E3 2009: THQ Big Sword Bonanza

Darksiders: Wrath of WarYesterday, I discovered THQ fancy one killing weapon over all: big ol’ swords. The two games I checked out Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and Darksiders: Wrath of War both feature characters who lug around unrealistically large weapons. Practical? Nope. Cool? You bet.

 

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine was definitely the cooler of the two. This new action-role-playing game is (obviously) based on the Warhammer nerd toys, which is really awesome if you know anything about ’em. Sadly, I don’t, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying watching hulked-up space marines bash the brains out of hundreds of orcs.

It was kinda hard to really judge the game because we only got to see a trailer with sprinkles of gameplay, but what I saw definitely looked like it had potential. The coolest part seems to be the customization of your orc-killer. My favorite character class? The dude with the — get this — chainsaw sword. Sure, it’d probably be better to add a gun to that thing (hey, it works for Marcus Fenix), but we can’t forget out lesson of the day: big swords are cool.

Darksiders: Wrath of War also features a ton of massive sword slicing. But that’s not what I liked most about this action-adventure masher. Instead, I dug the ability to hoof around kicking ass on a black demon horse. The rest of the game has a God of War-like feel, which is either good or bad depending on how sick you are of fighting giant enemies over and over. At this point, my sickness level feels like a sore throat, so unless the proposed Zelda-like adventure elements make this game standout, I might opt to let God of War 3 cure me.