Oops. Apparently the end of the world was a false alarm. Sorry, Earth. See, someone tipped off War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse, that it was time to get smiting. Being the deligent horseman he is, War grabbed his sword, jumped on Ruin, did his job, and did it well; raining fire and brimstone over the world. The problem is, well, it wasn't time yet, and some people are a bit upset that the lush, beautiful Earth is now a wasteland of demons and hellfire. In an attempt to clear his name and find out who's to blame for the miscommunication, War has been stripped of his powers and dumped onto the Earth, hoping to find out exactly what went wrong. Such is the setting for Darksiders, THQ's third-person adventure game due out in January of next year.

At this year's Penny-Arcade Expo, THQ had a booth set up where gamers could enjoy some time with the game, which was set up on about a dozen demo stations; or, for those choosing to live more dangerously, ride a mechanical version of Ruin. After a brief chat with the developers I grabbed a controller and began to play, looking forward to seeing how a developer would handle putting someone in control of something as powerful as War. The demo on the floor takes place after the initial smiting, so War is without most of his powers, meaning that it doesn't play all that differently than a standard hack-and-slash. War is strong, don't get me wrong, but he is far from the god of destruction that he is earlier and (presumably) later in the game.

At the early stage of the game that I was playing, War had to be clever to make sure he didn't fall victim to the literal Hell he hath brought to earth. This meant powerful sword combos and a good deal of platforming. Yes, the game falls into the category of "God of War clone" that is thrown around so often these days. War fights with a series of slashes, grabs, and dashes, all the while collecting souls from enemies in order to unlock new abilities. After beating a foe half to death, the second half can be done with a brutal finishing move, executed with a one button quick-time event. The developers didn't want to have players mashing buttons in order to have War do his thing, so it's been simplified, allowing the player to kick back and watch the bloody magic happen. Objects in the environment can also be interacted with, leading to a bit of fun by smacking enemies to death with the useless vehicles that litter city streets.

After finishing off the enemies inside of the opening area, War needed to make his way to the surface. Besides the typical array of jumping, grabbing onto ledges, and swinging from overhangs, War can also climb webbed areas where Hell and Earth overlap, creating more ways to navigate the destroyed cities of the world. I climbed up the sickly web and was told I needed to collect some souls, which I was able to do in a large, open section of the city. The spot of non-linearity was a pleasant surprise in a third person game like Darksiders, and I took it as an excuse to practice the game's combat some more. After grabbing all of the souls I needed the demo was over, and my time with THQ's newest was over.

I'm not going to lie: I wasn't all too impressed with Darksiders. Nothing about it really stood out as something that could make me want to play it, especially in an already overcrowded holiday season. When I brought this up to THQ at the event they smiled, reminding me that the game had recently enjoyed a slight delay to January. And for as silly as it sounds, Darksiders has a much better chance of grabbing my attention in the first quarter of next year. It's more of a January game, it seems, so I applaud this choice. We'll have a review early next year when the game comes out, so check back to find out if it's worth picking up after all.