Quick Critique: Darksiders 2 (Patreon)

I didn't spend a lot of time with Darksiders 2, primarily because that is a game that just doesn't work right. It hard locked the system five seconds after starting it for the very first time. I hadn't even gotten into the game; it was just the THQ splash screen and that's where it locked up. Then it locked up on me AGAIN not an hour later while I was in the first dungeon and I called it quits. It took me longer to download the game than the time I actually spent playing. And because it crashed my system, it corrupted the other download I had started and the Wii U makes you delete the file and start all over again, so it wasted even more of my time.

From my short stint with DS2 and aside from the crashing, I didn't have fun. DS1 was more of a combat-focused Zelda game, but this one is just a button mashing beat 'em up. The UI is awful, enemies respawn while you're still in the room, the controls are poorly mapped and unresponsive at that, the camera is too close and gets stuck on objects, and it didn't do anything interesting or lead me to believe interesting things would be coming later. The story and lore are way up its own butt with self-seriousness and trying to make you think it's really deep or the characters are tough. The best part of the series is Joe Mad's artwork, but from my rather short time with it, I fought mainly generic skeletons and brown suits of armor on brown backgrounds so the flavor didn't come through.

On the plus side, it inspired me to go back and read through Battle Chasers again. That comic is dumb in some really fun ways. I hope the upcoming game is as ridiculous and hammy as those comics.