Thankfully having dropped the silly Wrath of War moniker prior to release, Darksiders has taken on a life of its own, coming off as a violent Legend of Zelda. While this is exceedingly awesome and completely trounces Zelda in the realm of epic, apocalyptic battles, there is a bit of a problem. The 360 version, while beautiful in high-definition is prone to a disgusting amount of screen tear. Screen tear is where visuals from two or more frames show in the same screen draw. Occurring when the video feed being sent to the console isn’t synching properly with the refresh rate of whatever display you’re using, it boils down to a lack of sync in refresh rates. This becomes increasingly annoying and at times can render the game unplayable as the graphics just seem to rip and run across the television. While there is nothing visually notable about the PS3 version, it didn’t ship with this problem and is laudable in that aspect. On the other hand, there is a patch in the fix that will be releasing tomorrow (Wednesday 01.27.2010) that should fix the issue with the 360, making the game enjoyable again. Suffice to say though, shipping a game with such an issue is unacceptable in this day and age, regardless of the ability to patch or not.
Final Fantasy XIII is Square Enix’s next epic RPG. If you don’t know this or have spent the last several forevers under a rock, please go check the Wikipedia page and I’ll wait. In the meantime, the rest of you who are extremely excited to check the game out on your 360 (because now you can) will be a bit unsurprised that the game is going to be a multi-disc release. Frankly, there is just way too much data in that game to expect it all to fit on one. Well, that is unless you own a Playstation 3, which will be utilizing its proprietary blu-ray drive to access the immense amount of data for lazy PS3 games who don’t want to get off their butts and change discs. Additionally though, they will be getting improved sound via 5.1 Dolby and the graphics are already said to be better on the Sony console. But, it should be noted that this is one of the exclusive franchises that any gamer years ago would have attested would never have been on the Xbox. While ironically enough being a Nintendo franchise before ever shifting primarily to Sony, it has been interesting to see how the series is developing and what gamers of all consoles will be able to expect in the next decade maybe another Final Fantasy title or two will come out.
Conclusion: In all seriousness, as a writer for PlanetXbox360.com, I would like to note that I have nothing but love for the different consoles. My primary point being is that developers and publishers should make every effort to release relatively equal content to the community when it comes to third-party titles. Exclusives will always be expected in a world where console creators have more money than many gamers can dream of to draw upon. But as long as the titles that are available to relatively all consoles are made well, we can all keep playing and I suppose it’s a win-win situation for everybody. Unless you own a PC, then you’re just blindly convinced that you’re better than all of us.
