WB has a good problem on their hands.  They have the best action melee combat system on market.  Spider-man comes close, but it’s movement based rather than physical.

If you’ve ever played a Batman game, you know what I mean.  Rarely are fights ever 1:1, instead it’s Batman vs 5-10 different goons, with different abilities.  At easier difficulty levels, you can just use your fists and generally get through.  Harder difficulties really do turn you into a walking swiss army knife of combat options.  You’re shooting batarangs, rope pulls, stuns, air attacks, flash bombs and a slew of other options.  While there’s an ideal path for each enemy type, odds are you surrounded by multiple and just creating your own dance of death.

Even goons with guns can be taken down with the right tools.  The last game in the series went a bit overboard on that, as you can’t really take out an entire squad of armed foes with your hands.  Still, the model works and it’s extremely fulfilling.

Shadow of Mordor takes this up another notch, what with the possession skill.  Most fights are against 20+ enemies, and it’s really not possible to take them all down without turning the odds in your favor.  You end up just dodging all over the place, like you’re high on sugar pops.  Still taking down an army, effectively solo, is a heck of a feeling.  Throw in a boss (or 3) and it’s a great endorphin rush.

Which brings me to Mad Max.  Early fights start off with 3-5 goons.  Then you get people who run at you.  Then some with shields.  Then some with weapons.  Then PILES of enemies at once.  There’s a gradual increase of difficulty as you go through, and in nearly all cases, it is predicated on your use of the Parry and Dodge buttons.  Parry yellow, Dodge red.  You can “move cancel” almost everything but a killer blow (ironically), so that makes for some stream of combat.  But there’s really no movement involved here – you just wait for people to attack, and hope they are near a wall for what is the only “invincible” takedown that doesn’t require a consumable.

You don’t really get more tools (shiv, shotgun), but you do get some interesting skills to help offset the enemies.  You can reverse parry an attack, using the enemy’s weapon against them.  You can break shields.  You can quickly execute.  Almost all of them require you to play defensively.

It’s an interesting twist, and one that has some merit.  The Dark Souls model of opportunistic attacks is certainly sound.  Mad Max uses a different toolkit to push that concept, and for the most part, it works.

This one has been on my wishlist for a while now.  I heard some great things about it but I’d had enough open world games to play at the time.  I’m getting emails every day now about some game on sale, so I figured I’d get a deal and give it a go.

I am a fan of the film series.  That helps tremendously here, because the game makes next to no effort to explain the setting.  Not that we generally play these games for their story settings.  I’m not quite far in, but the bits and pieces that have been presented so far fit in really well with the world-as-seen-on-film.  Considering it came out around the time of the 4th film (which is frikkin’ amazing), the tie-in is obvious and probably in the top-3 I’ve ever played.

Open-world games walk a very tight line.  You want tons of things to do, but you want them to be meaningful.  Ubisoft put in character levels to help justify the crazy padding in the Assassin’s Creed series.  Mad Max has a lot of events, but it does a decent job in making them both varied and useful.  The base camps you’re clearing are all unique, peppered with some bosses.  There are secrets to find in each as well.  There are sniper nests / totems to take down, but they are mostly drive-bys and easy enough to manage.  The “discovery the world” points are hot air ballons, and rather than just push a button, you need to go through some minor (different) steps to get the balloon in the air.

The rough spots deal with scrap collection, which may or may not contain a piece of a useful recipe.  Means you only need to do a handful per mini-zone.  The absolute worst part is the minesweeping portion, which requires you to use a specific car and travel to the world without getting into any combat.

Given the setting, there’s a LOT of driving.  Thankfully it plays wonderfully.  Each vehicle plays differently, and your main ride has enough gizmos to make combat entertaining. There are some Death Races as well, which unlock different vehicles.  It’s ok to start, but really shines when you upgrade the ammo for your Shotgun and can take out enemies with ease.  The hunting of convoys is especially fun, as you need to take down 4-8 vehicles to get a hood ornament from the leader.  You end up doing a ton of laps around an area, using every advantage you can to survive.  Tons of fun.  It’s a really good travel system, making the world feel big without it feeling like it’s just big to impress.

Hand to hand combat is pretty much the Batman games, minus the crazy acrobatics.  So yeah, gold standard there.

All the various activities help restore a local stronghold which provides boosts to your gameplay.  Either free healing, ammo, scrap (money) collection, or similar.  They also reduce the area’s threat, which unlocks upgrades for your car.  And raising your Legend status (character level) unless character upgrades.  So there’s some value in completing them, as much there is in doing the actual activity.

The downsides here are all nitpicky.  The minesweeping portion is horrible as you can only use 1 car, which has no upgrades, and you need to manually find the minefields.  Dodge and jump are realistic, meaning they don’t really move you that much.  It’s jarring and takes a fair amount of adjustment.  Collecting scrap I tedious (hold A to collect) and takes a stronghold upgrade to collect from destroyed vehicles.  But I am nitpicking here (except minesweeping, ugh).

I’ve unlocked the 2nd area (I think there are 4), I guess that makes it about 20% or so saying “complete”.  So more thoughts as I dig deeper.  What I’ve seen so far, yeah, I can see why this game was on many top 10 lists in 2015.  Probably would be in top 10 lists in 2020 too.

If you haven’t played Control yet, you should.  It’s a GotY caliber experience.  The first playthrough is a sensory experience, as the House is weird as all hell.  Figuring out how all the pieces fit together is awesome, and throwing stuff with telekenitic powers does not get old.  Clearing it all, I was really hoping for some DLC to expand on it all.

The Jukebox runs came out near the holidays.  Timed arena combat with some OK loot.  It was OK, but since loot isn’t exactly a driver in Control, there wasn’t a whole lot to replay through.  Foundation is a true DLC, expanding on the lore, the enemies, and the skill sets.

You need to have completed the main game to get into this content.  As much for the fact the story won’t make any sense if you don’t, as for the fact that the new enemies are quite difficult.  I died way more in this DLC than the main game.  Enemies have more HP, deal more damage, and are much more evasive.  More challenge is good, and it doesn’t feel cheap.

Two new skills, though they don’t have huge impacts on combat.  You can create stone, which is mostly for reaching new areas.  It can be used to create spikes, but the enemies have to be lured to the location.  You can also destroy stone, used to access new areas and crafting mats.  Used in combat, this can destroy floors, plummeting people to their death.  Which is a neat way to kill the final boss in 2 shots.

There are some additional levels to skills, just stat boosts.  Some new mods that tweak gameplay – I added a +hp when hitting with Launch.  That seems almost mandatory given the new combat difficulty.  Compared to the base game, you’re going to be using different weapon types more often.  The sniper and launcher modes are very useful now.  The SMG and shotgun are still useless.

It’s all 1 big zone, with 2 main environments to explore.  It’s more linear than the base game, and most of it is within tunnels.  They play with light/dark themes to add some stress to the game.  The TV sidequest in particular is done in pure darkness with a minor source of portable light.  The Film Camera sidequest is similar to the Ashtray maze, but due to the more precise platforming requirements, its a tad less fun than novel.

I won’t spoil the story.  The Board has issues, you get to read about how the House started, and some of the political bits.  I do wish there was more here though – Ash is a fascinating character.  It leaves enough breadcrumbs to sow some doubt as to how benevolent the Board is, which always struck me as odd in the base game.

The DLC as whole probably takes 4 hours to run though, side quests and all.  There’s 1 secret quest to collect some cat statues, and let me tell you that is one of the most obtuse puzzles I have ever seen.  One step is done in the complete dark – and I likely never would have found it without a reddit post.

The Foundation is a good DLC.  It’s more of Control, with a few minor tweaks.  It’s not an expansion.  I’d rather see a sequel than an expansion.  There are many veins that are present here.  For what it is, it works very well.  Highly recommended.

I’ve now played all the games in the Darksiders series, and I have to say it’s one of the more interesting ones out there.  The plot line deals with the 4 horsemen maintaining the balance between the forces of good and evil, with humans stuck somewhere in the middle.  Each game in the series emulates a particular genre, and focuses on a particular horseman.  For the most part, this works, but emulation is not replication.

The first game dealt with War and was in line with the Zelda series in terms of open world, unlocking skills, and world traversal.  It was the most puzzle focused of the series, and had the cleanest of plot lines.  Ironically, in terms of timelines, its the last one – setting the stage for all 4 horsemen to come out and play.

The second game dealt with Death and was a mashup of God of War’s combat with Diablo’s itemization.  Worked well enough, and the plot line really expanded on the world.

The third dealt with Fury and tried to be more like Dark Souls, but instead focused on parry attacks.  The world building was ok, Samael in particular was top notch, and the end scenario was unexpected given the character growth.  Looks amazing, but the gameplay got dry pretty quick.

Finally, the 4th game deals with Strife and is more in like with a twin-stick shooter (since Strife has guns).  Well, the game is actually a duo-game, since you can freely swap to War (melee focus) or play local coop.  There’s some exploring and puzzle work, and some backtracking if you want to unlock everything.  Even an arena mode to test your combat skills.

The only downside I have with this game is the locked in camera angle.  If you’ve played Diablo, you know that there are somethings that you simply cannot see due to the world geometry.  Which, fine in a 2D world (Diablo has no vertical portions).  Darksiders has a lot of vertical aspects, and some portions are really hard to figure out without trial and error.  Main game, no real issues.  Exploring the world, painful.  There’s one set of puzzles in the Void (SW portion) that requires accurate platform jumping and is so poorly executed that I’ve rarely been that frustrated.  We’re talking Tidus’ Chocobo Race in FFX levels of frustrating.  Thankfully, it only provides an achievement – entirely skippable.

The story line isn’t very good – you’re basically chasing Lucifer and aided by Samael along the way,  but never get to see behind the curtain as to why.  Meh.  The combat makes up for it, as it can be a ton of fun to take out wide piles of various enemies with your skills.  A fully upgrade Strife is a walking death dealer – and the arena really shows that off.  The bosses all have some interesting mechanics, though often pad the length with spawns of trash to clear.  Knowing when to dodge/parry is key to survive.

The really interesting bit here is the skill orb system.  Enemies have a chance of dropping a skill orb, and the more orbs you get, the higher their level (up to 3).  There are ok skills and amazing skills.  +3% to special attacks is meh, but having chain explosions upon death of an enemy is like setting fireworks.  There’s a slotting mechanism too, where you only get the level bonus of the orb based on the slot.  So a level 3 orb in a level 1 slot only gets level 1 bonus.  Further, slots have a type (attack/wrath/health) which when matched with the right orb provides a % bonus to that stat.  That makes an insane difference.

By the end of the game I had a few decent skills, then I decided to clear out the arena levels (20 + 1 infinite).  Clearing that ended up maxing out most of my orbs so that by the time I was at the infinite stage, I felt like a god.  I really enjoyed the min/maxing portion – it didn’t feel tedious.  It would be something entirely for Diablo 4 to emulate this system – with some further refinement it would bridge the gap between Path of Exile’s massive tree and D3’s simplistic slotting.

The Darksiders series has never been a AAA series, and I am just fine with that.  Genesis does a solid job and providing non-stop fun, and that’s all that matters in the end.