Darksiders (PlayStation 3)

Pros: Hack and slash with guided pseudo-autonomy/free-roam (which comedically suits the divinity aspect of the story line), and easy uncomplicated combos for fluid combat. The music was very decent, too.

Cons: Camera view(s) blow and ruined the fun for me. Also, the look of the game is just too rough and colorful which made it seem cartoony and uninteresting (almost Power Ranger-esque) for such an epic setting.

Summary: The concept is fun: sci-fi angels vs. b-movie demons and you're the abusive legal guardian putting them in timeout. It's tough to come up with original ideas these days, especially in the video game world, and this one had just enough twist on it to entertain me, so I picked it up used (just a week, or so, after release).

War, the protagonist of the story, is a big dude, and from a third person prospective I would have REALLY appreciated the option of zooming out, a LOT. War just takes up an unnecessarily large part of the player's view, and honestly, he's not too fanciful of sight. To me he looks like a character from a Dragon Lance book with bulky extremities made of gray rock (think arms and legs of "Thing" from Fantastic 4, but gray in color, and throw a Transformer lookin' demon logo on one of his gauntlets that lights up) whom swiftly stomps and dashes about. Detail of War aside, he's just too big to take up so much of the screen.

How so? Well, the general and quest significant items, active environment pieces, monsters and random NPC's of the game are scattered about in every direction: above you, below you, behind you, off in the distance, et cetera. Since there's a bit of free-roam you have a hard time seeing what you wanna see, let alone getting a full view of playable environment. The developers tried to mend this by allowing the right stick of the PS3 control to move the camera angle 360 degrees around, high and low, ceiling and floor, literally anywhere you wanna look. The problem, however, is that War is still a big piece of the screen regardless of which point of view you're looking from.

This problem is something I'm usually able to get past. The Tomb Raider series, for instance, had a bummer camera issue. I never played beyond Tomb Raider 2, but I managed well enough because the aspect that exacerbates the Darksiders camera problem (which I'm going to mention in the next paragraph) didn't exist in Tomb Raider.

The camera issue gets really frustrating when a larger monster rushes and you can't keep it in view long enough to figure out what you want to do. This forces you, the player, to run or dash away to create a cushion of space so you can see what you want to see and decide where you wanna go and what you want to do. War has the strength and power to slaughter just about anything that comes at him, but in these cases you'll find yourself taking more time and more damage than necessary because you can't see what's going on so, again, you're running all over the place.

I think the developers saw this as an issue as well, and attempted to remedy it by adding an auto-face/ lock-target button (R2 on PS3 ...i think). Unfortunately, the problem is withstanding. War is just too big on the screen. Despite being able to run circles around the monsters and attack them from every angle, you still have a hard time keeping them in view.

The resulting gameplay is this: running around and fighting while consistently looking in directions other than the direction you're running in. Thus, you're running to or evading trouble, and into ______... I dunno, can't keep track, and in unexplored areas it's just retarded the amount of time I found myself taking to explore areas just because I wanted a clearer view.

To put a find point on it, this game had strong similarities to the Soul Reaver titles as far as gameplay in a kinda, sorta, but not really free-roam environment since the storyline allowed and inhibited where you could and couldn't travel -- and I really enjoyed those games!

Darksiders, while cheesing the look of the game up by adding cartoony, sci-fi, details to the characters (Google: Power Rangers Goldar for an idea of what the angels look like, minus the Altered Beast aspect), the game had potential to be more fun than titles of similar play by making the movement and combat faster and more fluid. Unfortunately, the camera view just screwed it all up and after less than five hours of play stretched over two or so days, I've decided to return it to the gracious gaming store I purchased it from whom allows a return of any used game for any reason so long as it's within seven days.

End Result: Disappointed.

Updated on Feb 14, 2010

Addendum: The screenshots available on here show views that are contrary to my complaint of the camera vs. character. What they don't mention, though, is that the only time the camera zooms away from War is when you lock on to your target by using the autoface option by holding down R2. Problem: aside from the Destroyer in the lava pit that dwarfs War, they're all moving, and since you're locked on to whatever target you've chosen, you can't see anything but the target... specifically, you can't see where you want to run when the target is running at you.