Well I can sort of say that my first impression did not fail me. I will start by saying this: Darksiders is in no way a bad game. The hours I spent playing it were fun filled hours and I don't regret playing it. This is even though the game was almost exactly like God of War, except for the main difference being you are playing War instead of Kratos, and you are trying to basically kill Satan instead of every god on Mount Olympus. Oh, and not to mention all the random things from Zelda they threw in....
Anyway...lets get back on track here....
In Darksiders you play as War, one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. The very first thing you do? Well this would be participating in what you assume to be the actual bloody apocalypse. Demons and Angels and flying all over the place killing each other, and everything around them. Kinda sucks that this is taking place on earth and it making mankind extinct....
So it turns out that this in fact ISN'T the actual apocalypse and War got tricked...whoops! So his group of bosses, called the Charred Council, get really pissed at War and strip him of all his powers. If that weren't enough, mankind IS now extinct, and the council believes War was some evil mastermind behind this so they want to kill him. Instead he suggests for them to send him back to earth so he can exact blood-spewing, gut-ripping sword-swinging vengeance on those jerks that tricked him. After giving the Council the logic that if said vengeance plan fails he'll be dead anyway, the Council sends him back to earth via giant meteor....ya screw taking a space ship or any other sci-fi stuff, War travels by meteor damn it!
Turns out that this whole meeting with the Council that seemed to have taken 5 minutes, actually took 100 bloody years and humanity now consists of zombies. Yes, all that is left of the humans are walking dead. It's my dream come true really, I get to be some big buff dude with a sword slashing my way through hordes of undead with a big grin on my face! Only problem is for some reason there aren't really all that many zombies....oh well.
The game play for Darksiders is the same type of game play that was in God of War, and every other game like it. One thing I didn't like about Darksiders was the lack of combo-liciousy goodness that came with the weapons. When playing you have three moves:
1. Slash (Square)
2. Super Slash (Square, Square) and
3. Super Duper Rip your face off with my Sword Slash! (Square, Square, Square)
You only get to use another button (Triangle) when you get your secondary weapon, but there is no way for you to combo them together, which utterly sucks. Other than the lack of combo goodness, the graphics of the game are utterly fantastic, and the added stuff is always nice (the random pieces of treasure you have to find and such).
This is a great game if you love games with senseless violence. Otherwise, I would find something else.
I give the game a 6.5/10
Darksiders is available for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC.
Note: I played this on the PS3 so any button references are made with reference to the PS3 controller =)
-Adam