Many of you are probably already familiar with the most recent “dooms day” news scheduled for this Saturday. Harold Camping, an 89 year old Christian radio broadcaster, believes he has decoded the Bible and found a message stating the Rapture will occur on Saturday, May 21 of 2011. Whether you believe this or not, this gave me an idea. All week this week I will play a game with an apocalyptic theme to it each day and give a short write up on it. This task isn’t hard since there seems to be no end to dastardly villains whose only plot is to take over and/or destroy the world in some way or another.

Darksiders

(Xbox 360, Ps3, PC)

Where better to begin then at the ending itself? Darksiders puts you in the shoes of War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. All Hell breaks loose (literally) when War is prematurely summoned to Earth to start the apocalypse. Because of this, Earth becomes a battleground for the epic and biblical showdown of Good vs. Evil. Caught in between are all manners of life resulting in total destruction of all life and most of the Earth. The Earth then becomes home to dark and evil forces. War is initially blamed for this destruction but is given a chance to prove himself innocent by hunting down the person (or persons) responsible for his early release. He then must go back to Earth, stripped of much of his power, to find the real culprits responsible.

Darksiders is a mix of several different games all in one. There are strong influences from the Legend of Zelda formula, as well as fighting styles similar to God of War or Dante’s Inferno. These combinations make for an interesting campaign on huge maps, plenty of enemies, and epic boss battles at the end of each temple. This game certainly has it flaws, but overall, this game does an excellent job getting one in the apocalypse mood.

Day 2 Preview: Get your Geiger counters out children.