The world has ended and the sky has fallen, and yet Darksiders 2 is a pretty comforting sort of game when you really get down to things. Its fantastical over-worlds are filled with lovely, craggy vistas and fancy lootable treasure chests, while its teetering dungeons are home to crunchy combat, giant bosses and pleasantly straightforward puzzling. This is an unashamedly old-school action adventure, vast and friendly and familiar, and loading it up feels like sliding into a warm bath - albeit a warm bath filled with blood, offal and funny little imps that probably want to bite your ears off.
The whole game is elevated by the magnificent art design, though: it's chunky, detailed and endlessly colourful. The characters once again look like the world's most collectable action figures, while the new fantasy-tinged landscapes offer plenty of Tolkien-esque spectacle and the monsters you'll face frequently tower over you in spiky splendour, hands clutching weapons the size of surf boards.
Our World Is Ended-DARKSiDERS
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Joystiq questioned FlowPlay's business model, as many of the games in ourWorld are available on other casual gaming sites such as Newgrounds.[1] Reviewer Stephen Greenwell of Gamezebo felt detached from the social aspect of ourWorld. He found conversation to be "dominated by netspeak and txtspeak" with all the depth "of a kiddie pool." However, the presentation was deemed to be "hip and edgy." with "Flash and Java used to create a gorgeous futuristic world." Overall, ourWorld was recommended for teens.[2]
Development on ourWorld began in January 2007 with a public Beta launch in April 2008. Since then, the product has received over 600,000 registrations.[3] The company built the world with a team of 40 employees and contractors in Seattle, Shanghai, and India.[4] In March 2007, Derrick Morton, the CEO of FlowPlay, raised about $500,000 in angel financing for the new company, with about one-quarter of that coming from the founders.[5]
In March 2009, Tagged.com, the third-largest social networking site in the US, announced the integration of FlowPlay's ourWorld.com. The partnership advances Tagged's movement into online social gaming and expands their portfolio of innovative products for Tagged's 80 million worldwide registered members.[8]
Long before the Apocalypse, the demon Lilith created a race of powerful beings by mixing blood from the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Hell. These beings, known as Nephilim, became an unstoppable army of conquerors, laying waste to uncountable worlds with their unquenchable bloodlust. The threat of the Nephilim could only be stopped after four of their warriors betrayed their kin. Vowing to fight for the balance of the universe, these four warriors were recruited by the Charred Council to ensure Heaven and Hell would stay in line. Their first mission was to slay the Nephilim and destroy their souls. So, it was in massacring their own people that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were forged. Amongst the Four, Death is the Horsemen that became forever known as Kinslayer after his blade cut down the last of their brethren, Absalom.
The fact that Darksiders III exists at all is something of a miracle. When THQ (the original publisher of Darksiders I and II) went under, it seemed that the light at the end of the apocalypse was flickering out. When Nordic Games (now THQ Nordic) bought the rights to the franchise, excitement was immediately renewed. THQ Nordic remastered the first two titles, forged a new studio made up of many original developers from Vigil Games, and set to work on bringing the end of the world back to life.
I for one am happy to see the series back. Darksiders II definitely ended on a high note, and Darksiders III picks up right where it left off, with yet another Horseman stepping up to save what remains of the world, at the order of the Charred Council. This time it's Fury, a whip-carrying badass warrior who's just as quick with her words, sent after the Seven Deadly Sins, who have broken out and taken over their sections of the world. But there's a deeper conspiracy here, one that involves her fellow Horsemen -- I won't say anything more, but the ties with the rest of the series are pretty deep.
And that's what I respect about Gunfire Games, the team taking over for the broken-apart team at Vigil (who worked on the first two). They highly respect the first two Darksiders games and keep the third very close in spirit, as you make your way through the world, tearing apart enemies, occasionally coming across a merchant to get leveled up and saving your game, and dealing with bosses the best way you know how -- violently.
But with a different team on board, you may want to settle in for a few minor changes, though not all of them will sit well with you. For instance, instead of an open-world map like we've gotten in the first two games, Darksiders III utilizes a system that automatically points out where the nearest Deadly Sin is. It's workable, but I miss the old way of being able to pinpoint a target and fight your way to it by any means necessary.
Also, the Darksiders III world, while very well-designed, isn't as wide open as you think it might be. Everything's pretty well connected, and the puzzles that are included here definitely live up to the series lineage, but it almost seems like you run through some similar-looking areas throughout. There are some things that stand out, like the lair of a Deadly Sin laden with gold pieces and a quiet, glowing field with traps and demon children scattered throughout, but otherwise the environments are more common than I thought they'd be. Still, not bad in terms of how it's put together.
Gunfire still has a ways to go to catch up with Vigil's fine-tuned legacy. But they've taken a strong step in the right direction, and with a few (much-needed) fixes, Fury should have no trouble holding her own with the big boys this holiday season. As it stands, Darksiders III is worth a look -- and that's not something you can usually say about an end-of-the-world game coming out at the same time as "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."
Nephilim are an ancient and nearly extinct race born from a union of Angels and Demons engineered by the demoness Lilith. Once one of the most savage, powerful and warlike races in all Creation, they were destroyed by the Charred Council, who sent the Four Horsemen to stop the Nephilim's world-burning crusade.
The Nephilim left some of the deadliest and most powerful weapons in Creation as their legacy. Though the Nephilim were not craftsmen, they were able to create extremely potent weapons by infusing their energies into Maker-forged weapons. Death himself appears to have been particularly skilled at this, as he was noted as being the closest thing the Nephilim had to a crafter. He was responsible for infusing both his own scythe, Harvester, and the sword Affliction with arcane energies that vastly increased their effectiveness. Affliction, for instance, inflicted poisonous wounds beyond the skill of even Heaven's best healers to mend, and Harvester was able to transform into any melee weapon Death wished it to become. The most heinous of their creations were the Grand Abominations, world ravaging weapons crafted from the flesh and bone of the Ravaiim. Ordinarily, creating weapons such as the Abominations would have been far beyond the skill of the Nephilim, but the somewhat amorphous nature of the Ravaiim themselves enabled the Nephilim to circumvent this problem.
The Nephilim came into being by the hand of Lilith, who derived the first of their kind from the mingled remains of angels and demons which, in turn, triggered the mating of angels and demons to spawn them by instinct. Absalom is known to have been the first of their number, and in some way was the "mold" from which the rest were cast. How this can be considering that many Nephilim were apparently born through numerous different angels and demons procreating with one another is a mystery. However, the Nephilim are all confirmed to be related to one another, and are all descended in some manner from Absalom. It is also known that there existed a primary generation of Nephilim known as the "Firstborn", which seemed along with Absalom to be in overall command of the race. After a time, when enough Nephilim had been spawned and matured, Absalom led his kind on a world killing crusade. It is not known why this crusade was begun, but based on statements from Absalom, it may have been started in part out of a desire to claim a realm for the Nephilim, which was in fact the primary reason for their assault on Eden. Further evidence of this is alluded to by Death who stated that his people were "depraved" and outcasts among Creation due to their bloodlust. The first victims of the Nephilim were the Ravaiim, an ancient and remarkably inventive race of craftsmen who could sculpt their own flesh, living or otherwise, into almost anything. Their destruction was quick and brutally effective, but unfortunately for them, the Nephilim had plans for them extending beyond extermination. One of the Firstborn, Death, conceived of a way to turn the corpses of the Ravaiim into obscene weapons of world-ending power. Named The Grand Abominations, these weapons were so horrific that even the Nephilim used them only sparingly, keeping them a closely guarded secret and creating numerous fail-safes to keep them under control. Additionally, only the Firstborn ever knew the secrets of either the Abominations' construction or the means to activate them fully.
The Nephilim went on to butcher countless realms, inducing the complete extinction of all life upon many of these worlds. Both Heaven and Hell made significant efforts to stop the Nephilim, though it is not known whether or not these efforts were true declarations of war on the part of either realm. One such battle involved a massive demon army in combination with a large group of Makers, but despite inflicting massive casualties on the Nephilim, the battle ended in defeat for the coalition. However at last, four of the Nephilim grew weary of the slaughter. Believing that the crusade of their kinsmen threatened to undo the Balance of Creation, the four approached the neutral ruling body of the universe, The Charred Council. Possibly unbeknownst to the four, the Council too had been watching the four, and had been anticipating their defection. The four struck a deal with the Council; they would become the Council's enforcers, upholding the Balance and maintaining order in the universe, in exchange for phenomenal amounts of power. After their defection, it is known that the Nephilim crusade continued for some time, but that time was short. 2ff7e9595c
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