The environment itself is also a pain to navigate, since few onscreen markers point you forward, and the map doesn’t display your exact position. More importantly, large environment objects (like trees and cliffs walls) can come between you and the camera, obscuring your view of the action.
The view makes it easier for friends to play together, but it also means the action feels distant and less intense. The biggest shift for Darksiders Genesis is its fixed overhead camera. Whether solo or with a friend, Genesis’ puzzles are never mentally taxing, but I was usually thankful for a break in the action. In single-player, these puzzles require a little more legwork, since you have to use bombs to trigger multiple timed switches or make use of other environmental tricks to navigate a space.
#DARKSIDERS GENESIS PS4 SERIES#
In co-op, these puzzles ask War and Strife to work together to throw a series of switches, or use their unique skills to send electrical orbs across the room to power ancient artifacts. Genesis offers some respite with a handful of environmental puzzles. This forced me to return to old levels (or a repeatable combat area) to tear through endless fodder in the hopes of finding more cores – an incredibly soul-sucking process. Each level has a recommended power rank, and those requirements quickly outpaced my horsemens' abilities. The problems with this system are exacerbated when you need to grind for cores – and you will need to grind. Unfortunately, these enemy cores drop randomly, which means you can fight entire enemy hordes without a guaranteed reward. Cores also offer other added bonuses, such as giving your attacks a chance to restore your health. War and Strife level up by equipping creature cores, which boost your horsemens’ strength and health pools. The joys of combat quickly turn to anguish as the difficulty escalates. I enjoy the mix of abilities that both horsemen provide, and Genesis generally succeeds at emulating Darksiders' fast-paced action from a new camera perspective. In contrast, Strife darts around the battlefield and rains fire from the barrels of his twin pistols. Each character feels impressively unique in combat. War is a slow-moving, close-quarters tank, with many sword combos reminiscent of his abilities from the original Darksiders. For this prequel, Developer Airship Syndicate repackages many of Darksiders' signature aspects into a new container just in time for the holidays, but this delivery is filled with more packing peanuts than presents.įrom the start, Genesis allows up to two players to control Strife and War (solo players can freely switch between the two). Darksiders' experimentation continues with Genesis, a co-op friendly, top-down action game. When Darksiders III released in 2018, it incorporated elements of From Software's Souls games. Darksiders II added Diablo-inspired loot into that equation. The original game offered a fun mix of combat and puzzle dungeons, like a fusion of God of War and The Legend of Zelda. War and Strife must hunt down these masters, gather information, and ultimately fight their way through a tangled, demonic conspiracy that threatens to forever upset the Balance and unravel all of creation.Darksiders is a shape-shifting franchise. Still reeling from the events on Eden, WAR and STRIFE have been given a new assignment - LUCIFER, the enigmatic and deceptive demon king, has been plotting to upset the Balance by granting power to master demons throughout Hell. What followed was a bloody battle on Eden where the Horsemen, obeying the will of the Council, annihilated the Nephilim. However, this power came at a tragic cost: the Horsemen were ordered to use their newfound strength to wipe out the rest of their kind. Carrying out their orders are THE HORSEMEN, Nephilim (powerful beings spawned from the unnatural union of angels and demons) who have pledged themselves to the Council and been granted immense power.