Mayhem-Online

Posts Tagged ‘Darksiders’

I have by no means finished this game and I think it will take me a bit longer to finish than most avid gamers since I’m not great at playing these types of games however a bit of persistence and grinding of teeth and I should finish it… sometime.

Anyway at this stage I have yet to face off the first major boss. Actually no I have started and died rather quickly but will pick up where I left off after I have a bit of a break from playing video games. I think when I picked up this game it was too soon after finishing Bayonetta and I was still in that game mode of thinking. This one you definitely have to think differently.

There seem to be three levels of bosses you face during the course of the game. The lower level bosses are ones that are new types of high-level demons that after you defeat the first time around, they’ll begin appearing regularly in other areas. They can be quite a nuisance to you later in the game when you have a lot of the minion demons and whatnot running around trying to slice you up and one sub-boss trying to hack you or poison you to death as well. Then there are the 2nd level of bosses. These are bigger bosses who take a bit of killing and usually there are other little minions running around getting in your way while you tackle the big guy. Once these are defeated, presumably you do not see them again. And finally there are the big bosses, namely the ones at the top of the food chain who thankfully don’t have lots of minions running around getting in your way but are still a pain in the butt to try and kill.

War with The Watcher (voiced by Mark Hamil)

Now the part that probably gave me the most gripe was the consistant row of sub-boss/minion battles before and after a 2nd level boss battle without giving you time to scratch yourself or heal properly. This was also where I noticed some large amount of blurring of the screen when the action was happening, making it difficult to see what was going on. First off this is around Twilight Cathedral which probably some people had no problems getting through but I found annoying. The puzzles themselves were good, very good in fact I really enjoyed trying to solve them, I’m referring to the fights though. First off one of the first sub-level bosses you meet is a crystal armored demon. You meet him in a room on his own and so begins the fight. Takes a bit to kill him and obviously you have to watch out for his crystal/ice attacks since they spread out around him. The funny part about this battle for me was that he got stuck behind the platform where the sword was located and although that could have been ideal for me to go up and slice and dice him, every time I got close he unleashed his crystal/ice attack. I eventually managed to shake him loose and then killed him, but that was my first glitch of the game. The second sub-level boss was one that has poisonous ooze and gasses coming out of him. The easiest, and obvious, thing to do was to remain at a distance and use your newly collected cross-blade to kill him. Took a bit of time but eventually he exploded and all was well.

War fights The Jailer

Moving on after this, solving various puzzles, you get to an area that you know as soon as you enter it, it will be a boss fight of some type and sure enough it was. It was the Jailer, whom I had seen various images and videos of prior to the games release. He would throw some of the minion demons at you while slowly trudging around the floor and if he got too close to you he’d take a swipe with the cage that he carries. It was kind of funny when he’d even knock his own minions about. The Watcher gives you a tip on how to try and bring him down. Without his minions in the way its easy to attack The Jailer, but you need time to lock onto The Jailer and the silly minion demons just keep getting in the way. Eventually I got my first hit and he went down, started slicing the crap out of him and then he gets up again and goes into a complete berserk mode where he just screams and starts bashing anything and everything for a few minutes. After that he calms down a bit and the whole thing starts again. The second time I got him, I unfortunately got caught in the corner of the room – his minions kind of locked me in there and that was when he went into his rage mode – War got smushed about a bit. It was after this that the vision got blurry, I don’t know if this was supposed to be because of what happened to War or it was supposed to go like that or not but it made it difficult to continue the fight until it dissipated.

After finally taking the Jailer down, and with very little health left and no extra health to aid me I moved on to the next room that now becomes available – turns out to be an elevator. After solving the problem at the bottom of the elevator, a group of minion demons come racing through along with this poisonous sub-level boss Although I battled hard I knew that with little left of his health he would not last long especially if the poisonous bastard spewed any of his gasses and liquids onto him. I pretty much had to let him die so I could start it over again. Thankfully with this game you don’t have to restart the level by playing out against the Jailer once more. Once you’ve defeated him that’s it. I played a bit of a trick on the demons and their poisonous leader though, on my second go at them. Because the minion demons get in the way and make it easier for the sub-level boss to get at you, I ran back into the elevator, forcing all of them barring their boss to jump on with me. I activated it and it shut out the boss but kept in the demon minions, allowing me to attack and kill them easily without being distracted by the other guy. I then went back down and found him cowering in a corner in the next room lol. He was then much easier to defeat on his own.

After solving the next few puzzles, I ended up in a new room with more enemies. Now what I have to point out here is this, along the way there were no health boxes anywhere in site, lots of soul boxes but I only found one health box which was in the area I’d arrived to start the next battle. In this ‘final’ battle I barely made it through. First off you face off against a crystal armored demon and a few minions. As soon as they are defeated, 3 more minion demons and a poisonous sub-level boss appears. Then as soon as you defeat them, two more crystal armored demons appear. I was running out of health again by this time but managed to avoid the worst of their attacks by jumping over them (of which I have to point out that War’s reaction time is too slow, at least it was for me) and killed them with a smidgen of health left. Luckily when you exit the room you get out closer to the exit of the cathedral, where I quickly headed over to where Vulgrim was waiting and healed War up.

First major boss Tiamat

I knew that the major boss, Tiamat would be difficult – it would have to be after what War had just gone through lol. But again, I guess I got frustrated at the slow reaction time for War at trying to move him around. Anyway I know how you are supposed to avoid and defeat Tiamat, but as I said getting War to move the way I want him to is the only thing that’s probably slowing me down. Of course, as I have also mentioned before, I’m not one of these skilled video gamers who have great hand-eye coordination so my level of gaming experience is probably too low for me to think that I could defeat Tiamat easily or get through some of these levels easily either.

I will still go on and say that so far Darksiders is still a great game. I love the world, War is a great character, the puzzles are cool – sometimes frustrating but once you work them out you go “Oh wow, that was pretty clever actually” and the action is great too.

I will need to get back into the game in the near future though, because at the end of the month I’ll be picking up my next game which I will definitely be busy playing – Mass Effect 2

I’ve been spending the holidays cleaning out a lot of crap from the garage and other rooms in the house. I am by no means finished as there’s still a bit I could go through but its too late now, I’ll be stuck glued to the TV with aching wrists and fingers by the end of the week (which is 3 days from now if the end of the week ends on Sunday).

It was payday today and also release day for a couple of cool games one of which I’d already pre-ordered, the other I had played the demo of and had been umming and ahhing over wheter to get it or not – as you can see I got it ^_^. Of  course the hardest decision now is which one do I start with first?

I will, however, be doing other stuff as I can get some anime raws screencapped while playing since I don’t have to do much except get the program running – so there’s still work being done though not as much as there should be.

Will post a review of either or both games in the next couple of days.