Darksiders: Wrath of War - Welcome to the Darkside of Gaming

Your mission, should you choose to accept it and you really have no choice since your brothers are currently preoccupied for this title, is to rip off a blockbuster game in a failed epic. Or is that an epic fail? Besides, Wrath of War does have a ring to it, doesn't it? We plan to put Fury, Strife and Death on reserve for the sequels.

Heard It All Before

Vigil Games and THQ came up with a concept involving Angels, Demons, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in a plot that is simple enough to have you questioning the Mature ESRB rating. It doesn't take much brain matter to figure out the next twist in the fork or the next quest-it's all the typical and expected fan-fare for a hack-n-slash trying to fill the big shoes of a giant like God of War.

In this world of good versus evil, and the humans that show up to be cattle for slaughter, War represents the Chaos that handles the balance. Unfortunately, he's no head honcho. The guy's a lackey along with the other Horsemen. War gets framed and goes on a quest to clear his name. That's it. That's the premise.

I Was Summoned

Action and adventure of Darksiders is introduced in an FMV sequence that is amazing in terms of quality, bringing us to the present from a history depicted in murals. As expected, control of War comes in his fully powered form, with those same powers being atypically stripped from you through a twist within the first five minutes of the game.

What we're left controlling then is a vengeful little man whose character design matches that of World of Warcraft. The humans, or the mouth-breathers as your Watcher calls them, have normal proportions. The rest of the world doesn't suffer from the comic book variety of stocky characters-just the ones that play an integral role in the story(or is conveniently butchered for the sake of progress).

Play Me For No Fool

The initial move set available for War will prove to be more repetitive than a rehash of Tetris-fun for a while, but definitely lacking in the originality department. Most of the kills are delivered in execution style with context sensitive presses of a button in front of the right enemy. A single button. No combinations that might actually have you at the edge of your seat and no more than two(sometimes one) finishers for a single type of enemy. That's right. The enemies decide the type of finisher and definitely not you.

Combos need to be purchased, leaving you pressing a single button until your enemy is dead or is simply hovering around for your finishing blow. Not far into the game you do get the chance to wield a secondary weapon, a scythe, which is assigned to an unused button for variety. There are some long range weapons such as guns as well as aerial combat via a conveniently bestowed pair of wings and moving combat on your warhorse. This does lend more to the game, but overall given how far spread apart these upgrades are, Darksiders will have you feeling a nostalgic itching for more of Kratos.

With less than 15-hours of gameplay, while it's at least worth a rental, it's nothing more than a paperweight at full price. Darksiders: Wrath of War video game is best reserved to kill time between bigger and more worthwhile games.

Available now for PS3 and XBOX 360.