Darksiders Warmastered Edition on PS5 – Wringing the neck of this beloved franchise

Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, The Lego Movie 2. Whatever time-travel belief system you ascribe to, one should always come before two. Seemingly, that’s not the case for THQ Nordic and Darksiders. Last year, we got Darksiders 2: Deathinitive Edition on our shiniest new consoles, and now? Well, now we’re getting Darksiders Warmastered Edition on PS5 and XSX|S, which is ideal if… well, I can’t see much advantage to playing the second game before the first one, but, at least it’s here, right?

Darksiders is the first title in the excellent Joe Madureira-designed series, and while each title has tinkered with the formula, taking in loot-nabbing dungeon crawling, souls-like combat, and top-down shooters, the original game is the unlikeliest of Zelda style games.

First off, it doesn’t look remotely like a Zelda game. Darksiders is straight out of the 360/PS3 era, which means that a good amount of it is brown and grey, while its story centres on the battle between Heaven and Hell, which War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, has stumbled into. There’s lots of blood, demons and darkness, and it’s all just very much of its time.

Combat remains the highlight of the original Darksiders. It’s not the smartest or toughest, but there’s just a heck of a lot of fun to be had dispatching demons with a massive sword, while steadily improving your skills and learning new moves. It is, in a word, deeply satisfying, and it ties every moment of the game together, in between exploring new areas and taking a step further towards The Destroyer.

Here for the Warmastered Edition on PS5, everything looks that little bit sharper and runs smoothly. It’s certainly a sharper brown, and central character War looks that much better clad in his chunky armour than he did before. The design of this world, and in particular the characters, has never looked better, and I think that’s a clear strength for the series, but you shouldn’t expect a wholesale change from its 2010 origins, or from the last time we saw the Warmastered Edition.

In fact, since we already got the Warmastered Edition on PS4, this is now a remaster of a remaster. What enhancements ARE you getting for PS5 and XSX|S? Well, this is the first time you’ve been able to play Darksiders at a native 4K, assuming you have the right TV, though the PS4 Pro was pumping out an upscaled 4K last gen. On top of that? Well, this version is 60fps, but then, it was everywhere last time around (apart from the poor old Wii U which had to settle for 30fps). It feels like there should be a 120fps option for this outing – PC players have been able to do this forever – and it makes the whole thing feel pretty redundant.

Oh! There is now a photo mode, so you can capture the browns and greys exactly as you remember them, and there’s some neat haptic touches if you’re playing with a DualSense.

What makes this harder to swallow is that this is a paid upgrade, even if you already own the previous Warmastered Edition. Fundamentally, the very slightly sharper visuals offer no real change over what we had before, and for all that I love this series, its visual design and the schlocky storytelling, this is THQ Nordic wringing the life out of one of its premier series.

Perhaps they’re filling the coffers a touch before Darksiders 4, but if you’re a fan of the series, you deserve much, much more for your money, particularly if you’re like me and have re-bought these games over and over again across different platforms. The one good thing? It does recognise your PS4 save files, so you can pick back up where you left off and, if you haven’t played a Darksiders game before, you can now experience the ‘best’ version of it. For everyone else? It’s best to wait patiently for the next title, or play Darksiders 2, because it’s the better game.

Oh… Maybe THQ Nordic did release them in the right order.

Tags: Darksiders 3, Darksiders Genesis, Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition, Darksiders Warmastered Edition