Darksiders: A Professional's Opinion

   A few Days ago I went to speak with professor Jainan Sankalia, who teaches game development classes at UT Dallas. I asked him if there were any games that had encountered that were under-rated, and why he felt that way. The game he decided to talk about was Darksiders.

   Darksiders is a third person brawler, released in 2010 by Vigil Games, akin to games like God of War. The basic plot revolves around War, the horseman of the Apocalypse, as he tears his way through hordes of angels and demons as he tries find who set the Apocalypse in motion.
 
   Sankalia put most of the blame for Darksiders' poor sales on its utter lack of advertising. The only reason that Sankalia had played Darksiders is because one of his co-workers mentioned that it influenced a project that they were both working on. The only advertising that Sankalia could remember were banners that said absolutely nothing about the actual game play.

   When I asked Sankalia if there were any unique aspects of the game that really made it stand out, he actually responded by saying that there were none. He went on to explain that Darksiders took the good parts of well established titles such as Zelda, God of War, and even Portal, and just made sure that the pieces fit together in a unified way. Darksiders felt like a complete game, not just a bunch of mismatching segments that were thrown together.

   Some of the games I have talked about in this blog have had aspects that could push buyers away, such as God Hand's difficulty. The only potential barrier that Sankalia could think of was the art style.  Sankalia mentioned that he had heard several people talk about passing up playing games with such a stylized and unique appearance in favor of games with a more "realistic" design.

   Darksiders is currently available on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC, as is its sequel Darksiders 2. Sadly, it looks like there will not be another installment in the series since Vigil Games recently went out of business, but that is no reason to skip over the Darksiders games.

   Until next time.



Sources:

    J. Sankalia (April 8, 2013) Personal Interview.