When players first heard the news that Darksiders Genesis would be a prequel to the original series and feature an isometric, top-down perspective instead of the franchise’s normal third-person follow camera, many were worried the game would be a watered-down version of what they were used to. However, despite the new camera angles and a more enhanced focus on co-op gameplay, Darksiders Genesis provides a ton of enjoyment for both returning players and those new to the series, and feels more like an evolution of the Darksiders formula than a simplification of it.
The plot of Darksiders Genesis takes place thousands of years before the events of the first three games and sees War, the protagonist of the original Darksiders, teaming up with Strife, this entry’s new playable Horseman of the Apocalypse. The two are tasked with stopping Lucifer from upsetting the balance between Heaven and Hell, and they do so by traveling to a multitude of various unconnected levels, defeating hordes upon hordes of both minor and major demons, and upgrading their magic powers and equipment via discovering items in the world and buying them from friendly NPCs in the game’s main hub area.
Players utilizing the game’s online or local split-screen co-op functions can play as either Strife or War, but people choosing to play the game solo can switch between the two characters instantly, utilizing the best aspects of each for any given situation. War retains nearly all of his moves from the first Darksiders game and plays practically identical to his original entry, bringing to mind a style of gameplay quite reminiscent of the PlayStation 2 God of War titles, while new series protagonist Strife play more like a simplified version of Dante from the Devil May Cry series, utilizing twin pistols which, when combined with the game’s isometric camera, can quick turn Darksiders Genesis from a hack-and-slash into a twin-stick shooter.
Darksiders’ levels are vast and winding, with multiple optional items and battles hidden away for those who go looking for them. The minute-to-minute gameplay of Darksiders Genesis sees the player alternating between clearing arenas of enemies and solving environmental puzzles, occasionally doing both at once. Although the game’s level design gives the impression of co-operative play optimization, with multiple areas featuring doors which must be opened by pressing two different switches or pulling two separate levers at the same time, thankfully Darksiders Genesis’ solo mode allows for these puzzles to be solved in a myriad of similar but varying ways.
Combat is fast and fluid, although the zoomed-out camera can sometimes make things on-screen more confusing than they should be, and even though Darksiders Genesis displays a shaded silhouette around the player characters when they are obscured by the environment the same amount of visibility is not applied to the game’s enemies, which can often lead to surprise attacks cause by poor camera placement. The platform hopping and wall/pole jumping, of which there is altogether slightly too much of, is also made unnecessarily difficult by the inability to control the game’s camera, and often leads to misjudged distances and angles.
The levels in Darksiders Genesis are surrounded by bottomless pits and often dotted with one-hit-kill environmental hazards, but the game graciously opts for the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice style of bottomless pits rather than the Dark Souls brand, meaning that when players fall in (and thanks to the aforementioned uncontrollable camera angles, it’s almost guaranteed they will at some point) instead of restarting the level the player simply respawns near the last piece of solid ground they safely touched with slightly less health than before. It’s a forgiving necessity in Darksiders Genesis, and even when one of the Horsemen falls during combat the player need only wait a few seconds before they are allowed to return. A true death only happens when both Strife and War are defeated, and then the game still only bumps the player back to the most recent autosave, generally at the beginning of whatever combat encounter caused the deaths to occur.
The relationship between War and Strife, brothers sworn to do their murderous Heavenly duty, begins with the standard “buddy cop” trope of War, the stoic professional, being constantly exasperated with Strife, the wise-cracking up-and-comer, with the latter being equally flabbergasted at War’s constant melancholy. While the voice acting is well-delivered the archetypes themselves feel incredible generic at first, but throughout Darksiders Genesis’ story layers of both characters are peeled away and players are left with a much better sense of who the two Horsemen are by the story’s conclusion. Small touches of dialog during combat and exploratory sections, like War chiding Strife for wearing a silly mask when the other starts to complain about his visor fogging up due to the current level’s heat, go a long way towards establishing character emotions and motivations.
One of the most immediately enjoyable aspects of Darksiders Genesis is the ability to instantly summon a horse upon command, executed by simply tapping the L1 and R1 buttons together. While only available in the more sprawling areas of Genesis, this simple button combination will, more often than not, result in the Horsemen’s titular animals rising from out of the ground underneath the player instantly, allowing for the quickest transfer from ground combat to horse combat in recent video game memory, and one which proves invaluable for escaping a battle at the last second. Both Strife and War have access to a large majority of their attacks from horseback, and the faster movement speed the steeds bring allows for quick traversal of some of Darksiders’ larger areas.
Like most level-based games, Darksiders Genesis feels like it was created to be taken in small chunks, with each story mission and location lasting roughly between twenty to thirty minutes in length, usually culminating in a boss battle. Level designs are varied enough so it doesn’t constantly feel as if players are simply doing the same things over and over, and a well-regulated influx of new progression-tied abilities, like War’s Vorpal Blade and Strife’s Void Bomb, help to keep puzzles fresh and interesting.
Darksiders Genesis released recently for the PC and Google Stadia, with PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions planned for February 2020. This review is based on the Google Stadia version of Darksiders Genesis, and as such the issue of performance must be discussed. Although the game ran smoothly through the Google Stadia Chromecast Ultra for televisions, a curious glitch which saw the Stadia logo not disappearing during gameplay (example pictured above) occurred nearly fifty percent of the time Darksiders Genesis was tested on the program’s mobile feature. The zoomed-out camera, too, when combined with a mobile device’s relatively minuscule display, also made determining what was happening on screen at any given point rather difficult. When running on Google Stadia through a PC’s internet connection the game performed adequately, although the occasional dip in graphical fidelity (apparently due to bandwidth) easily made the Chromecast Ultra version an ultimately better experience.
Nothing about Darksiders Genesis’ gameplay feels like a step backwards, although the cheaper price, camera angles, and lack of fully-animated cutscenes make the game appear at first glance to be nothing more than a Diablo Immortal style arena loot-cycle ripoff. Thankfully, this is a complete Darksiders experience, and although the overall presentation may feel a little different the game still contains all of the brutal hack-and-slash spectacle fighting gameplay fans of the series know and love.
Throughout its campaign, Darksiders Gensis found ways to constantly change itself and improve upon its own formula, and the level-by-level progression system which sees players regularly returning to the hub world and upgrading their spells and equipment from the souls and items they’ve collected while playing makes for an enjoyable method of acquiring new abilities. While the story itself boils down to a rather generic video game plot, the characters involved are charismatic and interesting, and the classic God of War and Devil May Cry style of sword-flailing and bullet-showering stayed enjoyable from the beginning of the game to the end. Darksiders Genesis is a game which can appeal to longtime series fans and newcomers alike, and anyone tangentially interested in the action-RPG genre should give it a chance.
Next: Darksiders Genesis Is More Expensive On Stadia Than PC
Darksiders Genesis is available for PC and Google Stadia. A Stadia code was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.
