Darksiding (Across the Universe)

One of the games I got in a Humble Bundle is Darksiders. And since I felt like playing a third person action... shooty... thing... game, I decided either that or Borderlands, so Borderlands will be second.

So far it's a standard fairly linear game, where the main way to win is to spam the attack button as fast as possible. Yes, there are moves, but so far just leaping out of the way and then spamming attack is working pretty well. I'm currently up to a boss battle, and will get back to it at some point.

But I wanted to talk about the 'buying improvement' mechanic, where I get new moves and more powerful versions of those moves. At which point does that that trend over into the RPG genre? While I am not levelling up my basic stats, you can broadly think of levelling as 'becoming better at what you are doing in the game', and I am certainly doing that. Moreover, it's up to me to decide where to put the points.

One difference is that I'm not saying 'I want to be this type of War' (I'm playing War of the Horsemen), so I'm not buying up improvements to fit a certain backstory I have in mind, but still I am spreading out the points according to how I'm playing... which at the moment means buying more levels in the powers I'm likely to spam and not buying new moves because then I'd have to remember I have those moves. So the difference isn't as great as it could be.

And I have to admit, I prefer games where the levelling (as such) is automatic, because when you have points to spend... that suggests there's an optimal path to level up in the best way to get the best advantage, and not doing it that way is just stupid. And while that's not true in every instance, it is for some games. No idea if it is true here, I'm not a good enough player to play the optimal way anyway, but it could be, so I could be doing it wrong with my picks.

And yes, I'm on Easy mode, 'cos that's how I play. Still doesn't mean I'm going to get through it without falling into lava many many times (as I have done).

[END]