The mythology of Darksiders goes something like this: Before humanity appeared, there was a never-ending war between Heaven and Hell.  During this war, Earth became inhabited by humans.  The Charred Council, a sort of intermediary between Heaven and Hell, decides that when humanity is able to fight both Heaven and Hell, the final battle between the three factions will occur.  It’s at this point alone that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are meant to appear to punish the wicked.

You take on the roll of War, one of the Horsemen.  War finds himself summoned to Earth, as war between Heaven and Hell breaks loose.  Soon after, you find that he was never meant to be summoned, and is being blamed for bringing forth the end of humanity.  The Charred Council summons you to destroy “The Destroyer,” a powerful demon who controls Hell’s forces on Earth.  They bind you to a being known as The Watcher, who acts as Navi, but with Mark Hamill’s Joker voice.

That said, the plot of the game can get convoluted.  There are some plot lines that never get tied up.  At other times, the story feels like it’s going in a certain direction, and then it goes in the exact opposite direction.  For a good portion of the game, one character in particular is built up as the “true” enemy, yet by the time you finish the game, this sort of just left hanging.  It’s a bit disappointing, to say the least.

The gameplay itself, however, is simple to describe.  Darksiders is a “Zelda Clone” if I’ve ever seen one.  The game’s basic flow, most of the time, goes like this: enter dungeon, obtain item, use item to solve puzzle, kill dungeon boss with new item and use item to enter next dungeon.   You can then use items you’ve found to re-explore dungeons and find new areas.

Even the combat is, in many ways, Legend of Zelda.  You have a lock-on camera which then enters into “Widescreen mode” (which seems to be one of the strangest choices in things to copy from Zelda).  Then you bash away at enemies with your sword, or you use a specific item to weaken them, then you bash away at them anyway.

I don’t want to come off as saying that this is in any way a bad thing.  As I mentioned previously, just because Darksiders is Zelda with a different coat of paint, that doesn’t make it bad.  As a fan of the series, however, I found the game to be fairly enjoyable for this very reason.    If you haven’t been a fan of the Zelda formula, then you probably will not be impressed.

Some of the game’s items will rarely be used.  This includes a horn, which serves no real purpose except to open some doors on random occasions, or the Mask of Shadows, which you will only use near the game’s ending.  Others items, however, become invaluable.  The Abyssal Chain or the Crossblade, the game’s equivalent of the “Hook-Shot” and the “Boomerang” respectively, become invaluable to solving some of the game’s later puzzles.

Eventually, you will get Ruin, which is basically Epona (or Agro from Shadow of the Colossus, if you prefer to think of it that way).  This allows you to move around the world much more effectively.  It also allows for some decent horseback combat, however it’s rare that you will need to approach enemies this way.  Also, there are some strange restrictions on where Ruin can travel.  One moment, you’ll be traversing through the desert, and the next, you’ll be thrown off because the ground changed texture.

The game isn’t a complete carbon copy of Zelda, however.  After some time, you can use souls collected from enemies to buy specific move upgrades, adding to War’s repertoire.  This also includes the ability to purchase a separate weapon, the scythe, which can be thrown into a combo to deal more damage.  You are also eventually able to purchase Wrath powers.  After fighting a wave of enemies, War will gain “Wrath.”  This is, for lack of a better term, the game’s equivalent of magic.  There are four Wrath powers that you can buy, once  you’ve collected enough souls.  They are very basic, though, and never really add a lot to the combat of the game.

It’s not totally fair to call Darksiders a complete copy of Zelda; there are some brief moments in originality, though it’s odd to talk about them simply for the fact that they seem to pop up completely randomly.  In one case, I returned to an area, and a zombie, wearing a cape and top-hat, randomly popped up and said, in a British accent, that he was terribly sorry, but he had to kill me.  After defeating him, he disappeared and I was given no explanation of what just happened.

Darksiders, though, is more than simply Zelda with strange moments of originality.  It’s an homage to other titles before it.  The “Voidwalker” is, for lack of a better term, the Portal Gun, with one portal being colored blue and the second colored orange.  The main difference between the two is that you can only use this one on specific surfaces.  There is one boss fight which is, literally, nearly completely lifted from Shadow of the Colossus in which you have to ride Ruin through a desert, shooting at a worm which pops-up from the sand.

Eventually, you gain the Chronomancer, which slows time in a similar fashion to the Amulet of the Fates from God of War 2.  After fighting in a gladiator-like stadium, The Watcher yelled out to the crowd, “Are you not amused,” a reference to the film Gladiator.  You will hit points where you will need to use turret guns, similar to those found in Halo, and the camera perspective is nearly identical (over the shoulder and close to the character). There is even a fight in which you fly through the air in a similar fashion to Panzer Dragoon Orta.  It’s clear that Darksiders realizes what it is and is more than happy to run with it for the duration of its play time.

The game’s art style is fairly decent.  Angels have the sort of Cybernetic look of Too Human, while demons feel much more like natural creatures.  War is a decent mid-point between the two factions.  However, it’s brought down when you realize how many of the game’s enemies are simply recycled with a different color to them.  Also, the environments never seem to pop.  They’re not totally dull, but they don’t stand out.

There are four primary dungeons, along with vast areas that you will need to explore.  The game feels a bit artificially lengthened by an arbitrary “re-visit every area you’ve gone to and collect pieces of the final weapon” quest, but in my 15-or-so hours with the game, it never got too dull.

That’s not to say that Darksiders is perfect.  Many of the game’s problems come from strange choices in checkpoint locations.  After nearly completing a fairly long mission, I died, and was re-spawned right back into an area where I was absolutely destroyed by enemies.  I also found that a lot of the time, the game lacked clear objectives.  At one point, I had to backtrack through a dungeon and had absolutely no clue where to go.  I was stuck like this for a good 20 minutes before finally finding, randomly, where I had needed to be headed.

Darksiders is not, by any means, an original game.  It could be seen to be a near total rip-off of The Legend of Zelda.  Thankfully, though, Darksiders is refined and still maintains a lot of the charm of its older predecessors.  Originality, in the case of Darksiders, isn’t an issue, since it’s still an extremely fun game to play.