I very highly recommend Darksiders. The combat system is similar to Devil May Cry, but different enough that it'll take some getting used to. I was worried that the combat would turn out like God of War, and until i started getting my move list fleshed out it threatened to do just that, but fortunately the combat system was designed by someone who evidently plays fighting games. there's a wide array of moves for your main weapon and some pretty winsauce combos are possible with just that (plus it has its own versions of the DMC "utility moves" like stinger and high time), but you can also use secondary weapons in the combos as well. However, the implementation of mid combo weapon switching isn't quite what I'd hoped for - if you lead with the secondary weapon, it'll pick up in the main weapon's combo string at whatever number attack you left off in the secondary's, but if you lead with the main weapon it'll always jump to the last hit of the secondary weapon's combo string.
The secondary weapons are a few moves short of what I'd consider a full list, and their standard combo strings are only a few hits. Also, a few more of them would have been nice - there's only a scythe and a gauntlet. The scythe is good for juggles, and for keeping your distance as it has a lot of moves where it gets thrown and returns. The Gauntlet does a lot of damage, however almost every move it has knocks enemies away. Makes a great combo ender though, because its just a really murderously hard punch with War's entire weight behind it. One move the gauntlet has that's pretty handy in combos, however, is an area of effect launcher, for obvious reasons.
On top of the secondary weapons there are also "gear items," most of which are primarily utility devices but can be used as weapons. There's a "cross-blade" which is basically a giant shuriken/boomerang that can be set to home in on up to 5 targets, including certain bits of the environment - it can hit a torch, then 4 enemies, and it will set all 4 enemies on fire, as well as shredding up the last one for a few seconds if it was charged before the throw. it can also hit switches and activate objects from a distance. I rarely used it in combat, though it comes in handy for creating openings to attack certain enemies. a bit later, you'll get a grappling hook thing, which does the usual grappling hook things - hang, swing, pull yourself to climbables. It can also yank enemies back to continue a combo, or pull war to the heavy enemies.
You get a handgun about 1/3 of the way through the game, but after trying it in a bunch of situations, I can't figure out why they bothered. Its legendarily weak, it doesn't shoot very fast, it can't activate switches or anything like that, and basically it seems to serve no purpose at all except for LOOKING extremely badass, especially when fired stationary or from horseback. I love the design of it, and its suitably massive to be one of War's weapons (the shell casings look like .50BMG, which makes its lack of power all the more disappointing). It also takes up a gear slot, and you can only have 3 gear items equipped at a time (you assign them to left, right and up on the d-pad, while down switches your secondary weapon).
The rest of the gear items aren't really useful in combat, and are meant for a different purpose entirely - there's a horn which is used to open a few specific doors, a portal gun that leads to my biggest complaint with the game (more on that later), and a "mask of shadows" which lets you see things that aren't normally visible.
you can also get some Wrath abilities, which use a portion of your wrath bar, either all at once or through a continuous drain. they're mostly ignorable, though the stone skin one comes in pretty handy in the late game.
A few other combat notes: There is no jump cancelling. if you want to keep yourself and the enemy in the air longer and extend your air combo, you'll need to use the gun. There are also no jump i-frames. I had to make a concentrated effort to break my devil may cry habit of jumping to evade. Blocking/parrying/countering and evasion are all handled by the same button - press it without moving to block, time the block properly for a parry, and the parry becomes a heavy damage auto-counter after the ability is unlocked. Press it with a direction and you'll get a dash. dashing twice in the same direction has a pause, but if you change direction between each one you can go again almost instantly. remember to lock on when dashing to get the direction change benefit; otherwise every dash is "forward."
The character designs are awesome. Way awesome. I didn't like War's at first, but its grown on me (a little less WoW would be nice, and I could do without the one giant oversized gauntlet of massiveness + 5, though he does make good use of that). The angels are high tech, but all of the tech fits the "angel" aesthetic, whereas the demons are demons. Like "from hell" demons. and not that weird japanese hell where the backgrounds are brightly colored and the badasses are blobs with tentacles. These are not some dudes you'd want to see kicking down your door.
Graphically, the game looks good. Its not going to win any awards for its visuals, but it's definitely far from ugly. Its got a very high level of detail on the characters and weapons, especially War, and the post-apocalyptic, demonically twisted landscape is very satisfying to look at. The gore is exquisitely gruesome, going so far as to show the different layers of flesh and bone on dismembered stumps. The 360 version does suffer from some screen tearing issues, but a patch to address that is promised "very soon."
The sounds are uniformly great. The weapons slinging around sound mean, metal on metal clanging sounds damaging, and the gun sounds like a beast. Also Mark Hamill voices a major character who is a total dick, which is always awesome. I can't really comment on the music, though; I was listening to the Metalocalypse Dethalbum for the majority of the game. The whole game could be a Dethklok music video, it had to be done.
Now, let me get into that portal gun. Unlike Valve's portal gun which was very freeform and let you play around with it a lot, this one only works on very specific surfaces, which are there just to portal on. Takes some of the fun out of it, imo. But that's not the problem. The problem is the puzzles associated with it. Not all of them, but there's a recurring type of "how do i get across this chasm" puzzle near the end that is maddening. The solutions to these puzzles aren't difficult to find, but most of the time they're nearly impossible to implement. you'll have a split second after coming out of one portal to place another before falling to your death, which wouldn't be so bad if any part of the gameplay would allow this to happen. The camera angle when you exit the portal makes your target impossible to see, when you exit a portal your controls take a half second to turn back on, and if you're too close to the surface you're trying to portal on, War will turn and shoot the portal in another direction, to avoid sticking his arm into the wall. There were three puzzles like this, all of which had blatantly obvious solutions, but I was stuck there for well over a combined hour, and I died more times on each of them than on the rest of the game combined. However, that's my only major complaint with the entire game, and its only 3 puzzles. Plus other people don't seem to have the trouble I had there, so I dunno.
I don't want to get too much into the story. There aren't a lot of cutscenes, but each one actually matters to the plot - unlike a lot of games where the cutscenes are all balls-out action choreography, the cutscenes in this tell the story, and the balls-out action is in the hands of the player. Also, despite the current flood of halfassed, boring/pointless endings, the ending for Darksiders is awesome.
Other misc. stuff:
Quicktime events - they happen once in a great while, but once the first one happens you'll always know they're coming and it makes sense when they do.
War's character - He's pissed. Really, really pissed. But not that burning, screaming blind rage kind of pissed that will make a guy punch the floor until it shatters. No, this is a cold, unending, all-consuming fury, and War thrives on it. But he's not without wit, he always has a comeback whenever, say, a boss character talks trash. But unlike the usual cocky anti-hero, his comebacks are very to the point and extremely menacing. War does not fuck around.
Overall, this game was awesome. Its devil may cry for grownups. Its fast, visceral, gory, and brutal, but above all its FUN. I've seen it getting scores hovering around the 8.5 mark, and I'd say that was right, but only in a scoring system where an average game actually gets a 5, and how often does that happen? If I were to go by the "standard" crazy, topheavy scoring system, I'd give it about a 9.25
