Top 1 Xbox 360 Site

February 17, 2010 –
THQ Inc. today announced that Darksiders owners can redeem their pack-in code to receive a free copy of the critically acclaimed shooter Red Faction: Guerrilla for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, as well as a Digital Hellbook disc filled with Darksiders art, videos, and other content. This offer applies to both previously purchased copies of Darksiders and new copies purchased prior to the offer’s termination date. Darksiders owners can click on one of the links below and enter their code into the “Promo Code” box on the page:

Free PS3 Game

http://store.thq.com/servlet/PromoServlet/promoID.51933900

Free Xbox 360 Game

http://store.thq.com/servlet/PromoServlet/promoID.51934000

The opportunity to get two great games for the price of one will only last until March 7, 2010. This promotion is available to United States residents only.

About Darksiders

Deceived by the forces of evil into prematurely bringing about the end of mankind, WAR – the first Horseman of the Apocalypse – must return to Earth to search for the truth and punish those responsible. War must take on the forces of Heaven and Hell, forge uneasy alliances with the very demons he hunts, and journey across the ravaged remains of the Earth on his quest for vengeance. Players harness the apocalyptic power of War, combining brutal attacks and supernatural abilities to decimate enemies who stand in his way. With an extreme arsenal of weapons, War blazes a trail of destruction, and emerges even more deadly atop Ruin, War’s fiery phantom steed. Darksiders is now available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For more information, please visit www.darksiders.com.

About Red Faction: Guerrilla

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a 3rd person, open-world shooter set on Mars, 50 years after the events of the original Red Faction. Players take on the role of freedom fighter Alec Mason, with the newly re-established Red Faction movement, as they battle for liberation from the oppressive Earth Defense Force (EDF). Throughout their fight for freedom, players can carve their own path, wreaking havoc across the vast, open-world environment of Mars, from the desolate mining outpost of Parker to the gleaming EDF capital city of Eos. Utilizing improvised weapons, explosives and re-purposed mining equipment and vehicles, Red Faction: Guerrilla allows players to tear through fully destructible environments in a Martian landscape swarming with EDF forces, Red Faction resistance fighters, and the downtrodden settlers caught in the cross-fire. Red Faction: Guerrilla features a robust multiplayer experience, including several modes focused on destruction-based game-play.

Penned by legendary comic book artist Joe Madureira (X-Men, Battle Chasers, The Ultimates), Darksiders: Wrath of War is set in a Post-Apocalyptic demon-ravaged world where evil forces have prematurely brought about the end of the time. Originally sent to oversee the destruction of Earth, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been betrayed by their master, stripped of their powers and cast down to Earth. Players take on the role of WAR — the first of the Four Horsemen — as he embarks on a brutal quest of vengeance and revenge against the forces that betrayed him with the help of his phantom steed RUIN. Darksiders: Wrath of War features open-world exploration, a deep combat system and a huge arsenal of modern and mythical weapons.

Genre: Action

Publisher: THQ

Developer: Vigil Games

Online Play:

Local Play:

February 17, 2010 –
THQ Inc. today announced that Darksiders owners can redeem their pack-in code to receive a free copy of the critically acclaimed shooter Red Faction: Guerrilla for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, as well as a Digital Hellbook disc filled with Darksiders art, videos, and other content. This offer applies to both previously purchased copies of Darksiders and new copies purchased prior to the offer’s termination date. Darksiders owners can click on one of the links below and enter their code into the “Promo Code” box on the page:

Free PS3 Game

http://store.thq.com/servlet/PromoServlet/promoID.51933900

Free Xbox 360 Game

http://store.thq.com/servlet/PromoServlet/promoID.51934000

The opportunity to get two great games for the price of one will only last until March 7, 2010. This promotion is available to United States residents only.

About Darksiders

Deceived by the forces of evil into prematurely bringing about the end of mankind, WAR – the first Horseman of the Apocalypse – must return to Earth to search for the truth and punish those responsible. War must take on the forces of Heaven and Hell, forge uneasy alliances with the very demons he hunts, and journey across the ravaged remains of the Earth on his quest for vengeance. Players harness the apocalyptic power of War, combining brutal attacks and supernatural abilities to decimate enemies who stand in his way. With an extreme arsenal of weapons, War blazes a trail of destruction, and emerges even more deadly atop Ruin, War’s fiery phantom steed. Darksiders is now available for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For more information, please visit www.darksiders.com.

About Red Faction: Guerrilla

Red Faction: Guerrilla is a 3rd person, open-world shooter set on Mars, 50 years after the events of the original Red Faction. Players take on the role of freedom fighter Alec Mason, with the newly re-established Red Faction movement, as they battle for liberation from the oppressive Earth Defense Force (EDF). Throughout their fight for freedom, players can carve their own path, wreaking havoc across the vast, open-world environment of Mars, from the desolate mining outpost of Parker to the gleaming EDF capital city of Eos. Utilizing improvised weapons, explosives and re-purposed mining equipment and vehicles, Red Faction: Guerrilla allows players to tear through fully destructible environments in a Martian landscape swarming with EDF forces, Red Faction resistance fighters, and the downtrodden settlers caught in the cross-fire. Red Faction: Guerrilla features a robust multiplayer experience, including several modes focused on destruction-based game-play.

January 5, 2010 –
What is Darksiders? Think God of War meets The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s like. Though it’s not as good as either of those games, when you’re taking elements from some of the best around, you’re doing something right, and Vigil Games built in plenty of gameplay systems that fans of those titles, particularly the Legend of Zelda, should find familiar and enjoyable.

Darksiders plays smoothly, looks sharp, sounds great, and provides about 15 hours of single-player content. There’s lots of gear to collect, weapons to upgrade, combos to learn, and special items to find. There’s a range of enemy-rich environments, puzzle dungeons and reasons to backtrack. All seems to be in order for a standout gaming experience, but I felt a few elements of the game limit the range of its entertainment value.

You play as War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His power is known and he’s treated with a certain sliver of respect by even the most powerful of dungeon bosses. Sure people want to kill you because they falsely think you screwed up the balance between Heaven and Hell and blew up all of humanity in the process, but they’re still a little apprehensive when confronting you. It’s empowering to have supreme beings spout their standard death threats without forgetting to properly address you as a Horseman. They’re angry and they’re arrogant enough to fight you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t recognize your status.

War’s actual personality, unfortunately, doesn’t manage to match up with his reputation. He may not be a traditional heroic figure, but there’s never a doubt that “hero” is the role he’s meant to play here. Since he’s the framed victim in a corrupt scandal, it’s easy to identify with his desire for revenge and you don’t exactly pity the throngs of demons he slices through.

As a result, he isn’t particularly interesting to listen to, as he’s portrayed as the stereotypical good guy — a flat role for such a figure. You’ll chuckle from time to time as his bluntness in conversation blasts aside any mists of uncertainty surrounding his intentions, but mostly you’re going to want to get back to battle. In combat he will rip enemies apart, tear off their heads, impale them on his sword, slice them in half, smash them senseless and pull out their hearts. Blood spills all over, and thanks to some slick animations, every slice, thud and smack feels like it has an impact.

Like in God of War, when you do enough damage to a foe a button prompt will pop up over their head. You hit the button and it kills the enemy. The difference in Darksiders is that there aren’t any quick-time event (QTE) sequences following the input of the kill command, something I think anyone else who thinks QTEs are overused will appreciate. If it’s a common foe it’ll be an animation specific to the enemy type, and if it’s a boss of the mini or final variety, it’ll be something more elaborate and brutal. In this way, you get a nice reward for successfully utilizing the combat system, which, as it turns out, isn’t very difficult to do.

Veteran gamers will want to crank the difficulty on this game. The fighting here is far from Devil May Cry complex and encounters don’t feel as challenging as God of War. The command input system doesn’t require any kind of supercharged reflexes. It’s slow, methodical and forgiving, so chaining attacks can be done by pretty much anyone who picks up the controller, even if they’ve never played an action game before. You move through the game and will eventually unlock two weapons to complement your sword, a massive scythe and a hulking gauntlet that can be easily mixed in with your standard combos with the press of a button. There are slight differences in feel between the weapon styles, so it’s a nice change if you’re tired of your sword combos and the same easy combat is in place across all three weapon types. Though it’s not built for the hardcore action gamer and its limited nature will become apparent well before the end of the game, it’s still entirely functional, entertaining and a joy to watch because the animations are so smooth.

War gains access to a wide variety of very familiar fantasy tools.The gear you pick up in various dungeons can also contribute to battle behavior, juggling enemies, affecting your movement in a fight, or grabbing bits of the environment at a distance. How do you get the gear? Well, get ready for a deluge of Zelda comparisons. If you’ve played any 3D Legend of Zelda game, what you find here is going to be very familiar indeed.

War will come across puzzle dungeons from time to time, and within each is buried a gear or weapon item that allows more to be explored and ultimately access to a boss chamber. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll find dungeon maps, treasure chest locators, keys to open specific doors and bombs to blow up red crystal walls. You’ll use your Abyssal Chain (hookshot) to cross chasms, use your Crossblade (boomerang) to tag multiple targets and transfer fire onto explosives to arm them, or to activate crystals.

Throughout Darksiders you’ll see influences from other titles like Halo 3 as War grabs heavy, fantastical versions of Bungie’s turret guns, Portal, and, strangely enough, Panzer Dragoon. You get a horse named Ruin that War can ride around in larger spaces and swat at enemies with his sword, and the sprint mechanic is the same as Ocarina of Time, only it uses little energy pellets instead of carrots. You even get the equivalent of milk jars to store powerups for use in the field. The good news is that the recycled mechanics are still fun to toy around with, particularly when fused with the game’s combat system.

Darksiders has, after all, the benefit of including elements of some of the best games ever made, and it’s a new property with high production values, which is certainly something we all like to see. Its gameplay can’t really be described as original, but the fact that the majority of its mechanics are already proven to work and implemented well means there’s certainly entertainment to be had here. If anyone reading this has not played Ocarina of Time before (which you should), then you’ll have a great time with this game. The introduction of new gear, challenges, and enemy types are set before you at a measured pace that keeps you hooked and piles more layers on the gameplay. Even so, some aspects don’t hook together as snugly as I would have liked.

• 1
• 2
• Next
  

January 5, 2010 –
What is Darksiders? Think God of War meets The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s like. Though it’s not as good as either of those games, when you’re taking elements from some of the best around, you’re doing something right, and Vigil Games built in plenty of gameplay systems that fans of those titles, particularly the Legend of Zelda, should find familiar and enjoyable.

Darksiders plays smoothly, looks sharp, sounds great, and provides about 15 hours of single-player content. There’s lots of gear to collect, weapons to upgrade, combos to learn, and special items to find. There’s a range of enemy-rich environments, puzzle dungeons and reasons to backtrack. All seems to be in order for a standout gaming experience, but I felt a few elements of the game limit the range of its entertainment value.

You play as War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His power is known and he’s treated with a certain sliver of respect by even the most powerful of dungeon bosses. Sure people want to kill you because they falsely think you screwed up the balance between Heaven and Hell and blew up all of humanity in the process, but they’re still a little apprehensive when confronting you. It’s empowering to have supreme beings spout their standard death threats without forgetting to properly address you as a Horseman. They’re angry and they’re arrogant enough to fight you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t recognize your status.

War’s actual personality, unfortunately, doesn’t manage to match up with his reputation. He may not be a traditional heroic figure, but there’s never a doubt that “hero” is the role he’s meant to play here. Since he’s the framed victim in a corrupt scandal, it’s easy to identify with his desire for revenge and you don’t exactly pity the throngs of demons he slices through.

As a result, he isn’t particularly interesting to listen to, as he’s portrayed as the stereotypical good guy — a flat role for such a figure. You’ll chuckle from time to time as his bluntness in conversation blasts aside any mists of uncertainty surrounding his intentions, but mostly you’re going to want to get back to battle. In combat he will rip enemies apart, tear off their heads, impale them on his sword, slice them in half, smash them senseless and pull out their hearts. Blood spills all over, and thanks to some slick animations, every slice, thud and smack feels like it has an impact.

Like in God of War, when you do enough damage to a foe a button prompt will pop up over their head. You hit the button and it kills the enemy. The difference in Darksiders is that there aren’t any quick-time event (QTE) sequences following the input of the kill command, something I think anyone else who thinks QTEs are overused will appreciate. If it’s a common foe it’ll be an animation specific to the enemy type, and if it’s a boss of the mini or final variety, it’ll be something more elaborate and brutal. In this way, you get a nice reward for successfully utilizing the combat system, which, as it turns out, isn’t very difficult to do.

Veteran gamers will want to crank the difficulty on this game. The fighting here is far from Devil May Cry complex and encounters don’t feel as challenging as God of War. The command input system doesn’t require any kind of supercharged reflexes. It’s slow, methodical and forgiving, so chaining attacks can be done by pretty much anyone who picks up the controller, even if they’ve never played an action game before. You move through the game and will eventually unlock two weapons to complement your sword, a massive scythe and a hulking gauntlet that can be easily mixed in with your standard combos with the press of a button. There are slight differences in feel between the weapon styles, so it’s a nice change if you’re tired of your sword combos and the same easy combat is in place across all three weapon types. Though it’s not built for the hardcore action gamer and its limited nature will become apparent well before the end of the game, it’s still entirely functional, entertaining and a joy to watch because the animations are so smooth.

War gains access to a wide variety of very familiar fantasy tools.The gear you pick up in various dungeons can also contribute to battle behavior, juggling enemies, affecting your movement in a fight, or grabbing bits of the environment at a distance. How do you get the gear? Well, get ready for a deluge of Zelda comparisons. If you’ve played any 3D Legend of Zelda game, what you find here is going to be very familiar indeed.

War will come across puzzle dungeons from time to time, and within each is buried a gear or weapon item that allows more to be explored and ultimately access to a boss chamber. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll find dungeon maps, treasure chest locators, keys to open specific doors and bombs to blow up red crystal walls. You’ll use your Abyssal Chain (hookshot) to cross chasms, use your Crossblade (boomerang) to tag multiple targets and transfer fire onto explosives to arm them, or to activate crystals.

Throughout Darksiders you’ll see influences from other titles like Halo 3 as War grabs heavy, fantastical versions of Bungie’s turret guns, Portal, and, strangely enough, Panzer Dragoon. You get a horse named Ruin that War can ride around in larger spaces and swat at enemies with his sword, and the sprint mechanic is the same as Ocarina of Time, only it uses little energy pellets instead of carrots. You even get the equivalent of milk jars to store powerups for use in the field. The good news is that the recycled mechanics are still fun to toy around with, particularly when fused with the game’s combat system.

Darksiders has, after all, the benefit of including elements of some of the best games ever made, and it’s a new property with high production values, which is certainly something we all like to see. Its gameplay can’t really be described as original, but the fact that the majority of its mechanics are already proven to work and implemented well means there’s certainly entertainment to be had here. If anyone reading this has not played Ocarina of Time before (which you should), then you’ll have a great time with this game. The introduction of new gear, challenges, and enemy types are set before you at a measured pace that keeps you hooked and piles more layers on the gameplay. Even so, some aspects don’t hook together as snugly as I would have liked.

• 1
• 2
• Next
  

January 5, 2010 –
What is Darksiders? Think God of War meets The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it’s like. Though it’s not as good as either of those games, when you’re taking elements from some of the best around, you’re doing something right, and Vigil Games built in plenty of gameplay systems that fans of those titles, particularly the Legend of Zelda, should find familiar and enjoyable.

Darksiders plays smoothly, looks sharp, sounds great, and provides about 15 hours of single-player content. There’s lots of gear to collect, weapons to upgrade, combos to learn, and special items to find. There’s a range of enemy-rich environments, puzzle dungeons and reasons to backtrack. All seems to be in order for a standout gaming experience, but I felt a few elements of the game limit the range of its entertainment value.

You play as War, one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His power is known and he’s treated with a certain sliver of respect by even the most powerful of dungeon bosses. Sure people want to kill you because they falsely think you screwed up the balance between Heaven and Hell and blew up all of humanity in the process, but they’re still a little apprehensive when confronting you. It’s empowering to have supreme beings spout their standard death threats without forgetting to properly address you as a Horseman. They’re angry and they’re arrogant enough to fight you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t recognize your status.

War’s actual personality, unfortunately, doesn’t manage to match up with his reputation. He may not be a traditional heroic figure, but there’s never a doubt that “hero” is the role he’s meant to play here. Since he’s the framed victim in a corrupt scandal, it’s easy to identify with his desire for revenge and you don’t exactly pity the throngs of demons he slices through.

As a result, he isn’t particularly interesting to listen to, as he’s portrayed as the stereotypical good guy — a flat role for such a figure. You’ll chuckle from time to time as his bluntness in conversation blasts aside any mists of uncertainty surrounding his intentions, but mostly you’re going to want to get back to battle. In combat he will rip enemies apart, tear off their heads, impale them on his sword, slice them in half, smash them senseless and pull out their hearts. Blood spills all over, and thanks to some slick animations, every slice, thud and smack feels like it has an impact.

Like in God of War, when you do enough damage to a foe a button prompt will pop up over their head. You hit the button and it kills the enemy. The difference in Darksiders is that there aren’t any quick-time event (QTE) sequences following the input of the kill command, something I think anyone else who thinks QTEs are overused will appreciate. If it’s a common foe it’ll be an animation specific to the enemy type, and if it’s a boss of the mini or final variety, it’ll be something more elaborate and brutal. In this way, you get a nice reward for successfully utilizing the combat system, which, as it turns out, isn’t very difficult to do.

Veteran gamers will want to crank the difficulty on this game. The fighting here is far from Devil May Cry complex and encounters don’t feel as challenging as God of War. The command input system doesn’t require any kind of supercharged reflexes. It’s slow, methodical and forgiving, so chaining attacks can be done by pretty much anyone who picks up the controller, even if they’ve never played an action game before. You move through the game and will eventually unlock two weapons to complement your sword, a massive scythe and a hulking gauntlet that can be easily mixed in with your standard combos with the press of a button. There are slight differences in feel between the weapon styles, so it’s a nice change if you’re tired of your sword combos and the same easy combat is in place across all three weapon types. Though it’s not built for the hardcore action gamer and its limited nature will become apparent well before the end of the game, it’s still entirely functional, entertaining and a joy to watch because the animations are so smooth.

War gains access to a wide variety of very familiar fantasy tools.The gear you pick up in various dungeons can also contribute to battle behavior, juggling enemies, affecting your movement in a fight, or grabbing bits of the environment at a distance. How do you get the gear? Well, get ready for a deluge of Zelda comparisons. If you’ve played any 3D Legend of Zelda game, what you find here is going to be very familiar indeed.

War will come across puzzle dungeons from time to time, and within each is buried a gear or weapon item that allows more to be explored and ultimately access to a boss chamber. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll find dungeon maps, treasure chest locators, keys to open specific doors and bombs to blow up red crystal walls. You’ll use your Abyssal Chain (hookshot) to cross chasms, use your Crossblade (boomerang) to tag multiple targets and transfer fire onto explosives to arm them, or to activate crystals.

Throughout Darksiders you’ll see influences from other titles like Halo 3 as War grabs heavy, fantastical versions of Bungie’s turret guns, Portal, and, strangely enough, Panzer Dragoon. You get a horse named Ruin that War can ride around in larger spaces and swat at enemies with his sword, and the sprint mechanic is the same as Ocarina of Time, only it uses little energy pellets instead of carrots. You even get the equivalent of milk jars to store powerups for use in the field. The good news is that the recycled mechanics are still fun to toy around with, particularly when fused with the game’s combat system.

Darksiders has, after all, the benefit of including elements of some of the best games ever made, and it’s a new property with high production values, which is certainly something we all like to see. Its gameplay can’t really be described as original, but the fact that the majority of its mechanics are already proven to work and implemented well means there’s certainly entertainment to be had here. If anyone reading this has not played Ocarina of Time before (which you should), then you’ll have a great time with this game. The introduction of new gear, challenges, and enemy types are set before you at a measured pace that keeps you hooked and piles more layers on the gameplay. Even so, some aspects don’t hook together as snugly as I would have liked.

• 1
• 2
• Next