Hey everybody! I do apologize for being away from Twitter, Facebook, and all the other places that you know me at. I’ve been on hiatus due to the fact that I was at San Diego Comic-Con, and boy are there a great many things to talk about, including one of the many games that was revealed: Darksiders 2!
On Thursday night, Nicole Sixx and I were invited to a bar , where Joe Madureira and a few others were releasing a first look at the game-play of Darksiders 2, a game that won’t be out until 2012 at the earliest. I must admit though that, upon seeing the amount of people within the room, it was an honor to even join the event, since so few people were present.
Now, Vigil Games is an upcoming game development company that is under the ownership of THQ. They happen to have only three named games under their belt, with two coming out in 2012 and 2013 respectibly. What can be told is that Joe Madureira is a comic artist that first worked on Marvel’s X-Men for a time since 1994 to 1997, leaving only to start on his own comic, a swords and sorcery comic called “Battle Chasers”, a comic owned by Cliffhanger. He has since then worked a bit more with Marvel as well as contributing his work for the famous videogame company Realms. He became the founder and creative director to the youthful Vigil Games, and was the artist that created War of Darksiders, as well as the rest of the 
series.
On the surface, Darksiders 2 seems to have similar game play to it’s predecessor: use your first weapon with one button, use second weapon with the second button, Jump as the third and action as the fourth, with only a few quick keys set to add to any quick change. You go around destroying monsters of various difficult, wander around a great amount of puzzles, and face some tough boss. In the first outing, you were War, a hulking, brooding warrior who was framed for bringing about the apocalypse. To clear his name, War undertakes an epic quest that subjects him to tough enemies and mind-bogglingly difficult puzzles.
In the sequel, you are not War, but Death, one of the other four horsemen of the apocalypse. The plot follows after the first story, and Death is trying to she some light on the conspiracy, knowing full well that War would not join unless it truly was the apocalypse. So he remains in the nether realm, trying to find all the pieces that will break open this conspiracy.
Much like War, you can climb various ledges and walls and glide across various places to get to your destination. You also use various abilities, such as the Abyssal Chain that can shoot a rope to yank enemies to him or him to them. Death can do this, though his seems more astral in appearance.
That being said, the team has taken the core mechanics of the first game and evolved them, while also adding new mechanics. The game play seems to have been given new life. Small things, like giving the enemies a life bar to see how far it needs to go to kill it, or seeing the amount of damage that you have given them really add to the experience. The enemies also drop loot, cash, and other things for you to gather and collect and use to buy things when you’re in a ‘town’.
That’s right! The game is a little more on the RPG side than the first, allowing you to know where you need to go to and gather up weapons and armor. Much like the first game, you have an array of weapons that you can choose from, but unlike the first game, you have armor that you can change into, thus changing Death’s overall appearance. It was fun when the team showed us the claws Death can use, giving him the appearance of a famous clawed hero (only the claws are far bigger on Death). Plus, watching Death holding up a hammer that’s larger than his chest is amusing every time he pulls it out.
Again, much like the first, you can upgrade your weapons, though it seems the team once again outdid themselves with the upgrades. Now you can see the difference as the weapons change upon upgrades (A hint that was given to us when Madureira mentioned that later the Hammer will get spikes upon one upgrade). The armor might have upgrades as well, though we weren’t informed of that. Still, with the new RPG-esque system, the armor might change Death’s speed, slowing him down in order to strengthen him up.
Which leads me to the next thing. Death is FAST. Of course, if anybody read that, they would possibly roll their eyes and tell me how silly I was for saying that, since, you know, Death is mostly bones. But still, watching crawling up a wall is like watching a rabbit racing ahead of a tortoise, in reference to War. When using Death’s main weapon, a scythe called “The Harvester,” it’s amazing to see him just swing his weapon across the room and have a bunch of combat options appear. Within moments, a good legion of enemies are dead and Death is off to deal with the next issue at hand. It is quite lovely.
Before the team ended their demonstration, they showed you a mid-level boss called the Scarab Hulk. It was a classic fight – a massive figure looming over that looks like a cross between a scarab, crab, and a Predator vs. a small, lithe figure. The battle ended quickly, but it was still probably my favorite part that we watched. Joe Mad even said that it was one of his favorite bosses that was made for the game.
It was an awesome experience, and, truth to be told, I am glad to see that this series is receiving a sequel. The first was an awesome game, tarnished slightly by minor issues. The storyline is still as thrilling as ever. To add to the amusement, the few people that were at the party got to hear that the voice of Death is none other then Michael Wincott, a man who is most renown to being a villain in the Crow, the Three Musketeers, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Count of Monte Cristo. A fitting voice, to be sure.
Although I have seen a lot of news speculating upon whether or not the other members of the four horsemen were showing up, when I actually asked, Madureira sort of paused before telling me ‘Maybe’ and ‘I can’t really tell you without breaking in too much of the story’. So, at this time, it seems that the majority of the ideas that were thrown in a year or two ago may still be up on the air, though, at this time, I’m not sure if we will be seeing any of it, including multiplayer. Still, Joe was very thorough about his work and about what he told, including to our favorite Nicci Sixx, who interviewed him about the game. You can find the interview here!
Still, it was an awesome demo, and I do believe it should be an interesting game once it’s released in 2012! Congrats to Vivid Games for creating such an awesome series!
Tags: Comic Con, Darksiders, Darksiders 2, Death, Four Horsemen, Joe Madureira, Vigil Games, War
Lots of pics, did you ever consider putting them in a slide show so they don’t obstruct your artical? Other than that, this was a very analytical….I’m surprised ;p
Surprised eh? We hadn’t seen each other in like 10 or so years man..
I have done my own things…artistically.
The graphics look uncanny, not much of a gamer, but I might just check this out.
It indeed feels a bit like the first one in graphics, though a bit more enhanced, thus when a skeleton beast appeared out of nowhere like, twenty feet away, I was half-blind and still could see it. Plus the dragons at the bottom was something I enjoyed watching when they brought them up.