Badass? Yes. Fun? Not so much.There's three parts to this game (possibly four if I count the credits that are STILL rolling), the combat, the puzzles, and the story. Each one is bad in its own special way.
Combat is lame and lackluster. It wants to be God of War, but can't pull it off. Keeping a combo of more than 20 going is pretty impressive, and if you so much as miss one hit, the meter resets. Enemies are given to you in unoriginal waves. You start off with one type, then they throw something into the mix, then they throw you TWO of the somethings to fight at once, oh my! There's very few ways of regaining health in the game, enemies only give it to you if you're on the verge of death, which leaves you to look for small enemies you can one shot kill, or birds which fly around giving somee health if you can hit them (which is very hard to do without ranged weapons, which you don't have in the beginning). It's often easier to just kill yourself to get back to starting health than it is to try to tough an unexplored area out.
Puzzles are frustratingly placed in the game as a way to extend time. This could have been a forgettable 5 - 7 hour romp, but the backtracking in the Zelda like dungeon environments with no real hints about how to proceed are hair pullingly maddening. A good example is towards the end of the game, weights come down from the ceiling and a door is just out of view. The weights look like elevators, with chains holding onto what could be best described as pointed tops. Using some blocks that also spawn, you're led to believe you need to drop the weights down to act as a counter weight to make one rise, but that never happens. No, instead you need to weight the elevators down so you can jump ON TOP of them and then be lifted up by knocking the weights out of the way. If you miss a jump here, you have to start all over. It doesn't even look like you can get on top of these elevators until you accidentally end up doing so.
Lastly, the story. It doesn't make sense. I hate going into spoilers, but the game asks you to take certain things for granted. It has a bit of a twist revelation that occurs, but it feels pretty weak and an attempt to explain it all out.
Overall, Darksiders borrows heavily from some other great games (God of War, Zelda ... Portal..) but doesn't ever really capture the magic of any of them. I can't really recommend that anybody else slog through this one. There's better ways to spend 10 - 15 hours of your time than going through a 5 - 7 hour game that artificially stretches itself with frustrating puzzles, ho hum combat, and forcing you to repeat every area in the game (seriously).
