Can we all agree that pepperoni makes a great topping for pizza? I think we can. Sausage pizza is also delicious, as is bacon. Yet there’s only so much time available and space in the stomach to eat a pepperoni pizza, a sausage pizza and a bacon pizza. They are all good, but you are limited to taking a sample from one of each or choosing just one.

This is why the meat lover’s pizza exists. Even though you will have less of each ingredient, the sum of all parts is delicious and fattening. You may want a simple sausage or pepperoni pizza still, true, but a lot of times the meat lover’s just combines it all into a savory selection of gluttony*.

Darksiders is a meat lover’s pizza. It may not be able to accomplish all the puzzles Zelda can (have as much pepperoni), or the combat of God of War (sausage), or the many other games it imitates such as Prince of Persia or Portal (bacon and bacon), but that doesn’t make the game derivative. If it does then you must admit that a meat lover’s pizza is also derivative because it merely uses fewer pre-existing toppings.

I’m not sure what other game reviewers want. Do they prefer a seven-hour experience of nothing but chopping foes apart? Or would they rather several repetitive dungeons with mediocre-gets-the-job-done combat and controls? Darksiders may not surpass what its ancestors excelled in, but it sure as Hell has a lot more to do on the whole. This is what keeps the game so fun and worth returning to. Just because these individual characteristics have been done better doesn’t mean it isn’t a masterful package. Other developers devote all their time to making one aspect of gameplay great while the rest is lackluster. Darksiders makes them all good at the very least.

Let’s take a look at the combat as an example. Last time I stated that it isn’t as in-depth as God of War or Ninja Gaiden 2 and I still stand by that point. This doesn’t mean it is outright dull nor is there a complete lack of depth. There will be moments where you are overwhelmed and pulling the glove out to knock foes off their feet will be a necessity. The end of the game feels like it hits a sudden difficulty spike until you realize you have enough magical power to make real use of your spells, engulfing yourself in flame to light attackers on fire, spreading blades up through the ground to impale foes or encasing yourself in stone to boost your armor. Fill up an ability gauge to transform into War’s demigod form which tears through enemies like butter.

The combat may be lacking in a number of combos and the ability to chain them together effectively, but it certainly isn’t missing any depth. The types of enemies you face, the tools at your disposal and abilities war possesses all provide for a system as simple or complex as you want it to be.

I also want to take a moment to discuss War’s horse Ruin. Combat on horseback in Darksiders somehow feels appropriate. It is awkward, especially at first, since you are constantly moving and passing by foes. However, the swings from your blade become devastatingly powerful in this state. In other words, it more closely resembles fighting on horseback than Twilight Princess had managed, where enemies still take a large number of hits before going down. In that game it is more worthwhile to just pass them by. In Darksiders doing strafing runs may be awkward at first, but when you reduce foes to piles of demon dust with only a couple swings you’ll feel as if you are some kind of bad ass. Perhaps like a horseman of the apocalypse.

I’ve never been a fan of having something controller awkwardly or being inconvenient just because that’s how it is in real life, but at least the developers here comprehend that there should be a greater advantage to horseback than speed. That power makes it worthwhile to try fighting your enemies on the horse. Weaker blows will stun War, almost knocking him off, and stronger blows will bring Ruin herself down. None of these are too devastating and the fight continues to flow as it should. As combat may start to become stale they throw a horse at you and change the rules again.

This is just one of many ways Darksiders keeps you entertained throughout the whole game. What others view as an identity crisis I look at as a swiss army knife. You may not even know you want something, but simply because it’s there gives you a use for it.

While combat was certainly a major focus of the game so are puzzles and exploration. With few exceptions no one puzzle is so difficult you can’t work it out. The pieces are often obvious and by merely experimenting with your surroundings will the solution present itself. This will vary based on the type of player and there are some moments that are foggy until you notice one minute detail. On the whole, however, the puzzles are challenging enough to require some degree of thought while being simple enough that you won’t be keeping a FAQ open just in case.

Each tool is used frequently enough throughout the game that you’ll be left forgetting one, either. Unfortunately not every tool gets used as frequently as others, but I went over some of these detriments already. What counts is you’ll never have an item that was useful once at the start and then never gets used until ten or so hours later, easily forgotten after trying every other tool instead. Nor will you have an item exclusively used in just its origin dungeon. Every item has multiple uses, and even if some are only used towards the start they don’t need to be pulled out for some obscure puzzle towards the end.

The world itself is huge and full of sights to see. I cannot comprehend how people claim the environments to be uninspired when you go between lush forest and jungle environments, desert wastes, ruined cities overtaken by vegetation and ancient graveyards and temples. It’s a visual representation of what to expect from the game. A lot of different styles coming together into a whole. The maps are huge but not empty. There are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore and treasure to find at the most unlikely looking spot.

What’s more is the design of the dungeons themselves. They aren’t all the same thing repeated. The third dungeon, for example, completely breaks away from the Zelda formula in favor of focusing on combat and puzzles focused on avoiding giant sand worms by standing on solid rock and avoiding the loose sand.

Yet even with all of these big ideas being thrown together Darksiders manages to remember the little things that create a lasting impression. Before reaching the second dungeon you meet a character named Ulthane. As you progress to the labyrinth a counter appears in the upper-left hand corner of the screen showing War’s face as well as that of Ulthane. The game doesn’t establish a purpose ahead of time nor does it explain what is being counted or reward for having the highest number. It merely appears, and soon enough as you and the A.I. begin killing foes the counter goes up. A friendly and sporting contest has been created where your kills are tallied against Ulthane’s. Suddenly I found myself trying to steal the A.I.’s kills while using all my best abilities to slaughter everything in sight so I could beat him. I didn’t know what to expect, I just knew I wanted to win.

Turns out the prize is just an additional ability that isn’t important for completing the game. However, it wasn’t the prize that mattered, it was the very existence of the contest. Without saying words you feel you have a better sense of who Ulthane is through this friendly competition of highest number of kills while simultaneously bonding you with a fictional character. Despite how little the character is in the game I always felt an attachment due to this moment.

Do you understand why I enjoy this game yet? It never gets boring because there’s so much to do. It’s more like a theme park with a variety of rides to choose from, such as bumper cars to roller coasters to a fun house, than a simple go-kart track. Both are fun, but one has more to do than the other. As a result you can play the game for as few as twelve hours or as many as twenty and still want to go back and play again.

The story itself isn’t so bad, though its execution is a victim of the medium. If you want a cinematic story with pre-defined characters, you are probably going to try and use cut-scenes to move the plot along. It is established early on that War was tricked into bringing about the end times, or so he believed, and wants to seek out the one who framed him. A lot of interesting things happen early in the game and towards the end, but the middle is only capable of providing a few clues and theories. This is going to happen when you design a game that requires the player to collect x number of any item in a hub-based world. You don’t want the world to change too drastically based on the story, yet releasing more and more plot details could mean adjustment in design philosophy. As a result a lot of filler has to be thrown into the middle.

Darksiders does a decent job of trying to make these cut-scenes interesting, but at times it feels like nothing at all happened. All you gained for your trouble was directions to the next destination. Once you get to the end of the game where all the interesting details start to be given you may no longer even care or it may be too much at once.

While the plot isn’t going to be winning any awards, it’s interesting enough to set up really cool possibilities in a sequel. It’s a bit political, but not on the same level as, say, Dune. However, if any reviewer has spoken bad of the plot, there’s a quick way to check their credibility. Did they say Final Fantasy XIII has a good story or writing in their review of that title? If so, disregard all story related advice from them at once. They don’t know what they are talking about.

I haven’t commented on the art style yet, and I’ve found that it seems to be the one aspect of the game that is truly subjective. Personally, I dig the art. While in some cases the proportions of War’s hands look odd and just-too-damned-big, there are other times it looks awesome. I found the environments to be widely varied and the overgrowth surrounding modern structures to give it a flavor. You understand just how much time has passed since the start of the game. Maybe the problem is that the game doesn’t necessarily label all the areas your requisite “fire dungeon” and “ice dungeon” and “water dungeon, but I found the artwork to be excellent with beautiful to look at landscapes and environments.

Apparently some people found it all “boring”. Others find the adolescent comic-style artwork to be childish and just plain terrible. Others think it’s fantastic! It all depends on what sort of person you are. As I’ve never been an advocate of every-game-must-look-the-same, I like the art style simply because it’s an art style at all.

The way I see it, Darksiders is what games that cannot be innovative should strive to be. A collection of really good ideas put together to create an entertaining and solid experience. Too often you have too many games trying to compete for the same ground. God of War takes on Devil May Cry takes on Ninja Gaiden takes on Bayonetta and so on. Each game has its difference, sure, but at some point they still blend together into one very generic mold. They all must have massive bosses. They all must be cinematic. Every room must have enemies that take forever to cut through.

All you do in those games is fight, fight and fight some more. Well that’s all fine and good, but sometimes it’s nice to do something else as well. Even Bioshock managed to figure out how to stand out by throwing in photography, hacking and other elements to the gameplay to spice it up and make it more than “just another shooter”.
You could try and say Darksiders is a worse or lite version of Zelda, but you’d be wrong since it’s much more of an action game. You could say it is a worse version of God of War, but you’d be wrong again because it has so much more exploration and puzzles to it giving the fights less importance. It isn’t the individual elements, but the whole.

A meat lover’s pizza is not a pepperoni pizza, nor is it a sausage pizza. It is its own food, and it is awesome.

*If you are a girly woman man that prefers vegetables over meat, then replace the deliciously awesome ingredients with suitable rabbit food.

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