Darksiders II Preview
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Combat is fast and versatile
With Death so much nimbler than War ever was, it's a no-brainer that he'd have a different approach to fighting monsters. Death's main weapon is his scythe, which actually spends most of its time split into two smaller scythes (but reunites during finishing moves). Wielding them, Death is capable of fast, button-mashy combos, and he's capable of bringing a secondary weapon into those combos as well. These along with armor, health potions and even new scythes are scattered throughout the game as random loot, and (during our play-through, at least) took the form of claws and tonfas, which allowed for rapid, weak strikes; and giant hammers, axes, polearms and maces, which allowed for slow, powerful ones.
After the first hour, Death had accumulated quite a few weapons, and each one carried different stats and abilities. Should we switch over to a faster weapon that made enemies drop more gold, or stick with the heavy, slow one that dealt out 26 additional points of ice damage with every hit? It could get confusing, but there was plenty of time to experiment.
Combat could also get pretty confusing, as it mostly involved Death being surrounded by crowds of smallish monsters. Luckily, Death can lock on to a single enemy, which also makes the creature's name and health bar float over its head, MMO-style. This was also essential for targeting enemies with the Death Grip or with Death's pistol, which didn't deal out huge amounts of damage but was nonetheless useful, especially against flying enemies. Also useful? Finishing moves, which we were able to bust out whenever enemies' health had dropped low enough to put a button prompt over their heads, at which point Death would sometimes turn into his huge reaper form and ram his single, giant scythe into their heads.
It's an action-RPG
As we mentioned on the last page, loot is a key part of Darksiders II, and it isn't limited to just weaponry and potions. It drops from defeated monsters and sundered treasure chests on a routine basis, and includes armor that changes Death's appearance and abilities. Most of it seems to be tailored to a certain play style; (Slayer) armor, for example, boosts combat abilities, while (Necromancer) armor provides better defense. As with the weapons, having a high level of variety injected into a relatively short demo got a little confusing, so we ended up just going for the highest defense ratings and/or whatever made Death look cooler.
In addition to loot, Death gains experience from kills, meaning players will also be able to level him up, pick new abilities from his skill tree (which, like his gear, seem tailored to different play styles), and keep an eye on his stats. It's something we didn't see at all in the first game (which held to a more linear, Zelda-style progression), so it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out over the long term.
