Darksiders: Fury Review: Fury reborn after death

"Dark Bloodline" from the first version released in 2010 to the 2012 release of "Dark Bloodline: Death" in two years with its fun game experience to cultivate a large number of game fans, "Dark Bloodline" has become the publisher THQ after the "Warhammer" series of another player familiar IP, even in 2012 when THQ closed down the "Dark Bloodline: Death is seen as its own lifeline to prove the influence of the series, but things are not satisfactory, Death due to the "constipation" of the game experience led to poor sales, publisher THQ also declared bankruptcy after the acquisition, the Dark Blood. But after four years of stagnation, in 2017, a game company called THQ NORDIC gave gamers the good news: Darksiders III: Fury, a sequel to the Darksiders series, would be released in 2018, and the game would be produced by Gunfire Games. THQ NORDIC is the THQ that was acquired by NORDIC, and GUNFIRE GAMES is the reorganized VIGIL GAMES, the original Dark Side producer, which is the sequel to Dark Side: Dead. Rage, let's evaluate this hardcore dark lineage of "rage reborn after death".

Evaluation Difficulty: Challenge level

The experience is different from the hardcore experience of the past, but there is no lack of care for the player while exploring

Darksiders 3: The game experience of "Rage" has become very hardcore compared to previous works, and the ultra-low fault tolerance rate leads to the fact that you have to run the corpse after eating two hits from the monster in the early stage, and it is common to be sent to read by the monster with a knife in the later stage of the game. There is no "danger indicator" in the difficulty of the challenge, and the harsh "accurate dodge" judgment makes it impossible for you to strike back if you do not dodge at the critical moment. The invincible time of ordinary avoidance is very short, usually before the landing will be attacked by other small monsters, and the above has almost become the difficulty in every group fight.

In the exploration of this game like the "soul series", the serious lack of guidance, the game does not even have a large map, only the BOSS orientation indicator on the top of the screen, all directions rely on the orientation indicator. In the guidance of the operation only tells you how to operate, the lack of specific operation guidance for some scenes has become the reason for countless players to bitter hands, all this is the need for players to explore, adapt to these operations, slowly familiar with a variety of routines after the suffering journey is officially started, so in just contact with this I made this evaluation is: the dark soul of the battle. But that's not exactly friendly to veterans of the Darksiders.

The action system of this game finds a balance between the low fault tolerance of the Soul series and the cool combo feeling of the Devil May Cry series, and the experience of perfectly dodging every attack in the stormy combo is very refreshing in the group fight, which is rarely featured compared with other core games.

When you die in the exploration to "pick up the body", you can feel the love of the enemy players - in an area repeatedly died when the player killed the small monsters to get resources will be automatically collected to the death point, do not worry about a large number of resources are wasted, free hands and feet to fight until the success of the level to pick up the body to enjoy the "suffering reward".

Another point is that there is a very close save point in front of most BOSS doors, compared to the parkour BOSS on the way to be consumed by monsters, this design can ensure that you will not be consumed by monsters in advance before the BOSS door, so that players in every battle with the BOSS "full of vitality".

There are two ways to get supplies while exploring the map: One is to buy the store supply healing stone, this supply is very spicy chicken, low recovery, all supplies enjoy a public cooldown time and the more expensive the same supply is sold, the other is to kill the small monster after a certain probability of falling green soul can be "take a nap" recharge, this means not only the recovery amount is large, the recovery effect is good, the important thing is that there is no cooling. Players are encouraged to explore the map and decrypt it through combat, even when they are running out of ammunition and only need one kill to make you feel like rain.

"From 500 to 625, for the sake of being a regular customer, I will give you a higher price."

Interesting map exploration that finally finds a level between decryption and combat

Players who have played Diablo 2 will be very bothered by the pace of decryption and combat in that game, and the poor pace also brings a game experience like "constipation", which is well solved in this game.

"Dark Descent 3" is a semi-open world, the entire map integration most of the time do not need to read, intricate scene design and various winding paths greatly enrich the exploration of the map, even after the completion of the player can still rely on the four forms of rage in the map to explore.

Compared to the decryption and combat of Darksiders 2, this game has become very layered.

In the early stage, the decryption method is mostly "thinking decryption", which needs to think about the puzzle and how to use relevant elements to solve the puzzle, usually using explosive insects to blow up the door, or burning the spider web to decrypt the whole body. In the later stage, because the player has obtained all the abilities, the decryption method of explosive insects and spider web is gradually reduced. Instead, it has become more exploratory decryption - "discovery is solution", which no longer requires too much brain, but requires reasonable use of their own abilities and make various attempts. Later in the game, the puzzles become simpler and more crude, and more emphasis is placed on combat.

In terms of reward decryption, the design of this game is also mostly exploration, such as rescuing hostages usually requires players to find out the relationship between map elements with good observation, and then they can solve the puzzle smoothly.

The rhythm of decryption and battle has shifted from the early stage to the late stage. Some of the decryption with the nature of reward will not delay a lot of time, which is a very obvious progress compared to the previous game, but the drawback is that the rhythm of the middle stage is chaotic.

In the middle of the game, you usually return to the previous map to solve puzzles because you have gained some ability to promote the game progress, and this process is very painful, the lack of map guidance requires the player to remember the location of these organs at the beginning, which also leads to the player needs to go back to the past map with the newly acquired ability to solve the game. One or two of these designs are acceptable, and when a large number of them appear, it is inevitable to feel that the real chicken eggs hurt, and the way to solve this problem is usually to sweep up the carpet from scratch.

"Furioussis crawling in a narrow tunnel, seeking a third-person perspective in the tunnel."

Even with the innovation and optimization, the BOSS design is the biggest failure

Although caught up with the core game this train, although the optimization of the previously criticized rhythm problem, but this game has one of the most serious problem - BOSS design.

Apart from the fancy moves, it's hard to get a feel for the different mechanics of each BOSS, and the lack of design is a common problem for many bosses, which is the game's downfall.

In the early stage, most BOSS moves can be summarized as a few moves: Saltwater spike, delayed cross cut, two combo, straight line hit, some add a fire and some add a leap hit, BOSS in the fight of the move standard, set routine is fixed, there is no cheat and "move trap" type of setting, resulting in players as long as they know the BOSS's move in the fight, The next step is to cut down on mistakes -- a symptom of which is a very, very lack of randomness in combat.

The design idea is as simple as: when the player is far away from me, use a certain skill, where I use a certain skill, it is too easy for the player to find the way: Some bosses will pull away after he will use saltwater sudden, players avoid saltwater sudden, you can hit him twice, some bosses will pull away after the use of stone attack, to do is "precise dodge" after the stone launch counterattack waiting for the next stone, so back and forth until the BOSS dies. This kind of BOSS design of "husband singing and women following" is also a refresh of my vision.

The only exciting thing in a BOSS fight is the expectation that the BOSS will suddenly not follow the routine and make you die by surprise, this sudden change is even more rewarding than defeating the BOSS.

"It is more surprising for a village fool to become a fool all of a sudden."

The lack of BOSS design leads to a lack of randomness in the leader battle, which is even better than the experience of fighting a bunch of monsters or killing an elite monster, after all, you don't know what these monsters will do, and the battle is more random and more exciting. Battles without randomness are no fun, battles full of randomness are difficult to navigate, and the problem with Darksiders shifts from decryption and the rhythm of the battle to the control of the randomness in the battle.

This problem did not have a significant breakthrough until the end of the game, from the second hit God anger this two-stage BOSS, "Dark Lineage 3" finally found the action game leader battle should be difficult and epic sense, in contrast, some bosses are not elite strange difficult to play, such as the sword dead brother is very headache.

The last three battles in the challenge difficulty compared to other bosses is unforgettable difficult, God's angry sword array break evasion, arrogant fatal laser connection, jealous three knights plus seven deadly SINS combination finally gave this generation of bosses back face, move to card face, to the difficulty is difficult, but some too late, then the game has reached the end.

In addition, there are some small problems, the Angle of view on the wall is unreasonable, the other small monsters will not be automatically locked after killing the monster, the need to re-lock after the end of the transformation, the attack direction cannot be changed when the non-locked state combo, and some small details are waiting to be optimized.

"This screenshot is from the opening scene, the only part of the game that is not Sinicized."

summarize

This new generation of Darklings took us in a new direction, the pain and joy of exploring the map, and the emergence of underwater maps was exciting, but not well used. The plot begins with Fury being summoned and ends with Chaos appearing against the demon army and Fury becoming the defender of humanity.

This is no longer the game market in 2010, it is difficult to satisfy the appetite of modern players only for refreshing. Although there are some flaws in the dark lineage of this hardcore style, you can still see the determination of the new GUNFIRE GAMES to do this series, and an old combo action game returns with such a new hardcore attitude after many years.

Fury gave us a glimpse of Darksiders' potential as a core game.

"Are dreams more exciting than reality?"