Why did this game fail, /v/?

It's ugly and the main character look stupid.

It could've sold 10 million copies and THQ would've still fallen.

>>376589119
This is true, THQ made a lot of mistakes. However, I was specifically asking about this game.

>>376589119
This, uDraw killed THQ.

>>376590557
It wasn't just the Udraw, they were in massive debt to the WWE.

>>376588939
I really want to love Darksiders but the games have nothing to make them stand out. Everything about it, from the artstyle, the game mechanics, the story and lore, etc., just feels generic, like it's all stuff you've seen a thousand times before. Not to say that each element is directly lifted from another game (though there is some of that too), but it's really uninspired. Like even if you hadn't played the games that it's borrowing from, the game would still probably give you that "seen it before" feeling.

The presentation in particular I think suffers the most from this. The character designs look straight out of Warhammer or WoW (they're over-designed, indistinct, and not very memorable), the music is just some tribal drumbeats for combat and pastoral noise for the fields, and the NPCs are all just walking exposition dumps with gravelly voices. The story is a generic Heaven/Hell war with the super special main characters being angel/demon hybrids aka probably the most played-out plot you could come up with using Abrahamic mythology as your inspiration. The gameplay is probably the best part of the whole series but even that is just pieced together from other games but without the polish and refinement that those games offer.

I do like the games though, especially 2. It's basically a better Kingdoms of Amalur, which came out around the same time and has a lot of the same problems I've been talking about except even worse. They just feel completely soulless, for lack of a better word.

tl;dr: the game is just generic and uninspired. Despite the relatively unique concept of an action-adventure game that uses Abrahamic mythology as the source for it's worldbuilding, a concept that I would be totally down for normally, the games just feel bland. There's nothing about Darksiders that you can't get somewhere else.

>>376589360
I don't know then, it wasn't bad at all. world felt a bit empty at times, but otherwise it was a solid game and a worthy sequel to the first one

This is no place for a horse

Every mission was fetch quest x3 or press button x3.

>>376588939
Because they had fun combat but barely let you partake in it. Every 2 minutes of combat is on either side of 20 minutes of fucking around with brain-dead easy but long puzzles... Or just running through an empty map.

I lost count of the amount of times I uttered "that's IT?" after killing the last enemy in an encounter after fucking around with those boring ball-moving puzzles.

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>>376590760
>The character designs look straight out of Warhammer or WoW (they're over-designed, indistinct, and not very memorable), the music is just some tribal drumbeats for combat and pastoral noise for the fields

You're fucking retarded mate.

>>376588939
Because THQ failed.

OP here. If I have to make one criticism of the first one (which I just finished, Warmastered Edition, thoroughly enjoyed it) was the whole Black Citadel level. You know, the fucking Portal puzzles.

Someone mentioned the art style. I dunno, I think it has its own personality, intentionally over the top in a cartoony sort of way. I dunno, YMMV.

Yeah, the story's a bit generic. I really dig the Horseman thing, tho. If anything, War was a bit bland and one dimensional in the first one, but Death actually looks like he has a personality in the second one.

Sure, these are not games that invent anything. And maybe that's the reason why people gave them a pass. But I don't see, so far, reasons enough to pan the franchise.

>>376588939
The free roam killed it. 1 had some elements of it but it was more contained, this one just had a big ass place and just took me out of it when going from point A to B. Dropped it around the worm boss thing

>>376588939
It did? I remember it doing fine

>>376594445
I dunno, man. 1 was more contained, yeah, but the backtracking was godawful even counting the shopkeeper's fast travel. 2 has an open world kind of vibe, sure, but it feels more flexible.

>>376588939
Bad combat
Fuckload of useless items
Iirc monsters on dungeons didn't respawn
Best boss battle at the beginning of the game
Extremely long while the last segments felt rushed
Terrible last boss and ending
It was an overall mediocre game.

>>376588939
On PC it felt like a lazy console port, something which they made WORSE in the fucking Deathinitive Edition.

Apart from that, I wasn't a fan of the loot aspect.

>>376594672
Can you elaborate on the "bad combat" part? I find it much more fluid and varied compared to 1. War was a goddamn tank in that game, and everything was solved by that air spinning attack + a very easily activated Chaos Mode. Evading enemies had a very long cooldown and parrying was all kinds of fucked. Death is much more nimble and fast, not to mention the options.

I'll give you the useless items thing, sure, it feels unnecesary and the inventory system is bad.

>>376590760

>>Oh these things are great but I've seen them before so I refuse to enjoy them again.

I guess you also don't like sex, and stopped reading books once you'd seen each word once. Fucking moron.

>>376594850
Original version was a piss poor port, granted. What's wrong with the Deathinitive?

Because it had a high budget but the game was mediocre at best. Everything that's not the art, the combat and the music were just not good.

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>>376588939
it doesn't have zelda and nintendo on the cover.

>>376588939
its too drawn out and just not very fun.

>>376594962
Been a while since I played it, but I think controls were fucked up.

Also they didn't bother to polish anything. Menus are just as fucking pixelated as they were with the original release.

Oh, and there was also a thing in the Options menu where it crashed your game every time.

>>376594856
Every single thread I have to explain why, holy fuck. I'll explain but do me a favor and spread the word on the next threads please.

It is almost a solid copy of bayonetta's combo system with wicked weaves and everything but without short combos that trigger the wicked weaves.

Said "weaves" are necessary to charge the reaper bar. But here's the breaking point, it has no dodge offset and many enemies become immune to knockback effects while charging their attacks, which forces you to dodge and break your combo.

When you are fighting one or two enemies it's ok because you may manage to finish the combo before they charge an attack, but when you have several enemies like on most of the late game, then a good chunk of the combo options are simply not available to you because the combat was badly planned. Not to mention that you will barely be using the reaper form because of that.

In the end this makes the combat extremely repetitive, in a game that's as long as Darksiders 2 this is a huge problem.

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To reawaken the guardian you need gather three things and bring them here one by one.
Welcome to the land of the dead. Now fuck off to the arena.
Welcome to the arena. Now go and gather three things before we let you fight the boss.
Good job on killing that boss in the arena, your reward is having to gather three things.
I see you did a fine job in gathering the first of those three things, but the prerequisite to getting the second one, is having to gather three other things.
All right, good job with the gather three things-ception. You get to fight a boss and then go to angel land.
Welcome to angel land. Now fuck off to Earth and then... uh... gather three things and bring it back!

>>376588939
Too long
Also the open field was a mistake

>>376595565
Alright, I get your points. Sorry for having you post that again, first time I honestly saw that point of view.

Moving on: if Reaper Form is as much as an I WIN mode where you thrash everything around you while being invincible like the first game, I don't think limiting it is necessarily a bad choice.

I will say that locking on and dodging as fast as Death does don't seem to gel that well, to add to the debate.

>>376595798
Well, Zelda did that how many times? Honestly, Darksiders 1 lifts a lot from the Zelda formula.

That doesn't make it bad per se.

>>376595798
This this this

>>376589031
this. I won't even bother to inform myself on this game because the artstyle is so off puttig. If he designs were more appealing maybe mroe people would have given it a try. But this could be the game of the millenium and I would never know because of this ugly ass looking mofo and those horrific warcraft-style proportions

>>376595798
Omg thx played and finished on xbone and this annoyed me a lot

>>376588939
It reviewed and sold well. THQ still closed down. It didn't fail, it just didn't succeed well enough.

>>376595798
>story is just an excuse for having you do things

What the fuck? This is the first action game that has ever done it. And would that be any different than from the first one? It's always "go there and do this and come back to the main room"

>>376596306
>sold well

It didn't though. The game flopped.

The first hour or two of the game was neat, then you realize it's just the same shit for another 10 hours.

It's like a one trick pony

>>376595798
And the worse thing about all of this is how it pales in comparison to the first game. In the first game you went around a desolate earth where the desert is literally made out of the ashes of the dead trying to kill a creature more powerful than Satan.

On the second game you go around trying to save your brother by doing.... something. The visuals are nice and the music is epic on certain occasions but the whole story looks and feels like a filler episode that not even the writers were invested on.

Because it sucks, the combat and platforming are terrible just like everything else in the game. Only retards that regularly listen to heavy metal can take this pile of shit seriously.

>>376588939

retarded lore

>>376588939
Because its really just not good. I fucking hate puzzles, they are not fun in any way shape or form. Platforming in the game isn't skill based jumping on platforms, its press button to interact on thing. The combat is fun and flashy but ultimately shallow and could never carry the game on its own. It tries to be an rpg by using light loot elements but it feels tacked on. Pretty fucking shit game, I kept pushing through thinking I was missing something because of the glowing praise.

>>376596379
Its only bad if you notice it and it gets annoying. A well designed game makes those things feel natural.

>>376595798
Someone needs to draw a tree diagram of the objects you need to grab/kill/rape in order to proceed down the pre-existing questline.