After the arrival of Fury with Darksiders III, THQ Nordic continues to ring new chapters to the saga, also trying to bring a breath of freshness and novelty, with Darksiders Genesis. Koch Media and AK Informatica have allowed us to get our hands on the return of War, assisted by his brother Strife.
During the Lucca Comics & Games 2019, at the Ex Cavallerizza, gaming stations were set up with gaming PCs made available by AK that were equipped with an Intel i9 9900k CPU, an ADATA XPG Spectrix D60G 8gb x 2 RAM, ADATA XPG Spectrix D40G 512Gb SSD, MSI RTX 2080 Aero video card and an MSI Z390 Tomahawk motherboard. Power was handled by an ADATA XPG Core Reactor while cooling by an ADATA XPG Levante liquid cooler.
The trial version we tested offered two different "modes": the exploration of Mammon's dungeon, the demon of material wealth, and the final battle with the boss. We explored both demos, exploring the dungeon and studying the battle with Mammon properly. In both cases we made use of both War and Strife: the two brothers can be swapped with each other at any time, as needed. War and Strife are brothers, yes, but completely opposite in character: the first is serious and loyal to his duty, the second is much more inclined to jokes and tears from the rules.
The differences between the two are not limited only on a personal level: War and Strife have two completely different fighting styles. War relies heavily on his powerful physique, making his Vorpal sword the key to victory, giving rise to devastating melee attacks that can be combined with the elements. Strife, on the other hand, with a much slimmer and more snappy silhouette than her brother, makes her pistols the secret of her success. Despite having melee attacks, Strife relies heavily on ranged attacks and thanks to Mercy and Redemption (these are the names of the guns) it will be able to enter a sort of trance state, where all its attacks will be enhanced, faster and effective. War, on the other hand, can transform into a huge beast, capable of crushing opponents, literally.
Strife will also be able to change the basic bullets of his weapons with others, with the most disparate properties, such as those enchanted with the magic of thunder, which will spread to all enemies after we hit one. Strife's abilities will be very useful in battles against multiple enemies: nIn fact, in the dungeon we found ourselves several times having to resort to the agility of the Knight of the Apocalypse to escape the hordes of adversaries and fire from a safe distance. War's approach, on the other hand, is much more useful when you are in less crowded fights or against minboss, which turn out to be quite tough.
In Mammon's dungeon, however, it seemed to us that the puzzles were either too simple or cumbersome: with War we had to work hard enough to free a lever, wrapped in a rock that could only be destroyed by detonating mines impregnated by the force of fire. The positioning of the objects and torches, useful to ignite the Vorpal sword, were not really well studied, so much so that it required a lot of attempts.
With the introduction of Strife, a very light-hearted and ironic character, in addition to the change of direction regarding the genre, from action to hack and slash, Darksiders Genesis is proposed as a breath of fresh air for the saga. THQ Nordic is wanting to try a new way to please its fans, without abandoning the saga of the Knights of the Apocalypse, instead exploring its origins: Genesis in fact will be set before the trilogy we all know.
All that remains is to wait until December 5th (on PC, February 14th on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch) to be able to get your hands on this new THQ adventure which, at least from the premises, seems to promise very well.
► Darksiders Genesis is a scrolling fighting game developed by Airship Syndicate and published by THQ Nordic for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia and Nintendo Switch, the game was released on 05/12/2019 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 14/02/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 14/02/2020 The version for Xbox One came out on 14/02/2020
Darksiders Genesis is a nice game that we recommend: we decided to rate it with a 70%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the Darksiders Genesis Review
