OK, my 2 cents. Sorry for the long post, but I hope you find it useful.
Every now and then I like to share my knowledge and opinions seeing as I have almost 30 years of video game experience. So a quick ?review? from a fellow gamer.
First off, Darksiders vs. Bayonetta:
The game are vaguely similar, the question is, do you want slightly watered down combat with a splash of Zelda, or do you want a deep combo system more like Devil may cry? I have both games and both are good. It you want more RPG elements go for Darksiders, if you want a deeper combat system go for Bayonetta.
Darksiders, the good:
I will say that Darksiders has blended a few different clones of popular games and made a very fun game. Probably it biggest success is cloning Zelda. The find an item/use it to complete a dungeon is done well. The dungeons are all pretty unique and well thought out. The enemies are the same. Very good art style thought the whole game. The combat is on par with DMC4 (IMHO, Bayonetta has better combat). I?ve put about 11 hours into it and I am still having fun. With the collection of new gear and weapons, the game stays fresh. And the puzzles in the dungeons are actually good. There have been a couple where I have had to think for a second and I like that. Oh, and the horse is badass.
The Bad:
I would not call the game glitchy. Fable 2 was glitchy, this is not. You will see some issues with frame rate (360 version, although I heard a review that said 360 version performs much better than PS3). I have come across the issue the OP was talking about, but the game does not really penalize you for falling. The story is good, but for a game with heavy RPG elements, there could be more of it. The story (so far) is quite simple and a little underplayed. It is kinda like the story is there just to get you to the dungeons. I?m not saying it is poorly done, just that they have a lot of potential and virgin territory with the whole 4-horsemen thing.
My biggest gripe is pacing/difficulty curve. The game is trying to mix Zelda dungeon crawling with DMC action and it is struggling to do it. You can go 20 minutes without having to use your weapon, and then you are hit with 20 minutes of non-stop fighting. It just kinda throws things off a little bit. Also, the difficulty curve look like a graph of Lindsy Lohan?s time in rehab. It is all over the place. Some of the boss fights are pretty hard and some of the larger minions are damn hard, then you have the lackeys that are cake. Couple this with a dodge move that is a little wonky and you have some weirdness in the difficulty. Then you get your horse, and that makes the open areas a cakewalk.
So in general, Darksiders is cloning a bunch of different games (Zelda, DMC, Portal, and Shadow of Colossus) and as a result, each of those elements is not quiet as good as the original, but the combination of all of them, it pretty damn cool.
Also, has anybody else found the zombie with the top hat? What the hell is that about?
