Darksiders: You Don’t Know A Good Game Till It’s Gone

The title practically speaks for itself, just as the old adage “You don’t know how good you have it until you lost it.”

I may be paraphrasing a bit, mixing one saying with another, but the idea still stays the same. I bring this up now in the lull before the big console wars flare up later this month and then grow even bigger once E3 rolls around. Something didn’t occur to me till just now, seeing a gaming franchise snuffed out long before I get around to discovering its potential.

Hindsight really is 20/20, isn’t it?

Moments before I started writing this article, I just finished my first playthrough of a game (that I have to say was amazing) called Darksiders. Developed by Vigil Games and produced by the now-closed THQ, Darksiders is a game that puts us dead center in the conflict raging between Heaven and Hell. You fill the role of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, and this all-out battle is right up his alley.

Now I won’t go into gruesome details, as this is not meant to be a review of the game, but merely bringing to light something I noticed. The game was a good one; it had depth, story, twists, and turns, and followed a pretty linear model of gameplay. While it may have had a few technical issues and copied heavily off a few franchises (God of War, Jak and Daxter, and even Portal seem to have had a great influence on this title), the game delivered a solid and somewhat powerful entry into a franchise that was marked for at least 4 titles.

This is where the revelation hit as hard as a blue tortoise shell.

With THQ defunct and Vigil Games, last I checked, not being spoken for by any company, the series was left hanging in the air with only 2 of the 4 finished and released. This game, a game with so much potential and depth, will only live on story-wise in our minds and hearts as well as in the stories of every fanfic writer in the world who loved the series.

I haven’t picked up the second installment yet, but I can say that without a shadow of a doubt that I will certainly be just as crestfallen as I was when the thought occurred to me at the end of Darksiders.

I hate being the last one to the party because most of the excitement has already faded from those party animals who played the game back on its original release. I can say that at least I got to experience the joy of the game and hope to see the second one improve where the first had fallen short.

The lesson is, don’t take your time to do anything in this life. Whether it be something like sky diving or something simple like playing a game all the way through when it first comes out. We miss out on so much by hesitating and I’m living proof. If there is a series out there that you want to play but have been putting it off, pop that sucker in the console and finish it for goodness sake!