Ok, My friend preorder it yesterday (I preordered something else). Still waiting for info on the Wii U version to see which one to buy.

Original game almost complete only 3 things pending, buying all powers (3 levels missing), maximizing Scythe weapon (last level missing) and killing the bad guy.

Awsome

PC system requirements 

Min Specs

• OS – Windows XP, Windows Vista SP1 or Windows 7
• Processor – 2.0Ghz Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor or AMD equivalent
• RAM –2GB
• Hard Drive – 20 GB space free (10 GB free after install)
• Video Card – NVIDIA 9800 GT 512 MB Video Card or AMD equivalent
• Online Steam account

Recommended Specs

• OS – Windows 7
• Processor – Any Quad-core AMD or Intel Processor
• RAM –2GB
• Hard Drive – 20 GB space free (10 GB free after install)
• Video Card – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 512MB Video Card or AMD equivalent
• Online Steam account

Darksiders 2 studio hits out at "derogatory", "frustrating" Zelda comparisons

"We've done it right but we still get a little bit whipped for it"

Sometimes describing a new game to somebody is dangerously like completing a jigsaw. You're got your God-of-War-shaped corner bit here, your Assassin's Creedy bit, your Dead-Space-style centerpiece, and presto! - "new IP". There's a thin line to walk between selling a game on the strength of such comparisons, and making it look like a clone. Darksiders 2 lead designer Haydn Dalton has seen journalists get the mix wrong more often than not - or so he claims.

"It's pretty frustrating because I think it's been ingrained into journalists and the public now," Dalton commented to Videogamer in a jolly interesting interview you should read in full (especially if you're a Wii U conspiracy theorist). "Like, they look at that and it's okay for a certain set of games to continually do that and just refine on something that they're not really going anywhere [with] and doing anything different. They're just doing very slight changes.

"But the way we look at it is, you don't look at the driving in GTA and say, 'Well, there was better driving in Gran Turismo'," he went on. "There was better driving in Burnout Paradise but that game was completely and solely focused on that one mechanic and that's why it was so good.

"Now, we've done that and again we get, 'Well, it's not as good as this and not as good as that'. But that's all that product focused on. We've been focusing on a lot of things and trying to bring an experience that you can't... I don't think you can get a Darksiders experience anywhere else because there's not a game anywhere else that gets so many different mechanics and things that people enjoy doing in one place."

Darksiders 2 is a garish, brutal open-world brawler with hefty RPG trappings. It stars Death, and sees you exploring the underworld for proof of innocence of little brother War, blamed for kicking Armageddon off ahead of schedule. The game's hub structure isn't worlds away from that of Zelda, though the combat system is closer to God of War. Have I got the balance right, Dalton? Can I have a cookie?

"Even when we were doing the first one, we were looking around and going, 'These guys are only doing melee combat and drops, and it's relatively simple, but we want to do this traversal and this puzzle solving'," explained the Vigil man. "Even hiring people to do the sort of level design that we do is very difficult because most games nowadays are relatively scripted. It's point X and point B and it's relatively linear."

Darksiders 2 stands apart by virtue of its difficulty, too. "The industry has gone in a certain way now where players like their hand held and [being] fed a lot of things. Then something like Dark Souls comes along and really blows people away because, you know what, the effort's been put back on the player again. It's not been taken away from them. It's [not] like, 'no, this game's bloody hard and you're going to have fix it'. Ours is not to that extreme but we certainly have mental challenges in the game that a lot of other games won't have.

"It's frustrating, it is very frustrating," Dalton reiterated. "If it was one rule for everyone we'd be completely fine. If everyone was like that, we'd be like, 'Fine, everyone judge it like that'. But it's not. It's only certain titles. We apparently seem to be the target of this derivative comment at every single turn, but if someone can point me to another game that does the sort of things that we do in one game then I'd be like, 'Right okay, that's fine, you can compare us to that.'

"Well, the word 'derivative' is always used in the article. If anyone says it's like the games that you talked about, of course, anything like that we see as a compliment. But it's a curse as well because they see it as, like, you haven't really done anything to earn that. Everyone has seen [Zelda]. Why isn't everyone else doing it? People have tried to do things like that but they've completely failed at it.

"We seem like we've done it right but we still get a little bit whipped for it. We're trying to do something that we think is fun in a genre that I think is dying now. It's hard to do and it costs a lot of money and we're still trying to keep the idea of that action-adventure genre going. It feels a little hurtful sometimes when people are hurting us for doing that.

"Referencing, yeah, absolutely. I can see that. But when it definitely feels like remarks are derogatory and basically saying, 'Well, it's just this'. I never understand when people say it's just like God of War. It's like, 'Have you actually played the game, gone through the levels and understood how it works?' I can understand saying this one bit's a little bit like that. But when you see people in comments saying it's just a carbon copy of God of War, I don't understand that."

http://www.oxm.co.uk/44160/darksiders-2-studio-hits-out-at-derogatory-frustrating-zelda-comparisons/

News: Darksiders II’s chunky, vibrant visual style came about because developers Vigil Games wanted to “own the style” and avoid the “next-gen grey” look that too many games opt for, according to lead designer Haydn Dalton and art director Han Randhawa.

Take one look at the chunky architecture and vibrant colour scheme of Darksiders II and you can probably name the game immediately. Developers Vigil Games will be glad, as that was exactly the point when settling on a visual style.

“We want to stand out from the crowd,” art director Han Randhawa told BeefJack. “We want to make sure that if you see a Darksiders piece of artwork you feel it’s Darksiders. We want to own the style, we want to make a house style.

“That’s very important for us. We didn’t want to be just lost in the swathe of other projects out there.”

Lead designer Haydn Dalton lamented the fact that too many modern games opt for a dreary colour scheme, meaning you can’t tell they’re legitimately “next-gen”.

“The big key thing is that if someone sees a screenshot of our game, they automatically know it’s a Darksiders game,” he said. “It doesn’t feel like a next-gen game but you can’t tell because it’s ‘next-gen grey’. Ours is much more vibrant. We’re happy to be different like that.”

It’s creative director Joe Madureina’s background in comic books that birthed the style, according to Randhawa. “We’re not going for an ultra-real look, even if the surfaces do have some treatments because of the next-gen nature of the game,” he said. “[O]ur silhouettes, the shape and language, is very chunky and comparable to a graphic novel.”

http://beefjack.com/news/darksiders-ii-dev-laments-next-gen-grey-graphics/

I have to say the recent gameplay trailer looks visually much better than the CGI trailers they released. Darksiders was a good looking game, and 2 looks to be stepping it up even more.

The rest of the interview 

http://beefjack.com/features/darksiders-ii-interview-vigil-games-go-bigger/

Darksiders III likely to be smaller in scope than DSII

Lead designer Haydn Dalton has said that if Darksiders II sells well enough to justify another sequel, Vigil will probably aim for a tighter, busier game world.

Speaking to Videogamer, Dalton said if Darksiders 2 moves 4 million units a third entry is almost guaranteed, but that he expects THQ president Jason Rubin to check the team’s ambitious world building.

“Maybe what he might do is turn around and say, ‘We’ll do another Darksiders game, but we’ll try and reduce the scope so that we can make it even higher polished,’” Dalton said.

“Maybe he says, ‘Bring the scope down a little bit, we’ll still do another game but it’s a lot more focused’. That’s not such a bad thing to do either.”

Dalton said Darksiders II’s scope is “huge”; early reports indicate the world size is about four times that of the first Darksiders, something our own hands-on previews have backed up. The enormous scale may be one of the reasons why THQ has delayed the game well beyond its original launch plans, and Dalton doesn’t seem averse to the idea of scaling it back.

“Reducing the size of the world might be seen as a big impact from a player point of view, you know what, we might do a lot more interaction within the world if the world was smaller,” he said.

“And there might be even more polish, there might be a lot more animated things in the environment and a lot more detail or destruction or whatever it might be in the world because of a reduce in size. Rather than doing sheer square-footage, it’s more like what can you do in less room by focusing on it, and depth [and] interaction within a smaller environment.

“Initially it seems like if you make it smaller that’s not as good. Well, that’s not necessarily true. Quantity is not about quality. Just because you make something bigger doesn’t mean it’s better.”

http://www.vg247.com/2012/07/26/darksiders-iii-likely-to-be-smaller-in-scope-than-dsii/#more-280113

guys i read a review today in the new german gamepro. ok i only read the conclusion yet and also still have to see the review vid on the dvd but still:

graphics: 9/10

+ fantastic art design, great animations, effects, gritty dungeons
- tearing, some mushy textures

sound 10/10

+ great soundtrack, effects, brilliant synchro, harmonious sounds
- ...

pros&cons

+ huge game,  intuitive fight system, exciting boss-fights, story, characters, motivating, varied climbing passages, talent system, crucible mode
- few camera problems

system differences

ps3 version sharper and 360 version has more tearing

conclusion:

war was good but death is better. darksiders 2 is a huge und gorgeous action-adventure with a lot of addictiveness.

score: 93%

have to say that they often give little bit better reviews than average but still, sounds great!

Well that is fine review and I can't wait till I get the game when the Wii U launches. I also really want to play the first title. The cons does not sound that bad for me, because I have been with the Wii for the last 5 years and a few Pc games here and there. The only thing that is bothering me is the camera that the review has listed as an issue, hope it's not that big of an issue, it can't be worse than anything like what the GCN library had or that some PS2 games had, am really rusty when it comes to the camera in video games, but the camera should have been improved this gen, so I don't think it will that big of a deal to me.

One of the devs on NeoGaf said that there is no tearing in the final build of ether console version and judging from the fact that the game is still a month away from release I would say that the review is bassed on a preview build so hopefully the camera issues might get fixed in time for launch as well. 

@zarx

hmm i'm pretty sure they only review games if they get that as review version. so yeah, maybe they worked on that but i'm sure it wasn't a preview version and declared as review version. the reason why they have the review so early is because german magazines always get the review version so early (or they release the review early if the magazine get a release before the release of the game) and i get the magazine earlier than other ones. it's not even out now^^

But the game hasn't gone gold yet, so they can't have had the final build to review. That is why early magazine Reviews can't be trusted, they are almost never final build and they usally have to sign an agreement that they will give it a hagh score.

the release is on 17th and people who buy on different retailers here get the game i would say 3 days earlier than release day. not sure how it can be still not gold but i'm not saying the tearing will be in the retail version, just that if they would have gotton only a preview version with the developer not saying "yes that is the official review version" they would have never made the review. but hey, i hope they managed to make the game without tearing for us^^

what i can think about is that they made a patch which maybe is out now but magazines who release the review before game release can't really test the patch then but online reviews wich will be out only one day before release  or so will have had the chance to test the patched version.