Darksiders (2010) and Darksiders 2 (2012)

It’s Not Death That You Should Fear

Recently, I’ve been trying to think of ways to make it easier to accomplish these reviews; things to make my reviews easier. It’s occurred to me that most critics review one episode of a TV show at a time, whereas I review entire seasons in each review. Well I put out a lot of reviews, and should spread those out so I can get more reviews out of one DVD set. …That being said, today I’m reviewing two games in the same review. I don’t know why, but even as I already own Tomb Raider and know of the existence of Bioshock Infinite, I decided now was the time to play two games in the same series that only ever vaguely interested me. I own the first one because I bought it used for $20, and I could borrow the second one from my friend Hookah, but there was clearly no reason to be playing this instead of Tomb Raider. Either way, I felt like I had to, so I did. Here is my review for the Darksiders series. Darksiders was developed by Vigil Games, published by THQ, with designs by Joe Madureira, and with the voices of Liam O’Brien, Mark Hamill, Phil LaMarr, Troy Baker, Moon Bloodgood, Lani Minella, Vernon Wells, Keith Szarabajka, J.B. Blanc, and Fred Tatasciore. Darksiders II includes the voices of Michael Wincott, Simon Templeman, André Sogliuzzo, Claudia Christian, Phil Proctor, Barry Dennen, Jamieson Price, Jessica Straus, and Nick Jameson.

For all my atheist readers, Heaven and Hell do not get along. In fact, one could say that they are at war. And Earth is often caught in the middle of that war. A balance is maintained by a group called “The Charred Council (Fred Tatasciore)” using the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – War (Liam O’Brien), Death (Michael Wincott), and for some reason Strife and Fury instead of Conquest and Famine. The balance is broken and war breaks out on Earth, and War awakens to restore the balance, but alone and depowered because the necessary paperwork was not filed to summon the Horsemen, so he is defeated by a demon called Straga (Troy Baker). The Charred Council accuses War of jumping the gun and bringing on the destruction of humanity, but War demands a chance to prove his innocence. They agree to send him back to Earth, bound to an annoyance known as The Watcher (Mark Hamill) and still depowered, to give him the chance to find out who was behind his premature evacuation.

In a fairly chronologically confusing setup, we now play as Death, who has set his sights on clearing his brother’s name by reviving humanity using the Well of Souls. I guess this part takes place just after War goes to Earth and gets defeated, so we’re playing this part in the several hundred years while War is talking to the Charred Council. Death first goes to the Crowfather (Keith Szarabajka) – who is NOT Bruce Lee – to find out what he must do, but Crowfather is all bitchy because Death made him carry around an amulet filled with the souls of the Nephilim who didn’t turn out to be Horsemen material and were then killed by the Horsemen. Death then goes to the Forge Lands, and finds that a lot of the realms are being taken over by this Corruption stuff that is kind of Death’s fault because it’s all caused by this guy named Absalom (Simon Templeman) that Death killed a while ago.

These games were fine for what they were, but there were issues to be had with them. None of these problems were really with the story … because I wasn’t paying that much attention to it. Well, I was paying attention to it, and I even played the game twice, but it was fairly inconsequential. I like a game that incorporates the Four Horseman. I’ve had a fascination with them ever since I first learned about them … in Marvel comic books. Of course it wasn’t in the Bible! I ain’t reading that thing! But that also means that I was thrown off because the Four Horsemen in this game didn’t include Pestilence and Famine, which wasn’t even accurate to the Bible that says it was Conquest and Famine they changed for their game. But Conquest doesn’t even seem to fit into the group, so I’m okay with him being gone. And Famine and Pestilence would just be sickly and frail, so they probably wouldn’t fit this game either. But the biggest problem of all is how little sense Death makes in Darksiders 2. How the hell is Death’s ultimate goal in the game to bring all of the humans back to life? Someone needs to change his fuckin’ name before trying that bullshit.

I really appreciated the look of this game, and mostly because the creative direction was left in the hands of my favorite comic book artist: Joe Madureira. This guy’s art is the bomb! I literally have one of his pictures as a poster on my wall AND as the desktop of my computer. So I love the artwork that created the game, but I did feel that the atmosphere of the first game didn’t really fit the theme of the game. It seemed a little too bright and almost cartoony while they were going for a darker theme. There were levels that seemed to reflect it better – such as the spider level – but the greater majority felt like they should’ve been darker. War definitely benefited from Madureira’s artwork because he loves to make heavily armored and intricate characters, and that fit the look of War really well. But then Darksiders 2 comes around and Death feels like a topless member of Slipknot. But aspects of Death can be changed, which is something that’s a little problematic for me. Part of me appreciates it when the gear I change actually changes the gear being carried by my character, but another part of me hates that my logical side needs to have the best equipment on while the artistic side of me wants my character’s gear to match and look badass.

Okay, the biggest annoyance I had with the game all came from the gameplay. The gameplay itself could be boiled down to your basic hack-and-slash game, which is fine by me. It’s a solid stress relief to hop into a mindless game and beat the shit out of your X button. The problem I had with both games was how much they flat out stole from other games. I had heard a little about this stuff before I even played the game. I was told that it was very similar to God of War meets Zelda, which is definitely true. Hack-and-slash games all kind of feel like God of War, and some of the music in the first game felt like it was taken right off the soundtrack. And the puzzles were vaguely Zelda, but the maps were EXACTLY Zelda. They even have the skull to indicate where the boss is located. But the thievery does not stop there. They have a portal gun in the game! It’s not a gun, but it is stolen straight out of Portal. The portals are even blue and orange! You can’t just call it a Voidwalker and fool me, Darksiders! And the Abyssal Chain is straight up the hookshot from Zelda. At least for Darksiders 2 they changed it enough by making it a spectral hand that Death reached out with. They have an aerial battle where War rides a griffin that feels very Starfox as well. Darksiders 2 changed the gameplay a lot, but they did not change the amount that it was all stolen. Instead of your basic hack-and-slash, it became more of a Diablo-esque dungeon crawler, where you were rewarded with loot and gold instead of the God of War-style soul orbs. This was also a bummer because you could often get better gear from fighting random weak creatures than you could from surviving 100 levels of the Crucible, or 10 levels of the Soul Arbiter’s Maze. Then, they decided they needed to get some quality platforming in their game. What better place than Prince of Persia? They had all the wall running that helped the Prince of Persia games be so good, but lacked the polish that made them great. And the big colossus boss battle was pretty reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus, appropriately. I actually got to the point with these games that I was thinking that I had not played enough games to accurately pick out every game that they were stealing from. The biggest annoying power wasn’t actually stolen from anything, but it was annoying for an entirely different reason. You’re not able to enter the realm of the spider people until you get the ability to make your horse – Ruin – run between two pillars to cross a chasm. The reason I found this annoying was that this was the ONLY TIME YOU EVER USE THIS POWER! What a fuckin’ waste!

The achievements in these games weren’t that bad. I was able to get all of them in both games. They weren’t easy, but plenty were annoying. They both did a lot with collectables which means you’ll be wandering around the maps over and over. Darksiders 1 even had one that was for riding a certain amount on horseback, which meant I spent a lot of time running around in circles on horseback since I didn’t do nearly enough normally. You’ll also probably want to play the game twice to get all the achievements, which makes it much easier while also making it take more time. But the most annoying achievement is the one you get for just getting the portal ability in Darksiders 2, because they called it “I can has cake.” Come on! You’re not even trying to mask that you steal from other games!

Darksiders and Darksiders 2 were decent enough games with next to no story, fantastic art design by Joe Madureira, and some fun and mindless hack-and-slash action. The biggest problem I took with the game was how clearly and blatantly they assembled their game with the cobbled parts of better games. I just don’t know if I can call this game worth buying. It’s okay, but there are better ways to spend your money. If you can get them super cheap, or if you can rent or borrow them, they’re decent enough to play if you have nothing else to play. Darksiders and Darksiders 2 gets “You would fight this war alone?” out of “The greater risk is to do nothing.”

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Alien Resurrection (1997)

I’m the Monster’s Mother.

We’ve come to the conclusion of the Alien series, but not quite to the end of the movies that I’ll be reviewing that are like it.  I feel like the review series wouldn’t be complete if I neglected to review the film that finds out what happens when Aliens come up against Predators, which also means I should review Predator.  But that’ll come in the next couple of days.  Today is the final Alien movie, which I remember being fairly fond of for whatever reason, but Rotten Tomatoes still does not show this movie favor.  Who will be wrong?  Rotten Tomatoes, obviously, but I’ll write some words to explain why.  First, I’m awesome and always right.  Second, my review of Alien Resurrection, written by Joss Whedon, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dan Hedaya, Brad Dourif, J.E. Freeman, Michael Wincott, Gary Dourdan, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Kim Flowers, Raymond Cruz, and Leland Orser.

Since they killed Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the previous movie, we’re going to have to be introduced to our new protagonist of the Alien series.  That comes in the form of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) … wait … Cloning?  Oh movie…  You are the sillies.  Ellen Ripley has been cloned because humanity really wants to get its hands on the creature that seems to do nothing but kill them and her clone would have the queen in her chest.  They successfully clone her and remove the queen, but keep her alive for study because her DNA has been mixed up with that of the Xenomorph queen.  After a while, the crew of the mercenary ship called the Betty show up with a bunch of people in stasis for General Perez (Dan Hedaya), who wants to use the people as hosts for the aliens.  Unbeknownst to the crew of the Betty, their newest member and engineer Annalee Call (Winona Ryder), joined up with them to get onto the ship and kill Ripley and the alien menace, but she’s too late because the Xenomorphs have already escaped and gotten to what they do best.

I still like this movie.  It’s still not really comparable to Alien or Aliens, but it was lucky enough to follow Alien3, making it that much better in comparison.  Also, Joss Whedon wrote it, so it probably gets some love just for that.  Of course, I didn’t know that until this viewing and I still thought it was pretty good.  Once you get past the initial annoyance of the return of Ripley being based on cloning, you can let yourself enjoy the movie.  Sure, the cloning thing is a bit of an easy solution to a problem, but it also opens up for some things that I found interesting, like Ripley basically being a superhero with super strength, senses, and acidic blood.  It also opened the story up for some things that I didn’t dig on very much, like the hybrid alien.  Sure, it looked icky as hell, but the Xenomorphs are way scarier and far more badass-looking.  For instance, I’m going to be a little afraid of an alien with no nose and dripping white skin, but then I’m going to look down and see its tiny alien boobies that it has for some reason and I’ll probably be dying laughing.  And that’s not a good thing when the regular Xenomorphs look as awesome as they’ve ever looked in this movie.  They have never been constantly wetter.  The rest of the story kind of unfolds as you’d expect as this story seems like mostly Whedon’s love letter to the Alien series, but that also makes things less surprising.  One of the characters turns out to be a robot, the army in this one makes fun of the company for not being able to handle the Xenomorphs while making the same mistakes, Ripley’s going to win.  Not a whole lot of surprises, but it’s still got a lot of cool going on.  I liked the underwater scene where the group had to pass through an area underwater while being chased by a couple of Xenomorphs, for instance.  I also liked when one of the characters used the alien bursting out of his chest to kill someone.  And the way they defeat the last alien in the movie is pretty awesome, and extremely icky.  The way the Xenomorphs escape their captivity by sacrificing one of their own is also very clever.  I like when they make them smarter than your average monster, but I wasn’t that fond of the aliens pressing the red button that was once used to punish them to kill the soldier, as awesome looking as that death was.  It just doesn’t seem like their style.  They’re plenty good at killing without the use of buttons and liquid nitrogen.  Speaking of better ways to kill things, though I liked the emotional impact of the scene with all the failed Ripley clones, it seems like there are better and quicker ways to kill them than using a flamethrower.

Most of the performances were good in this movie.  I would say this is the movie where Sigourney Weaver brings Ripley to the full potential of badass.  She’s got superpowers and she knows it.  It’s kind of the opposite of how she was a badass in Aliens.  In this movie she never seems afraid, so she’s just a badass because she’s the toughest one in the room, where in Aliens she was just the toughest because she did what she had to even though she was afraid.  Still an interesting character though.  I also really liked Winona Ryder in this movie.  For my money, she’s never been hotter in any movie I’ve seen her in.  There’s something about that lady that is a little bit of alright.  Although her sexuality never really came into play in her performance.  Her performance was more about hating on someone for not being human, which is completely ironic given what we find out about her later.  I also liked Gary Dourdan’s character.  Sure, he did a lot of things that I’m sure the Mythbusters wouldn’t take kindly to, like crazy ricochet shots to kill people, but he was also pretty badass and had a great look as well.  I did get a little confused by his death though.  I mean, he just got a little acid burn on his face.  There was no reason he couldn’t grab back onto the ladder and live a little while longer.  There’s also no reason that he couldn’t survive the short fall into the water that apparently killed him for good.

Alien Resurrection was much better than Alien3, but still far inferior to Alien and Aliens.  The story is good once you get past the BS cloning thing, the look is good, the action is over the top and fun, and a lot of the performances are still solid.  It’s a somewhat acceptable end to the series, but of course I wouldn’t have minded another one.  But, at this point, they’d probably have to replace Ripley, and I don’t think I’m down for that.  It’ll do, I suppose.  Alien Resurrection gets “Ellen Ripley died trying to wipe this species out.  For all intents and purposes, she succeeded” out of “Must be a chick thing.”

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