worlds.

So here's the part where I spoil something that might come as a really nice surprise if you are interested in the game.  It's nothing huge, and in fact, it's a very nice selling point for the game.  But it came as a very pleasant surprise on my end, and I would hate to ruin it if you plan on getting the game.

If you want to get Super Mario 3D Land and not have something good spoiled, go ahead and skip the rest of this and get the game.  Everything below the break is just going to say why I like this game and why I highly recommend it.

I'm not going to say anything jaw-dropping like Bowser becomes a playable character or something.  But it's nothing I would want to spoil for you if you like surprises.

Making sure there's enough space here.  Okay.  So you beat the game.  You beat Bowser's castles (the only kind of difficult parts of the game anyways), and you were treated to a pretty epic ending.  The credits roll, and there's some pretty dumb little 3D pictures that show up.  Then you see that Luigi's been kidnapped instead of the princess!  Is it sequel time? Nope, it's time for more worlds.

You take a pipe down to World Special 1.  And as the saying goes, shit gets REAL. Real quick.  Special 1-1 introduces you to the special tanooki suit that (again, like Super Mario Bros 3) lets you turn into a statue and avoid enemies.  But as you explore the rest of the level, something become obvious pretty quickly: there are no goombas.  The easiest Mario enemy ever has been replaced by spiky-backed turtles and some other spike-helmeted enemies.  In addition, there are a lot more jumps that will lead you to your death.  In general, all the levels have become remarkably more challenging, and a lot more fun to play.

And then there's these levels: 

You see that clock up there in the corner? That guy isn't playing the game poorly; the game starts you out with 30 seconds for the level.  It's pretty intense.  In these levels, you have to collect those ten second watches to keep the clock going until you can finish the level.  Another kind of challenge level has a Shadow Mario chasing after you as you complete the level.  He gets in your head.

I've got a lot to say on Nintendo's desire to fit a coin into every available space on the screen, but that's a discussion best saved for another day.  For now, suffice it to say that Super Mario 3D Land is very, very good.  Sometimes it tries a bit too hard to please its raving fanbase, and the first playthrough is way too easy, but the endgame saves it.  Providing well-designed, challenging levels in addition to 100% extra content?  Nintendo, you shouldn't have (except yes you really should have and should continue to do so).

Halo 4 Rocks

Get it? Because it's 4 rocks? Arranged like a Halo? Like the title of the blog?.....I don't blame you if you stop reading here.

I'm pretty sure just about everyone interested in the series knows that Halo 4 came out a couple Tuesdays ago, and if you didn't know, you may want to look into it.  Hell, even if you don't care about the Halo series, I'd still highly recommend picking this one up.

Now for the like, three people out there who don't know what this whole Halo thing is, it's a first-person shooter (in space!), and it's largely the reason Microsoft has a successful hold in the American console market.  The first three games detailed the war raging between humans and the Covenant, an alliance of different alien species.  The Covenant were trying to activate a set of massive, planet-sized rings (in space!) and the games followed Master Chief, aided by his sentient AI partner Cortana, as they fought to save the Earth from the threat faced by the ancient rings.  There were also space zombies, and those levels were the worst.

Not enough shotgun shells in the world.

The combat ran at a pace that was very easy to keep up with without getting overwhelmed, and the multiplayer emphasized that.  In Halo 2 (which introduced online multiplayer to the series) and Halo 3, the multiplayer consistently received high marks from both critics and audiences, even going as far as getting better reception than the single-player campaigns.  Halo ranks up at the top with Call of Duty and Battlefield's multiplayer popularity.

And if you think the series's fanbase is made up of drunken frat bros and twelve-year-olds who enjoy swearing on Xbox live, well, you may have an argument to make.  But you'll have to take it up with an army of extremely devoted and very detail-oriented fans. Read the Halo Wiki, and you will learn more than you ever needed to about Halo, going far beyond the games and into the detailed histories of the different species and events that happened outside the main story.  The sheer amount of devotion present here rivals what you could find in the Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms.

343 Studios had a lot to live up to with this game.  Bungie's last full Halo game was Halo: Reach, which means that they were handing a best-selling franchise to a brand-new company.  And this wasn't just a spin-off story, this was Master Chief, Spartan 117.  That's like giving Samus from Metroid to a third-party studio, and we know how that went. (The joke here is that it went extremely well.)

And really, the comparison to Metroid Prime is apt.  The first few Metroid games had little to do with story, instead focusing on atmosphere and gameplay.  But in Metroid Prime, Retro Studios added an enormous amount of backstory to the world in the forms of data logs from the extinct Chozo and the invading Space Pirates.  This made Samus's adventures on Tallon IV feel like it was necessary to the entire Metroid story as a whole, and not just something they shoveled in between Metroid and Metroid II.  The same is going on here in Halo 4.  The first three games had a good amount of story, but a lot of the emotional weight was lost, as the focus remained on the fight.

There are also a few...similarities...between the HUDs.

I will keep this spoiler-free, as I don't want to ruin any of the story elements for those who are interested.  But I have never connected to Master Chief (called John more in this game than he was in the entire first trilogy) and Cortana like I have here.  The multiplayer is still amazing, too; some of the play modes could benefit from a concise explanation of what each game mode plays like (coughRegicidecough), but once you figure it out, it's golden.  They no longer have a Firefight Mode, but have instead added Spartan Ops, which lets you play a co-op mission with four others (online or local), and 343 Studios plans on releasing new episodes weekly.  Frankly, I like it even more than I did Firefight.

Look, there's not a whole lot else I can get into without starting to just rant about how good the game is.  I recommend getting in on the action especially if you have friends with the game.  Multiplayer is a (running) riot and the campaign takes two of gaming's most beloved characters and truly does them justice.  And if that doesn't do it for you, Conan O' Brien and Andy Richter have a cameo appearance late in the game as two marines.  I don't know what else could compel you to buy this game.  Ignore all the hype and advertising, and you're still left with an incredible experience.

A New Project: Why Aren't You Playing This?

I'm dedicating a new series to the games that I love, but never see anyone playing. And it's not just that I love them, but that they are so well-received by people who do play them that it baffles me why these games are so unknown.

These are games that are expertly crafted, amazing examples of what you can do in a genre (including making a whole new genre altogether).  Yet for some reason, if you bring them up to someone in a regular conversation, odds are they've never heard of it.  This isn't about being a "hardcore" gamer vs a "casual" gamer.  This is about sharing video games that have left you in awe, wanting to be able to talk to your friends about it, just to ask, "What's Bastion?"

I want to make a couple things clear: this is not indie games only.  In many cases, I find that some big studio games get just as neglected as overlooked indie titles.  And secondly, that this isn't just about me. If you have a game like this, I want you to tell me about it.  Send me your feelings about a game like this, or give me a title and I'll try to find it myself.  I want this to be a place where we can share these experiences that can fly under the radar all too easily.

I'd love feedback from you guys!  E-mail me at freddiemalcomb@gmail.com!  Even if the game is popular (we all know that guy that won't play it if it is too popular), send me your suggestions and share your experiences!

Penny-Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3

I get pumped up about new releases on games, but I often have to pass them up.  I love a game that does something different, and when I see games like El Shaddai: Rise of the Metatron, Catherine, and Bastion, it appeals to me.

But sometimes, I like to see an excellent return to form.  I am a big fan of Zeboyd Games, creators of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World, two great throwbacks to RPGs of old.  The first is a wonderful parody of games like Final Fantasy (note that Breath of Death I-VI do not exist), and the latter stands as an amazing rendition of a 16-bit SNES-era RPG.  Both games have hilarious stories, memorable characters, and skillful theming.  But most importantly, it avoids a lot of the problems that older RPGs seem to share.  I had to grind through a total of no levels in either game, and I didn't have to worry about healing my party with potions after every battle; you start out with full HP every time.  Your MP will dwindle, but with proper management, it won't be a game-ender.

One of the cool parts about Zeboyd Games, though, is that there is a noticeable jump in quality in between each game.  I played Cthulhu Saves the World first, and when I played Breath of Death VII, I was struck by the difference in graphics and writing.  It's not to say that BoDVII is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but the jump that was made from their first to second RPG is amazing.

This speech is a reference to Mother (Earthbound in 'Merica), and I love this joke.  This is Breath of Death VII.

Cthulhu finds the greatest treasure of all. 

Hey, speaking of RPGs, did you know the guys from Penny Arcade made two of those?  They and developer Hothead Games started the Penny Arcade Adventures series on May 21, 2008, which has one adventure so far, "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness."  The first two entries were animated in 3D and you played as a regular guy whose house gets crushed by a giant robot.  At the persuasion of the narrator, you follow Tycho and Gabe through New Arcadia until you kill Yog Sethis, the god of mimes and the antagonist of the first game.  The first and second games are well-written, very aware of themselves, and extremely goofy.  It wouldn't be Penny Arcade if it didn't have those qualities.  And when the second game came out in October 2008, it seemed we were set up with a great potential for a nice, quick episodic game release schedule.  Kind of the opposite of the Half-Life Episodes.

In the games we are told that there are four gods fighting for power.  One had possession of the robot that crushed your house, and you kill it at the end of the second game with the help of Tycho's niece.  So we had a perfect set-up for a four game series, but the third game wound up in development hell.  Kind of exactly like Half-Life 2 Episode 3 (does our suffering please you, Valve?).

Then Penny Arcade announced that the third game was coming back with the help of Zeboyd, and I promptly lost any inclination I had at reasonable patience.  Zeboyd had already produced two of the best-written games I had ever played, and they teamed up with Penny Arcade.  So yeah, I was excited for this game.  It's one of maybe three games I've pre-ordered in my life.  

The game plays like a turn-based RPG from the SNES era, but with a bar up top that lets you know who's going to make a the next move.  Based on your speed (and that of your enemies), characters can pass each other on the bar, and judging the order from that bar immerses you in the battle system.  The game uses a Super Mario World-style overworld to get from place to place, and once inside a building, you enter a typical Final Fantasy-style top-down view of the dungeon.  What sells me on the game isn't the gameplay or the graphics (both of which are great, by the way), but the writing.  Even in battle, the enemies' names and descriptions were something to look forward to. The first two games were great, but this one carried a lot more weight as a narrative.  I cared about Tycho and Gabe in this game a lot more than I did in the first two because they were established as better characters.

Gabe in particular.

In fact, the end of the game stands out as one of the best endings I've ever seen.  It carries more emotional weight than any game ending (and for that matter books and movies) I've seen, and it carries that weight because by the end of the game, I cared about the characters and their choices.  I'll keep it spoiler-free, but just know that as someone who values stories, this one is easily one of my favorites.  I can't wait to see what's in store for the fourth game, and exactly unlike  Half-Life 2 Episode 3, I have a lot of faith that we'll get it sooner rather than later.

(Edit: I'm a big dummie; I couldn't pre-order it because I couldn't on Steam.  But dammit I would have if I could have.)

Darksiders

I picked up Darksiders because the department store at which I work is getting rid of their video games section.  We've had a lot of the same games since I started working there, so I keep an eye on whatever goes on clearance in the game rack.  I would have raided the skeletal remains of our video game sections if it weren't for the few hours I am currently working, so I narrowed it to a couple choices: Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Darksiders.  I've never played any of the other Deus Ex games (and I know that some people reading this didn't know there were other games), so I took my chance with the new IP, especially after I heard about how well its sequel is reviewing.

The shiny box didn't hurt, either.

An extremely basic outline of the story: The apocalypse is a party and War, one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is getting things started right.  But while demons and angels fight in the streets, War notices that his three best buddies aren't laying waste to the world the way they're supposed to.  In short, someone started the apocalypse early, and War gets framed for it.  The game wastes no time in getting the destruction of Earth underway.  100 years later, War makes a deal with the powers that lie between Heaven and Hell: he'll find out who framed him, or the demons who now walk the Earth will kill him, filling his death sentence anyway.

So I played it, and during the entire first hour, I thought two things:

1. The colors and the presentation here are great, I love that it's not another Brown and Bloom fest.
2. I'm pretty sure I'm playing God of War.

Note that second one, because I don't mean it in a wholly bad way.  Any comparison to God of War is a good one, but I am saying that in combat, Darksiders doesn't really feel terribly different from God of War in any way.  Besides the specific combos and weapons that differ between Kratos and War, combat takes place at a pace almost exactly like God of War's.  War even has finishing moves like Kratos's, but they lack the quicktime events of the latter's game, for better or worse.

So after a flight on an "Angelic Beast" (basically a griffin that functions almost exactly like an Arwing from Starfox, barrel-rolls notwithstanding) I got to the first dungeon, the Twilight Catherdral.

I loved the look of it, and by this point of the game, I was pretty sold on the atmosphere of it.  I'm a sucker for Heaven vs Hell and Revelations-type plots anyways.  So I got in the cathedral and solve a couple puzzles, after which I quickly realized that this is a fire temple.

Someone got lava all up in this church.

Oh, and that sweet throwing blade War has there?  That's basically a Zelda boomerang.  It's badass in every way, don't get me wrong, but if you played Twilight Princess, you already have experience with the targeting system.  Later in the game, you find a hookshot.  Darksiders calls it the "Abyssal Chain," but really,  anyone who's played a Zelda game from the past decade-and-a-half knows it's a hookshot.  It functions exactly like the famous Zelda weapon, and it even has that same satisfying burst sound effect when you launch it.

Towards the end of the game, you find a neat little artifact that lets you open voids in two different areas.  You can jump into one void and come out the other.  The voids come out colored orange and blue.  Yeah, War finds a portal gun.  Aperture Science didn't manufacture it, but except for Valve's physics engine and one difference you need to figure out to solve a puzzle, the "Voidwalker" functions just like the famous gun from Portal.

The game suffers from some typical qualities of new IPs.  War can grab onto ledges and pull himself up, but half the time, it feels like the game is arbitrarily deciding when he can and can't grab onto something.  I made War take many a fall into the abyss because of this.  In a related problem, a lot of the urban environments can get repetitive and easy to get lost in.  This is something that is hardly exclusive to Darksiders, though.

Darksiders is like a patchwork of all the games I've been playing through this console generation.  This would be a bad thing if it didn't all work so well.  They've taken the best qualities from many different games, including the recent jump in voice acting and storytelling we've seen in games like Arkham Asylum and the Assassin's Creed games. It's like listening to a "best of" album from an amazing tribute band.  And as an added bonus, you get to play as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!  It's a fun ride, and if you find this game in a bargain bin, I can't really give you a good reason to pass this up.