I can still remember vividly playing this on its original release back in 2010. I was blown away by the amazing visuals, cracking combat and Zelda like puzzle solving exploration. It was surprising that it was the sequel that was first given the remastered treatment but I held out hope that this original would also be brought back for a new generation to enjoy. That hope paid off, and it was with a big smile on my face that Darksiders ‘Warmastered Edition’ finally brought the legendary member of the famous Four Horseman to Xbox One and Playstation 4. It was time to go to War!
Darksiders still has one of the best opening cut scenes to any video game and it beautifully sets the scene of the battle between the forces of Heaven and Hell and how the all powerful Charred Council forged a balance between the two sides. The Council created the Four Horseman to police the balance and enforce their rules and laws. During this time, a third side emerged and the Kingdom of Man became the reason for a true between all sides. The condition relied on seven seals, that would only be broken when Man was ready to join in the Endwar. All sounds pretty awesome already huh?
The action picks up the Endwar seemingly beginning on what appears to be modern day earth, demons appear from dark portals and the Hellguard of Heaven being their attack on them. The Horseman War, believing that the Horseman have been summoned to join this Endwar, begins to fight with all his fury and power. But something is very wrong and soon War finds himself before the Charred Council, accused of starting the End War without permission and threatening the balance without the seven seals every being broken. Stripped of his true power by the council and bound to a demon Watcher to keep him in check, War demands to be sent back to Earth to find out what happened and who the real traitors are.
The Warmastered Edition brings the game up to date with 60FPS combat and 1080p resolution. Now I always question when cell shaded visuals are given a remastered status, but the truth is that the visuals are sharper with more polished textures making them even more striking in character design and environments than on its original release. Combined with a soundtrack and music that matches every location, cut scene to create a truly fantastical world to run around and explore. Finally Darksiders has an amazing all star voice cast with Liam O’Brien, Fred Tatascoire and Troy Baker. Biggest surprise is that Mark Hamill voices The Watcher, who sounds eerily like The Joker making a great bit of fun to trigger his dialogue by summoning the demon every now and then.
Gameplay mixes combat inspired by hack n slash titles such as Devil May Cry with exploration and puzzle sections which has a distinct Zelda like feel to them. Returning to Earth, a hundred years where the demon won the end battle with The Destroyer having wiped out humanity and defeated the army of Heaven. War finds he must reluctantly work with the demon Samael, and bring him the hearts of the four Tower Guardians that protect The Destroyer so War can enter the tower to confront him. This leads to four distinct locations to travel to and each offers different puzzles to solve and enemies to fight.
I love that War progressively regains some of his former power by collecting new abilities that help him along the way such as new traversal skills, some very much inspired by well known adventuring games but it all works so well you will forgive it so easily. The four guardians offer very different boss battle encounters but all feel like a really epic fight which encourages the player to use different techniques to defeat them by upgraded War’s combat skills, moves and weapons along the journey.
Darksiders Warmastered Edition is a superb reminder of just how much staggering potential this series had before the untimely folding of its then publisher, THQ. It was the game that launched one of the promising adventure series for non Nintendo consoles especially the Xbox 360 at time of launch as the console lacked a game like it and ironically, now in 2016 with the Xbox One, it still lacks a quality third person adventure series like Darksiders. It has so much gameplay and replay value that alone it would be worthy of a place in your collection right now but the fact that it was released on both consoles for a bewildering budget price really makes it a no brainer. It has even been enhanced for 4K playing on PS4 Pro at no additional cost.
Playing on Xbox One I did find that it suffered some input lag especially when trying to navigate tricky jumping sections leading to some very frustrating cheap deaths. Also some audio cues failed to trigger leaving some action sequences feeling a little flat. But overall this is a superb must have game to have which stands out among all the heavy AAA game releases right now and deserves your attention. I only hope that should this release show the newly formed THQ Nordic developer that there is real hunger from fans to see a third and trilogy closing game where all the Horsemen get a chance to shine.
But with a budget price point and gameplay just as fun as it was six years ago, Darksiders Warmastered Edition is certainly worth going to War once again with.
