Darksiders: Made from the best stuff on earth

Some of my favorite games are absolutely teeming with originality, even if they use familiar game play mechanics, environments, or themes. Take Bioshock for example: on one hand, it's a first person shooter and "spiritual successor" to System Shock 2 (see Kieron's brilliant take on that subject) that doesn't require the player to actually do anything they haven't done before in a game. On the other hand, well, if you've played it you know that the story, setting, combat, and moral choices combine to make for one incredibly original experience overall.

It's not on the same level of my personal gaming pantheon as Bioshock, but the first Darksiders game is one of my favorites for a very different reason: entirely because of the success Vigil Games achieved by making one of the most wonderfully derivative games ever. The game's structure and core mechanics? Yep, that's Legend of Zelda. The combat? God of War lite. The story? The bible (a very loose interpretation, obviously). Heck, they even threw in a little Portal for one of the dungeons! What's more, you don't even need to look hard to find these sources of inspiration; hell, if THQ had offered a green tunic and cap costume as DLC for the game, Nintendo might have sued.

And yet, they pulled it off. They took all those elements of great games & stories and did two things: they executed them with polish and precision, and they combined them in a way that made something new and fresh out of the familiar. In a way, Darksiders is like a DJ Earworm end-of-year mashup that lets you recognize a whole bunch of your favorite songs as they blend together into something that stands on its own. Even more impressively, they avoid the trap that some retro homage games fall into (I'm looking at you, 3D Dot Game Heroes) of being so slavishly devoted to the original that they fail to do anything new or worthwhile.

I should also admit that part of why I love Darksiders so much is due to its status as a "mature Zelda game". I think I've played almost every Zelda installment since the original, and long considered it to be one of my favorite game franchises... except that I realized some time ago that what I want more than anything is for Nintendo to radically shake up that series and do something NEW. Send Link into space. Make him and Princess Zelda fully grown adults in a relationship, not the cloying fairy tale-level romance the games usually reach for. Use the Unreal engine! (Just kidding.)

So, yeah, Darksiders is a top-notch mashup of video games that also dives into Judeo-Christian mythology in a fun way. And based on the first 5 or 6 hours of Darksiders 2, Vigil has hit the sweet spot again... only this time they've added a healthy dose of Prince of Persia to the mix. Oh, and Diablo. If there's kart racing in there somewhere, I may pass out.