Darksiders II

The first Darksiders was a blatant rip-off of (some might say “homage to”) the The Legend of Zelda. While it maintains much of that formula, the sequel feels a little more like its own thing. There’s more of an emphasis on acrobatic platforming complete with pillar jumping, vaults, wall-running and… er… okay it’s a rip-off of Prince of Persia this time, but who cares, it’s a formula that works!

The game keeps pushing you along from one puzzle room to the next and along the way you earn more and more advanced tools for passing obstacles. There’s still the pop gun, portal gun and hookshot thingy, but now you can also split into two characters, control ghosts and do a little time travelling. These new skills make for a couple really brain-twisting puzzles near the end of the game.

There is still quite a bit of hacking and slashing between the brainy stuff. A few of the battles are fun, but, for the most part combat is repetitive and uninteresting and can be reduced to spastic button mashing. The first game was a tad more sophisticated in its fighting controls.

As for the story, it just as convoluted and unintelligible as the it was in Darksiders. There’s a bit less of the bible fan-fiction feeling here, but still, I never really gave a crap about anything that was going on. The dialogue sounds like it was taken word-for-word out of the Lord of the Rings screenplay. Just replace “Mordor” with “The Corruption.”