Darksiders Preview

WAR wears his hood up because of an unfortunate hairdressing accident

Vigil's third-person action game Darksiders, due out on January 8 next year, has a lot going for it: it's relentless, bloody and comic book crazy. But it also has a lot going against it. Well, two things, really. You may have heard of them: Bayonetta and … what was it? Oh yeah, God of War III.

Bayonetta, already 2010's game of the year for some, is due out on… January 8. While Darksiders offers more than just hack and slash action, you will spend most of your time in the game hacking and slashing, which means, come January 8, it's a clear choice: Bayonetta or Darksiders?

Even then, some will dig their heels in and wait for the sure to be all-conquering God of War III, due out only two months later in March. What chance does Darksiders have in the face of such adversity?

Perhaps it's all WAR's fault. WAR, one of the famed Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Darksiders' star, is a tad too generic for his own good. He wears a hoodie (with the hood up), wields a huge sword called Chaoseater, and speaks with a gravely voice. Compared with Platinum Games' sultry, torture-obsessed witch Bayonetta, and Sony Santa Monica's bald-headed mentalist Kratos, poor old WAR struggles to stand out.

He's no less badass - WAR takes on huge, skyscraper-sized demons without batting a burning eyelid - but he doesn't do so with quite as much flair or sophistication as "the competition". Bayonetta shoots bullets from her stilettos and squishes beasties in iron maidens. Kratos rips the flesh from his foes with the Blades of Athena and pummels them into submission with a pair of fist gauntlets shaped like lion heads. WAR's got a massive sword, but will he be remembered in years to come?

This is a demon. WAR kills demons.

It may be inevitable, then, that Darksiders will lose the combat battle against its rivals. But could it win the war? Certainly it offers more varied gameplay, incorporating exploration, platforming, puzzle solving and staggered weapon and ability gain inspired by The Legend of Zelda series. Clearly, there's more to Darksiders than the slicing and dicing of demons and angels.

Take, for example, The Crossroads, the game's first hub. At this point in the game WAR isn't riding Ruin, his fiery steed, so the post-apocalyptic, newspaper strewn area doesn't rekindle memories of Hyrule Field with quite as much clarity as later hubs, but it serves to highlight one of Darksiders' key hooks: freedom of exploration. You arrive in search of the demonic merchant Vulgrim, the only being who knows the secret to big bad beastie The Destroyer's power. Vulgrim's hovering about the centre of The Crossroads, but even at this early stage you can see blocked off and unreachable areas in the distance, some too high, some hidden behind magic gates. Barely half an hour into the game, Darksiders reveals its Zelda-influenced spots.