I played two PC ports of two big, exciting new games this week. One of them worked. One of them didn't.

The two big games in question were Square Enix and United Front's Hong Kong crime game Sleeping Dogs and THQ and Vigil's comic-booky fantasy game Darksiders II. Both games came out on Tuesday, both were released on Xbox 360, PS3 and, in an increasingly uncommon but welcome move, simultaneously on PC (hooray!).

But while Sleeping Dogs has a robust, customizable PC version, Darksiders II's PC port has more than its share of problems.

Let's start with the good. Sleeping Dogs is, as Tina raved in her review of the Xbox 360 version, a darned cool game. I've played four or five hours, and I'm enjoying myself quite a bit. I like the story, I like the characters, and I like busting heads and breaking legs in nightclubs.

While Sleeping Dogs isn't a graphical powerhouse like The Witcher 2 or Crysis 2, it's still a darned good-looking game. Its Hong Kong setting is colorful and sprawling, and it's the first time in a good long while that a game has given me that wonderful sense of disoriented tourism that the best open-world games can inspire.

I run a middle-of-the-road gaming PC these days, an i5 with 8GB of RAM centered around an AMD Radeon 6870 graphics card. I run Sleeping Dogs somewhere between its middle and high settings, and have got it dialed in to a near-perfect setting.

Sleeping Dogs hums along at a solid 60 frames per second, with its HD resolution and long draw-distance bringing Hong Kong to bright, colorful life on my PC. I haven't had time to put together a side-by-side comparison of how the PC version stacks up to consoles, but the friendly folks at Revision3 have made a video (off to the side here) that about sums it up. Everything on PC—the colors, the framerate, the textures (if you use the PC-exclusive HD texture pack), and the DirectX 11 features to enhance the shadows and anti-aliasing, make the game look and run well on PC. Best of all, it's got a built-in benchmark tool that lets you know how the game is handling your settings without your having to go in and see for yourself.

In fact, I used the word "port" in the headline here, but that word raises the ire of many PC gamers—a "port" is thought to be a shoddy rip of a console game straight to PC, with little thought to the extra horsepower and customization options afforded by modern DirectX 11 PCs. Sleeping Dogs would be more accurately called a PC version of the game. It's not without its bugs and weirdnessness—one time, adjusting the graphics caused my characters to "fall into the world" and tumble unendingly until I restarted the game—but by and large, Sleeping Dogs runs smoothly and looks great.

Darksiders II, however, is resolutely a port. And unfortunately, it's not a very good one.

I'll start out by saying that I actually don't mind straight-up PC ports of console games. I play most of those kinds of games with a plugged in Xbox controller, and I frequently play them on my big TV. Really, I like when a PC game feels like a console game played in true 1080p. Arkham Asylum on PC, for example, ran so smoothly and cleanly that it almost felt like a different thing than its console sibling, even though it was basically a direct port of the game.

So, I was ready for Darksiders II to be a port, but when I booted it up, I was surprised at just how bare-bones the PC version was. (Really, things didn't get off to a good start when the game made me create an account and sign into THQ's proprietary gaming network, blerg, but that's a story for another day.) The in-game menus are essentially indistinguishable from an Xbox 360 game—I couldn't even get into the settings until I'd played through the opening cinematic, and when I did, I was surprised at what I found. No detail settings, not even a high-medium-low graphics dial. Just one setting for screen resolution and a checkbox for V-sync.

I'd seen a lot of screen-tearing in the intro cinematic, so I thought "Well, better turn on V-sync." So I did. I also bumped the resolution up to 1920x1080, since it had defaulted to something much lower. The settings menu stated that I'd need to quit the game and restart it for the changes to take effect (grumble), so I did that, and before long was back in the introductory segment. Despite the fact that I'd turned on V-sync, at 1080p screen tearing had become rampant.

Huh.

I went into the settings again and checked the v-sync box. Yup, it was checked. Double-huh. It would appear that the v-sync option in Darksiders II does not work, at least for me.

I started playing the game, but the tearing was so intense that I couldn't get into it. Every time I'd pan the camera around my character's head, the screen would roll and clip onto itself, a spastic dance of graphical jitters that were distracting and disorienting.

Eventually, I found something of a solution—I bumped the resolution all the way down to 1280x720, where the tearing became much less noticeable. You might notice that's 720p, or, the same resolution at which most console games run. And even then, the tearing is minimized, but still present.

It's a shame that the only way to make the PC version of Darksiders II run okay on my machine is to effectively turn it into the Xbox 360 version. I don't ask for much in a PC port! But I do ask to be able to run the game in my monitor's native resolution without a fuss. Reader Andy Pavolillo wrote in with this involved but theoretically feasable workaround for the V-sync and stutter issues, but it requires an Nvidia graphics card, so I haven't been able to try it. Regardless, that kind of involved solution shouldn't be necessary for something as basic as V-sync!

Some perusal of both the Steam forums and the official Darksiders II forums have turned up a lot of gamers having problems similar to mine—the nonfunctional V-sync option, in particular. Other PC owners, however, report that while the game may be lacking customization options, it is at least running smoothly and without graphical issues. It sounds as though AMD cards have the V-sync problem while on some Nvidia graphics cards, V-sync works as it should.

But the overarching vibe among PC gamers is one of discontent. Mouse and keyboard control customization is lackluster, and perhaps even worse, the camera auto-centers on to Death (the protagonist)'s back. There's no "free-look" option when using a mouse, resulting in a vertiginous flying camera that players must fight in order to look around while moving.

A large part of the anger is that some PC gamers feel they were mislead—people working on the game had ensured PC owners that the .config file that would allow them to tinker and tweak the game to their liking would be available, but now that the game has launched, it's nowhere to be found. In a post to the game's official forums, community manager Matthew Everett (to his and Vigil/THQ's credit) apologized for giving gamers bad information:

During the Community Summit both Jay Fitzloff and I (Mathew Everett) were under the impression that full .config files and final keyboard/mouse and controller hookups were going to work as promised when the PC version of the game launched. That was the plan at the time from a specifications perspective.

Unfortunately, especially at the end of the development cycle, sometimes things change at the last minute, and this was one of them. This puts us in an uncomfortable spot as we were acting on the best information we had at the time, and it has turned out not to be in the final game (at this point).

Since it was always the intention to implement these features, as I type this, the development team is checking to see what items can get added into the game. While I can't promise what can be done, I can promise we are working with the proper teams and have expressed the importance of including them in a patch.

When I asked THQ about the problems with the PC version, a spokesperson told me that "Vigil is tracking these issues closely and is keeping their collective ear close to the forums." And to their credit, a first patch has already been released for the PC version, addressing a number of game-crashing bugs more serious than anything I've encountered.

This is all a real shame, since Darksiders II is a fun game. Most reviews, including Kate's review for Kotaku, report it to be a fun and generally successful mashup of Prince of Persia, Zelda and Diablo. Everything I've played so far backs that up. But even when reviewing the PlayStation 3 version, Kate advised that players not buy the game just yet, as a number of significant bugs detract enough that it'd be worth waiting until they get patched. I asked Kate about screen-tearing issues in the console version, and she said that the display was fine on her version—the bugs she ran into were mostly functional.

Of course, this tale of woe is nothing new for PC gamers—it's common for this sort of thing to happen. But the contrast between the two games feels like a great example of how to do a PC version right, and how to get it wrong. Furthermore, there's a chance that you'll get Darksiders II to run perfectly fine on your system. But it also might be a mess. It's great that Vigil is working to fix their game, but when it comes down to it, a game shouldn't be released in the state that Darksiders II on the PC was. We PC players may grump about having to wait an extra couple weeks for a PC version, but if that's what it takes to give us a game that works immediately after we install it, so be it.

The overarching narrative of this week has been "Sleeping Dogs or Darksiders II?" Console gamers can't really go wrong, but PC gamers have a clearer choice—pick up Sleeping Dogs now, and you'll get a robust PC gaming experience with HD textures and all manner of DirectX 11 bells and whistles. But you might want to hold off on Darksiders II for a little while, at least until Vigil makes good on their promises to get the game up to snuff.

You could, if Hong Kong gangsters weren't your thing, call Darksiders II the biggest game release of the week. Probably the month, too.

So now's probably as good a time as ever to look at some terrific concept art from the game.

The environmental and weapon images below were done by artist Jonathan Kirtz, a freelancer who has also worked on games like the Warhammer 40K MMO, Warhammer Online and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

You can see more of Jonathan's work at his personal site.

Meanwhile, all the character art you see (with the exception of the large Death "painting", which was done by Joe Mad and Kirtz) was the work of a team of artists led by James Brian Jones, Vigil's Studio Character Lead. You can see James' personal site here.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".

Most men of modern profession have the good fortune to face death but once in their lifetime. These brave and critical souls stared into those empty sockets for hours and did not flinch... much.

Steadfastly refusing to spare anyone over 'til another year, Death rides his pale horse into the spotlight in Darksiders II, otherwise known as the franchise with at least two more sequels in it, if my apocalyptic horsepersons count is correct. Following in the beefy footsteps of his brother, War, Death uses the free time afforded him by everyone already being dead to try and save his sibling from a fate worse than him.

Judging by the reactions of these stalwart game critics, Pestilence and Famine are going to have their work cut out for them if they wish to step out of the shadow of their big brothers. I guess they're used to that. Here goes.

Darksiders II – the somewhat less tangled but no less silly story of Horseman of the Apocalypse #2 as he attempts to undo the end of days and clear War's name – presents the same melting pot of borrowed ideas as its predecessor, but with a few extra ingredients thrown in to spice up the brew. Along with the Zelda dungeons, God Of War combat and Metroidvania item-collecting come the welcome additions of Diablo's looting and World Of Warcraft RPG-ing.

IGN
Darksiders II further fleshes out the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse introduced in the first title - this time with War's brother, Death, at the helm. Death believes that War has been wrongfully convicted of destroying mankind, and seeks to restore humanity to clear his brother's name. The narrative is pretty entertaining, if not severely overdramatic. Though it should please anyone solely in the market for ‘epic,' it lacks any trace of subtlety and often comes off as sophomoric. Given that the end result of any plot advancement is inevitably that Death needs to gather three of something and thrash some skeletons, hearing the characters go on about the old ways and soul judgement just feels a bit silly. However, if a healthy dose of ridiculous doesn't faze you, the contrived reasons for Death's various escapades through heaven, hell and everywhere in between do provide an amusing backdrop for his quest.

Giant Bomb
Everyone wants something and no one's going to help out a horseman for free. So like any other proper video game protagonist, you're going to spend most of the 20-25 hours helping out the people around you. It starts by getting a forge going and discovering that much of the world in Darksiders II is overcome by corruption. This force is creeping across all the realms, infecting enemies and even the land itself, which is peppered with glowing rock formations that can be destroyed with bomb flowers. You'll work your way through multiple realms, each with its own version of the Tree of Life (or Death, as the case may be) and its own unique landscape and features. The story pushes you from one quest giver to the next, and everyone seems to have a few things for you to collect, be it the two keys, three parts of a staff, and so on. Though the story may be pretty straightforward, the dialogue is well-written and acted well, giving the game a weighty feel, overall.

Gamespot
If the original Darksiders was an action/adventure/puzzle game, then the addition of loot drops role-playing elements into that mix, which brings to mind a potential concern: Darksiders was already a heavy mixture of recipes that had come before, recalling games like The Legend of Zelda, God of War, and even Portal. There were so many mechanics and so many tools to keep track of that the game struggled to find its own identity.

In Darksiders II, a funny thing happens on the way to the apocalypse: it establishes an identity all its own, rather than one defined through the games that inspired its existence. The game's expanded scope (about twice as big as the first game) and thoughtful pace (about twice as long as the first game) are most responsible for this. You now have a chance to breathe between battles, and each new mechanic has time to settle in before a new one is introduced. The more leisurely sense of pace is obvious from the very beginning. Darksiders' first hour was front-loaded with explosions, angelic cries, and the bloodcurdling sights of demonic forces swarming across the earth. Here, there are moments to take in the frozen chasms beneath you, and to enjoy the slick new motion mechanics that have you defying gravity in heady flights of fancy. (You won't miss War's wings in light of Death's fleet-footedness.)

Polygon
What's truly impressive is the concentrated quality on display in all that dungeon design. Dungeons are layered and loop around on themselves in a way that pushes you in the right direction while maintaining a sense of scale and limiting downtime. Instead of endless hallways or a series of closed-off arena battles, virtually every room centers around one or two challenges - a puzzle to be solved with Death's expanding tool set or a Prince of Persia-style platforming segment that has Death scampering up the walls and showing off the game's beautiful animation work.

Even when dungeons don't hide a new tool for Death, they introduce one-off gimmicks such as lanterns that must be carried between statues to unlock doors or the ability to time travel to a past version of the dungeon. I wish Darksiders 2 placed more new toys into Death's toolbox - only one isn't a repeat from the first game - but even with a familiar inventory, I was always challenged and satisfied with the brain-bending solutions.

GamingTrend
With a game over 24 hours on your first run, you might question pacing. Darksiders II paces the items and powers out so you aren't getting inundated with new gadgets and powers all the time, instead scratching that itch with the loot system. The dungeons are heavily varied, and the puzzles don't repeat in other dungeons. Fresh approaches to puzzle solving should push this title away from the Zelda comparisons levied against the first title – Darksiders II stands on its own.

Kotaku
But when it does work, it's a gloriously stupid romp that's far more entertaining than it has any business being. By the time the player has trained a few scythe combos and special skills, combat is satisfyingly solid, and the ability to customize weapons, gear, and skill choices lets the player craft a combat experience well-suited to his or her own preferred play style. I grew to find myself actually liking Death, by the time the heavily-foreshadowed end finally came.

Ultimately, the bugs in the PS3 edition of Darksiders II are a disappointing stain on an otherwise entertaining game. It would be nice to give the game a YES, but we don't yet know if the Xbox 360 and PC versions are clear of the bugs I encountered on the PS3. Hopefully, the game will see a patch sooner rather than later.

I am become Death, destroyer of crates.

Also vases. And skeletons. And bees. And, oh yes, enormous slavering eldritch horrors from Hell. I destroyed a bunch of those, too.

Darksiders II begins more or less where the first Darksiders left off. In that game, War—as in, the apocalyptic horseman—accidentally triggers the Armageddon before the correct moment and everything, more or less literally, goes to hell. But it was a set-up; other powers used War for their own ends and he is, if not blameless, at least not as guilty as other parties think. Darksiders II stars War's brother and fellow horseman, Death, as he attempts to set the record straight and redeem War's good name. Doing so mainly involves going places and killing everything that lives there.

Plot-wise, the game never does make any more sense than that. But that's okay. It's the video game version of the summer popcorn flick, and that's not a bad thing.

WHY: Because although the game is entertaining and fun to play, the sheer number of bugs encountered in the PS3 edition really need a patch. We're waiting for confirmation on if the Xbox 360 and PC versions are plagued with the same issues or not.

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Darksiders II

Developer: Vigil Games
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Release date: August 14

Type of game: RPG-inflected platformy action killfest

What I played: The entire story arc (without any side quests), in < 25 hours, on PS3.

My Two Favorite Things

• Mid-and late-game combat is extraordinarily satisfying if you happen to enjoy being a madly cackling whirlwind of death.
• The scope and scale of both dungeons and overland realms. Death is a big guy, and the Forge Lands make him look tiny.

My Two Least-Favorite Things

• The mad proliferation of occasionally game-stopping bugs.
• The rule of threes gone amok. Recruit three lords, but to get one to come with you you'll need to perform three tasks inside his dungeon... at a certain point it becomes Threeception.

Made-to-Order Back-of-Box Quotes

• "Since when is there such a cartoony-looking God of War ga—oh." - Kate Cox, Kotaku.com
• "This is the first game I've played in ages that puts cut scenes in places where quicktime events could go." - Kate Cox, Kotaku.com

Darksiders II needs you not to question its internal logic. Much of it is, at best, strained. While playing, I had several conversations, like:

"I have to go to the land of the dead."
"Aren't you Death?"
"Yes."
"So isn't that your..."
"No."
"But..."
"This is one of those questions you shouldn't ask."

"So you're invincible in this game, right?"
"Nope. That's my health meter, and I have potions."
"But if you die, who kills you? And when you do, does everyone else become immortal?"
"Remember what I said about questions?"

Much in common with certain blockbuster films, it can be a delight to watch as long as you don't look through the logic holes. The game makes a covenant with you: if you promise not to think about any of it, it will provide you with the tools you need to travel, and the reasons to keep pressing onward.

Like the double-bladed combat and inventory full of magical garb, that need not to think too hard about the construction and purpose of the world is something Darksiders II borrows handily from games that came before it.

Darksiders was a pastiche of other games, brought together into a new package. Darksiders II is, in many ways, more of the same. Death's default weapon, the double scythes, feel so much like Kratos's arm-blades that it took me several hours to stop trying to use combos and motions still stored in my muscle memory from the God of War games.

So. For players who were wondering what would happen if God of War cross-bred with Zelda, then added a touch of the Kingdoms of Amalur aesthetic, and added dungeons that were essentially Fallout 3 and Portal, the answer is: you get Darksiders II.

The amazing part is, after a sort of rough beginning, the odd medley actually works. It does take three or four hours for all the disparate pieces to feel smoothly integrated. Like cooking or—better yet—like baking. When baking, it takes time and patience to get all of the ingredients in the bowl to stop being just ingredients, and to start being a cohesive dough. So, too, with Darksiders II.

Certain elements never do quite work. One late-game dungeon, set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, very suddenly invalidates everything Darksiders II has taught the player over 16+ previous hours of play. The modern, real-world setting, full of destructible cars, isn't actually the problem. (In fact, it's a pretty great change of pace.) The mechanics, on the other hand, are completely upended. It's a large area with no climbing, and rather than being able to use the abilities and weapons he has leveled up over two previous large acts, Death is more or less constrained to an awkward, two-handed angelic machine gun that makes taking any other action more difficult than it has to be. Put down the gun, open the chest, pick up the items, pick up the gun, move to the left, kill two things, put down the gun, melee kill the other twenty things, pick up the gun... The weapon was a frustrating exercise in "ideas that looked better on paper than in practice." Still, the game did try to provide new guns frequently, as if it knew that, at some point, I would have given up and left mine lying behind me in the dust.

Aside from some exceptions like Salvation (the machine gun), the tools that Darksiders II provides with each new area generally work well. And again, aside from the same exceptions, each added mechanic—a grapple, an ability to be in two places at once, and so on—generally carries forward well from dungeon to dungeon and act to act, staying useful as Death continues his journey.

A colleague and I discussed Darksiders II while I was playing. I said to him that I had been ready to hate the game, realizing how utterly derivative it is, but that somewhere around the four-hour mark, Death had grown on me. The stolen and borrowed parts, I remarked, had grown into an entertaining whole. He agreed: "You're just like, 'this is just Zelda with a growly grouchy man in bad World of Warcraft armor.' Then four hours in, you're like, 'This is great! It's like Zelda! But with a guy in grouchy WoW armor!"

But his final verdict summed up everything I was thinking about Darksiders II: "If you're going to steal, steal well."

A Word About Glitches on the PS3

I hit a great many bugs during Darksiders II. Some were cosmetic, some could be worked around, and some halted my gameplay entirely. I got stuck inside of objects and walls more than once, I encountered a couple of system-freezing hard crashes, and I repeatedly faced issues where my quicksave and fast travel abilities disabled themselves during normal play, and I had to quit and restart to bring them back. I also encountered several larger issues. Among them:

• A collision problem during the fight with the Guardian. The script requires players to grapple onto the boss's shoulder and to strike a gem there. Multiple times, with both shoulders, the grapple would take Death inside the shoulders, gripping an invisible point from which his scythes could not connect with the gem. Eventually he would drop to the ground and I could try again. Even though I knew the script and understood the tactics, I had to repeat each part of the fight 2-3 more times than should have been required.
• Late in Act II, there is a vertical platforming section requiring Death to scale the inside of a tower while a very lethal floor (on fire, covered in spikes) inexorably rises beneath him. Touch the floor, and it's all over.
  
  When I finally succeeded at climbing the tower, I hit X (the jump button) in order to ascend from the final landing position to safe ground, and got stuck. Death hovered in mid-air, apparently the victim of invisible geometry. Then an amazing thing happened: the game tried to trigger both the "you have been stabbed by the spiky floor and are dead" animation and also the "you have successfully navigated this obstacle and here is a pan of the room showing your next door" animation. The screen glitched, jittered, and tore for a brief, horrifying "Schrodinger's Death" moment before resolving into a loading screen. The end result? The game had decided that yes, I died, and would need to respawn—but it also had decided that I completed the platforming section, and so I respawned at the top, instead of at the lower checkpoint.
• The next-to-lass boss is probably the most difficult of the game. I learned his fight and eventually won, but no cut-scene triggered. Instead, he simply vanished. Loot lay where he had stood, and it looked as though I should be able to retrieve it, but I was stuck. Nothing on my controller worked except for Start, which allowed me to pause, change the options, or quit, and the right stick. I could move the camera around to get a good look at how stuck I really was, but that was it. I turned off the controller and swapped it for a freshly charged one, just in case the issue was with the controller, but the end result was the same: no left stick, no d-pad, no control buttons or triggers. I restarted the game and fought the boss again.

• When asked about a patch, THQ PR responded that Vigil was "looking into the issue as we speak," and added, "The team is currently polishing "Argul's Tomb" [DLC] and prepping bug fixes for an imminent submission to first party."

  
  

Bugs aside, the game doesn't always work. Some puzzles are more obtuse than they should be, and sometimes, even when they work in theory, something gets stuck in practice. There's a lot of irritating backtracking deliberately built in. Swapping tools and skills can be clumsy, and certain sections near the end overstay their welcome, slow down the action, and are just tedious. There is too much pixel-hunting when it comes to performing any action; finding the exact right spot to stand in order to have the option to act can be a pain.

But when it does work, it's a gloriously stupid romp that's far more entertaining than it has any business being. By the time the player has trained a few scythe combos and special skills, combat is satisfyingly solid, and the ability to customize weapons, gear, and skill choices lets the player craft a combat experience well-suited to his or her own preferred play style. I grew to find myself actually liking Death, by the time the heavily-foreshadowed end finally came.

Ultimately, the bugs in the PS3 edition of Darksiders II are a disappointing stain on an otherwise entertaining game. It would be nice to give the game a YES, but we don't yet know if the Xbox 360 and PC versions are clear of the bugs I encountered on the PS3. Hopefully, the game will see a patch sooner rather than later.

If you played Homefront, the new trailer for the remake of 1984's Red Dawn is going to seem like déjà vu all over again.

When THQ's ambitious but shallow 2011 first-person shooter first started its hype machine, the comparisons to the 1980s Cold War action movie rampant. Part of that is because the movie and the game shared the same core premise, where a foreign power invades and occupies American soil.

The two projects shared a creative contributor, too, in the form of John Milius, who wrote the screenplay for Red Dawn. Milius helped Kaos Studios shape the dramatic scenario for Homefront, which also had an ordinary town torn to shreds by the army of another country.

In Homefront, the invaders were from a unified Korean army. The villains in the new Red Dawn trailer are Korean, too, led by Will Yun Lee, who voices the lead character in the upcoming Sleeping Dogs game. The remake, like the game, has America invaded by the Koreans (who were, as with the game, supposed to be Chinese). The remake was in the works before the game, though.

Not surprisingly, you'll see some motifs repeating in the trailers for Homefront and the new and old Red Dawn films. Armies marching down suburban streets, swarms of enemy aircraft hovering ominously overhead, a ragtag rebel force fighting back… all of those plot points get trotted out in game and movie teasers.

The new Red Dawn comes out in November. We'll see if they go as far as Homefront did in its depiction of an American occupation.