Darksiders Genesis

So, the most obvious thing about this entry is the switch to a top-down viewpoint and the resulting changes in combat, and in the end, I'd say Genesis is worse off for it. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with the top-down style, this game just don't seem to have been designed around it as much as it should have. It's like the designers never really gave the change in perspective the consideration it needed to work its best. The biggest issue is that there are so many times that the environment itself gets in the way of seeing what you're doing via the absolutely hard locked camera angles. And often times, it's not even stuff you interact with that's in the way, but rather purely decorative environmental details that could have easily been omitted for visual clarity. It happens enough that it's one of the reasons I wonder if the game might have had a different camera system planned at first, as manual camera control could easily get around the problem. The second biggest design issue is that a pulled out top-down view is great for seeing lots of monsters coming, but bad for actually reading their animations with any precision. And in the right combat system that's primarily about mass enemy slaughter ASAP such as a Diablo sort of deal that's fine, but the game seems to want a higher degree of mechanical interaction along the lines of earlier Darksiders games too, and that requires reading enemy tells. For example, War's counter mechanic obviously requires tightly timing an input against precise enemy attack animation timings, and for anything but the biggest enemies, those animations are hard to read from the viewing distance the game actually runs on. If precise reactions are expected, the game really needed something more big and obvious like enemy attacks including a colorful flash of light. Something that would always easily instantly read even from far away and in all lighting situations. So again, combat feels like it wasn't fully optimized for the new top-down context, but is instead some awkward midpoint between Diablo-esque mass horde slaughter and the sort of more complex interactions that work better in the standard third person style presentation of the rest of the series. And finally, the locked angles just do not work well for the platforming the game wants you to do. With more camera control it would have been fine, or alternately, they just could have just minimized the platforming entirely, but again, it's like the designers weren't designing the maps and gameplay for the camera system the game ended up with, and the final product suffered for it. Aside from problems that were only problems due to not being a good match for the camera system, there are also things that would be flaws no matter what, such as it being far too easy to get stuck in level geometry or accidentally fall through it. I'd chalk this up to the designers focusing too hard on making the maps look good and naturalistic with truly uneven rubble and hillsides instead of perfectly, artificially vertical walls and straight edges, and not enough on the sort of geometric clarity that gameplay itself needs. Which would be a noble goal in itself, except there were still lots of gamey edges and path defining rock spikes to be found in some places anyway, so the game didn't even fully commit to looking naturalistic over clearly communicating where you are and are not meant to go anyway. And aside from that, there were also way too many tiny little obstructions that seem like they should just be details, but have enough hit detection to stop your character dead, resulting in cheap hits because you simply tried to dodge across something that didn't look like an obstruction in the first place. Yet another example of a lack of map design polish. World design issues aside, core combat was pretty solid, though I'd say Strife's focus on gunplay made him both more effective in practice AND a better fit for the top-down style overall. And since he didn't really parry or anything, the animation readability issue didn't apply either. Really, he was only dragged down by never feeling like he had enough ammo. Quite frankly, I think all his ammo types could have been infinite and the game would have been better for it. Or he should have at least had a further tier of ammo capacity, super mode recharge rate, and so on available. For that matter. the game just plain ran out of upgrades too soon overall. I seriously kept checking the shops each mission toward the end expecting new upgrades to become available but nope, your final power level gets locked in too soon, and at too low of a level to really feel powerful. Upgrading is a vital part of the game loop, but that part of the loop does not go the distance. And while the ability to equip monster cores is good, that similarly runs out of slots too early. I kept hoping you could unlock more slots, and it turns out you do get two more, but that just wasn't enough. So all in all, the upgrade system was lacking. On the upside though, the technical performance was great. Even if Genesis officially ran at the same 60 fps framerate as Darksiders 3 did, Genesis managed to do that good, buttery smooth type of 60fps, whereas 3 delivered that choppy type of 60 fps. Someday I'd like to figure out exactly how it is that the same officially reported framerate can look more or less smooth from one game to the next, but whatever the technical difference is, Genesis got it right in that regard. And gameplay design issues aside, the levels at least looked real nice. They very much had the right level of stylization for a Darksiders game and the lighting and color direction always looked good. Of course, the fact that the levels at least looked so nice proves that it's not like the devs were just plain incompetent all around, and just further reinforces that there was some sort of disconnect between overall map design and the design necessities arising from the final game's camera system specifically. And for one final complaint, I never really enjoyed any of the puzzle sections. It felt like they were just there because Darksiders games have a mix of puzzle and combat rather than them actually adding to this game's alternate take on things, so once again, it's like the game wasn't designed with the final top-down gameplay fully in mind. Frankly, I think Genesis would have been better off just ditching the puzzles and focusing more on pure, more Diablo-style huge hordes combat, since mowing down enemies while dashing around as Strife was where the game worked best by far. ...As long as you weren't bumping into random things, dealing with the environment blocking your view, or ending up in weird, janky places after finisher animations. And yeah, the game had plot and music too, I guess. Neither were all that good or bad, just kinda there. Most of the difficulty balance was right about in the not too easy or too frustrating sweep spot to its credit, but the optional, kinda secret platforming focused side area in the hub world you have to suffer through for full completion absolutely sucked. I mean, even regular platforming was unfun enough, why did the devs possibly think that actually difficult platforming was something anybody would want? It should have been obvious from any playtesting as they went that platforming was NOT where the fixed camera and general controls shined their brightest. Just focusing on combat foremost and making it the best it could be would've made for a significantly better game than doing multiple things poorly. In the end I give this game a recommendation, but not a hearty one. It's a solid 3 out of 5, though it sure had the potential to be better with some fairly minor tweaks and cuts. And could have been great if the designers had just focused more on making an experience optimized around the strengths and weaknesses of the top-down fixed camera system they decided to go with this time for whatever reason.

Простенькая игра по вселенной. Без коопа - нет смысла даже включать, а кооп с другом сам по себе прощает многое. Сама игра простенькая и не цепляющая Есть смысл брать только если нужна кооп игра, в остальном проходняк

Excelente juego, lo genial es jugarlo en cooperativo con un amigo.

Terrible platforming combined with an awful co-op system (seriously? I have to run around and find a summoning totem instead of, you know, my co-op partner just joining the game), save game mechanic (I guess I'm roughly where I left off? What's going on? Where am I?), and lack of handholding/waypoint marking (sorry, not sorry, I'm busy and just want to have fun, getting spun around and lost is not fun). Go play Split Fiction if you want a good co-op game. Soundtrack is good though. Oh, did I mention the platforming is terrible? Seriously, my character is literally chest bumping ledges they could and should grab onto, only to fall off into the abyss...

сюжет 8из10 геймплей 2из10

Excelente juego, lo estoy amando