Impressions: Darksiders takes a stab at Portal, Panzer Dragoon

Former X-Men, Battle Chasers and Ultimates artist Joe Madueira and his team at Vigil Games are drawing closer to realizing the celebrated illustrator's dream of making his own video game, Darksiders. We've seen the apocalyptic action-adventure a few times in the past, and its similarities to games such as the 3D Zeldas, God of War and, in some ways, Devil May Cry are still obvious in the latest build.

There were some new elements for publisher THQ to show off, though, like War's range of attacks. For instance, the Apocalypse Horseman can throw his cross blade into a source of time-slowing magic energy and have it return, momentarily giving him an advantage over a group of scurrying spider enemies.

Undoubtedly, the most interesting new tidbits we saw were obvious tributes to two of gaming's most hallowed franchises: Portal and Panzer Dragoon.
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We got a taste of the Portal nod when shown a small slice of the game's final level and one of its guardians. War acquires a weapon that's capable of creating dimensional rifts -- one of which happens to be blue, the other orange. Unlike Portal, Darksiders only allows players to use the warping mechanic on predetermined wall, ceiling and floor plates within the level, so as not to totally break the game.

War used the weapon to aid in defeating a giant, metal menace who looked like a member of Hellboy's Golden Army, sans the gold. Atop this lunk's flat head was his "weak spot," just out of reach of War's jumping ability. In order to defeat the guardian, War fired an entry portal onto one floor plate and an exit portal onto another and lured the mechanical foe closer. It lashed out with its massive mace-for-an-arm, which got stuck in the floor momentarily after War dodged the attack. War then jumped into the blue portal and came shooting up out of the orange, using his gliding ability to land on the enemy's head and perform a context-sensitive attack. Two more of those and the rust bucket was out of steam.

We were also shown a one-off, rail-based shooter segment in which War rides atop a griffin he commandeers from an angelic enemy. He uses the creature to traverse quite a large chunk of the game world, all the while under attack -- or being pursued -- by other flying beasts. The development team is admittedly comprised of folks who fondly recall Sega's dragon-riding shooter franchise, Panzer Dragoon, and it shows in everything from the sequence's pacing to the player's ability to lock onto multiple enemies and send forth a multi-burst of homing beams.

Combined with what we've already seen of the game, Darksides appears to offer up some pretty diverse gameplay from area to area in its world. The portal weapon, for example, isn't acquired until very near the end of the game, but there's a nearly two-hour-long dungeon filled with puzzles built around its mechanics.

Darksiders is scheduled for release on January 5, 2010 for PS3 and Xbox 360.