DARKSIDERS 3
New dev, new publisher, new hero – will this hack ’n’ slash series cut it on PS4?
Ridding the world of the Seven Deadly Sins, it’s Gunfire’s Horse(wo)man Of The Apocalypse.
How do you follow Death and War? We don’t mean figuratively, we’re talking about the skeletal Grim Reaper guy and his sword-wielding little brother from the Joe Madureira-created Darksiders action-RPG series. The answer is ‘with a confident, armoured badass named Fury’. That’s right, screw Famine and Pestilence, because we’ve got a whip-wielding, pinkhaired Horseman on our hands, and she’s taking [blorp!] from nobody.
The Darksiders series is back after a five-year hiatus, complete with a new publisher, a new protagonist, and a team which knows exactly what it’s doing. Gunfire Games is the new studio behind Fury’s rise on PlayStation 4, and it’s a studio with a good Darksiders pedigree. Gunfire was founded by series co-creator David Adams, and is staffed primarily with ex-Vigil Games artists and coders, so these are some pretty safe hands for this sequel, which aims to return the series to its former glory.
The new adventure takes place almost simultaneously with Death’s capers in Darksiders II, but a long way away from Fury’s skeletal sibling. Instead of gadding about in different dimensions, Fury is tasked with travelling to Earth to capture the Seven Deadly Sins, who have escaped while people were distracted by a little thing called the Apocalypse. The world you explore as Fury will be familiar – expect cars, subway stations, and city blocks – but it has been warped by the Sins themselves to suit their needs.
WORLD WAR WRATH
So far, we’ve only seen Sloth’s murky domain, but it gives a good idea of what we can expect from the game’s enemy encounters. Here, Sloth is a huge, fat, praying mantis who commands an army of smaller bugs that are really interested in chomping on your face. As you descend further into the caverns and get closer to his lair, the
infestation worsens and the bug assaults become more frequent.
This shouldn’t be a huge problem for Fury, however, because she’s armed for the task at hand. That magical, retractible whip that we mentioned is seemingly controlled with her mind. Rather than violently cracking it to attack, simple flicks and spins will unleash the weapon on any enemy stupid enough to get close to her attack range.
Fury moves like a cross between Batman: Arkham Knight’s Catwoman and Kratos from God Of War, which in our minds puts her in good company. She pulls off acrobatic flips that have us wincing with imagined pain (the fear of groin strain is close to our hearts). Bear in mind she’s doing all of this while wearing an absolutely killer pair of stilettos and we a) have respect for her supple gymnastic abilities and b) hope there’s a character customisation mode so we can drag Darksiders III’s design choices into 2017.
PUZZLE PASSION
Fury’s not just a high-heeled Bayonetta wannabe, and Darksiders has never just been about twitchy combat. One of the biggest challenges the team at Gunfire is facing is designing a world that works well and utilises all of Fury’s abilities and attributes. Sure, she can whip the stuffing out of angels and demons, but she also has several traversal abilities, including using the whip to scale and swing about the environment and solve puzzles. You’ll be using your noggin as much as your combo counter in Darksiders III, that’s for sure. Building a world that challenges all of these skills – and requires certain unlocks before you can progress – is tougher than it sounds, but Gunfire is on the case.
Fury will also have a number of ‘forms’ that she can take in the game, and we strongly suspect you will unlock them as you progress, allowing you to become (highheeled?) manifestations of hellish beasts or even the Sins themselves. We know that Fury is a mage, so she’s more inclined to dabble in magic than Death or War ever did in the first two games, and it’s likely this command of the ethereal will come into play throughout the story.
It’s probable her magical abilities will be used heavily when it comes to puzzles, too. Darksiders III will take place in a large hub world, with smaller, ‘dungeon’ areas outside of
FURY PULLS OFF ACROBATIC FLIPS THAT HAVE US WINCING WITH IMAGINED PAIN.
this open environment, but the major focus during our time with it was on the puzzles and how they work across the whole game.
Gunfire is striving to make sure that puzzles don’t feel tacked-on, or as though they’re placed there just for the sake of it. The aim is to avoid players wondering what led the congregation in an old church to build a complex (and probably very expensive) Heath Robinson machine that spits out a door key when you complete it. Gaming MacGuffins like this complex key machine will only be in the game when it makes sense for someone to have built them there, and chests will be found in places where you would expect treasure to be, making exploration meaningful.
COOL, DARK AND GRUESOME
It all adds up to what promises to be a major evolution for Darksiders. The five-year gap between the last game and this one has allowed Gunfire to step back, look at what other current games are doing, and hone its ideas. Where Darksiders II was a great Zelda-alike, Darksiders III looks like expanding its frame of references to include Bloodborne, which is no bad thing. We have faith new developer Gunfire Games can whip this series into shape.
Darksiders III will be released on PS4 and PS4 Pro in 2018. More news soon!