(note: this review is for those who have played Umbrella Chronicles)
I wanted to like this game, I really did. I enjoyed Umbrella Chronicles; it brought a somewhat flawed, but satisfying rail-shooter experience to the Wii. The sequel though, is bittersweet because it makes significant improvements to the game mechanics, only to turn around and ruin it.
Let's start with the good news.
+ The weapon system has been upgraded. Instead of only being able to choose a single secondary weapon, you now choose 3. Not only that, but you can switch to any weapon in your arsenal at any time. This makes the game less frustrating because you're not so heavily reliant on getting ammo at the beginning of the level.
+ You get to choose which upgrade on a weapon you want, instead of being forced to upgrade Max Ammo -> Capacity -> Power in that order. There are 5 upgrades for each weapon (Power, Rate of Fire, Reload Time, Capacity, and Stopping Power), and for most weapons, each upgrade can be purchased multiple times. Cash for upgrades is gotten through destroying objects rather than your end-of-level rank, which is nice because if you get an S-Rank on every level, you probably don't need the extra upgrades.
+ In Umbrella Chronicles, the pistol was a weak peashooter that was only adequate for getting headshots. If you got to certain bosses with no ammo left, you were pretty much screwed because the pistol's damage and rate of fire just weren't enough. In Darkside Chronicles however, not only is the pistol decent to start with, but it can be upgraded this time around. Headshots are also easier to get in Darkside Chronicles.
Now for the bad news.
- The boss fights REALLY took a nosedive. This especially hurts my opinion of the game because in a lot of games, awesome boss fights are half the fun. The developers wanted a more "cinematic" experience, so what does that mean for you, the gamer? Gimmick boss fights galore. I don't know what compels people to throw bad gimmicks into a boss fight, but I wish they would stop it. In Darkside Chronicles, the bosses that can be beaten by regular means are few and far in-between. You either have to beat them with a special weapon, let a sequence play out where they are invincible or close to it, or shoot a specific prop when they are at low health. Guess what happens if you don't shoot that prop? Even if you deplete the boss's lifebar, he just gets another one and you have to spend another few minutes wasting ammunition on him until you get a chance to shoot the prop again. In one particularly bad instance, you have to shoot a small, quick, flying boss with a slow rocket launcher that only gives you one shot per minute. Does that sound like fun?
- Sometimes a boss will keep doing an attack over and over until either you die, or you cancel the attack. That's fine except for the fact that usually when a boss does this, his weak spot is either counter-intuitive or very hard to hit. There's nothing more frustrating than getting hit constantly by the same attack which for the life of you, you can't cancel.
Overall, this game was an unfortunate disappointment.
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Top reviews from other countries
Sylvain C.
Good "on-rails" game and not too hard for me
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 10, 2012
Daniel
Game was good false advertising before shipping
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on September 16, 2017
