Aaron lent me Darksiders after talking it up as a worthwhile Zelda clone. Actually, everyone on the planet spoke about it in those terms. And neither Aaron nor everyone else were wrong.

The game’s structure is similar to that of Zelda games: You have to get to the big bad guy, but first you have to take out his four guardians. And to get to each of them, you have to go through their dungeons. And to get to the dungeons, you have to complete a fetch quest or five. You come across doors you can’t open and ledges you can’t get to, the implication being that you’ll need to acquire some equipment or skill to get through.

I just got the “crossblade” today, Darksiders’ version of Link’s boomerang. I know from all I’ve read and heard about this game that I’ll later get something akin to a hookshot. I’m already seeing places I’ll need to use it.

So yeah, it’s Zelda with a different setting and visual style. But it’s not pushing my Zelda buttons, and I’m not sure why. Because it’s not as fantastical? Because it’s set in a bombed out New York-ish city? Or because I just don’t have the history with this that I do with the Nintendo’s franchise?

My first complaint is regarding the combat. I don’t play games like God Of War, Devil May Cry or Dante’s Inferno because I just don’t like combo-heavy combat. I can mash X all day, but I can’t retain strings like LS (down) + RB + Y (hold) long enough to actually put them to use. Which means I’m basically doing the same three or four attacks on every enemy. And it’s a waste for me to spend my collected souls on new attacks that I don’t have the skill to pull off (at least on purpose).

I also don’t like the interface of the game. The Back and Start buttons each bring up multi-tiered menus, one (generally) for finding your way around and one for managing all the stuff you accumulate. But it all turns to a mess for me when I’m juggling new skills and weapon upgrades and equipment pickups and new Wrath attacks. Is that thing I just got a slottable upgrade for my sword? Or is it a consumable thing that needs to be set to a D-pad direction? And if the latter, do I need to de-assign a Wrath attack from the D-pad? Or do LB and RB bring up different versions of the D-pad HUD? I feel like I have to hold down every button on the controller to use some of this stuff.

Right after I picked up the crossblade today, I was IMing with Aaron about my progress in the game. My attention was split between the game and the conversation, and I missed the instructions about how to mark multiple crossblade targets. While I was trying to figure it out, some dinky flaming bats killed me and I was taken back far enough that I had to reclaim my new weapon. Thankfully, the game showed me the instructional screen again. It’s simple: Click RS to enter aiming mode, then squeeze LT over each target you want to hit (up to five), then pull RT to throw it. Don’t hold LT or you’ll enter enemy lock-on mode, and you’ll only be able to throw the thing at one guy at a time. And don’t hold RT, unless you want to charge the crossblade for a more powerful attack. See? Simple.

It’s quite possible that Zelda is just this complex. But I’ve walked that path as it’s climbed from top-down 2D to third-person 3D, and I guess I just know how those games are going to work. Manipulating Darksiders feels like trying to fly a Airbus after a couple hours’ practice with an RC model.

I’m playing Darksiders on “apocalyptic” difficulty, partly because that’s just what I do these days and partly because there’s a 100-point achievement for finishing the game that way. I had little trouble finishing Bioshock 2, Arkham Asylum and Mass Effect 2 on their highest difficulty settings. But playing Darksiders like this is murderous. Or is the game just that difficult? I fought the same car-throwing demon at least 10 times before I got past him. Yeah, I’m not good at the combat. But should it be this tough?