Guess what key "Talk" is supposed to represent? Give up? It's E.

It harkens back to a simpler time, when I'd sit on my parent's living room floor on a hot summer day playing Legend of Zelda.

This animation looked awesome the first time I saw it. Three dozen times later? Not so much.

The keyboard and mouse controls don't feel as finely tuned.

Slicing through the competition.

Darksiders 2 is a good game, and it deserved to be launched in better condition.

I'm a sucker for the End Times. Wait, that came out wrong. I'm a big fan of stories that take placethe End Times. Considering the Apocalypse is central to the Darksiders series, I had the release date of Darksiders 2 circled on my calendar for most of the year. (Granted, I had to change that a couple of times.) Now that it's finally out, I'm having a hell of a good time playing, but the road there is paved with good intentions and a load of technical issues.Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, has taken it upon himself to clear his brother War's name of a crime he didn't commit: kick-starting the End Times without permission. Death sets out to accomplish this feat by visiting other worlds, talking with mystical beings, and killing things as he carries out their endless fetch quests. It sounds like a potentially rich backdrop to play around in, but Darksiders 2's narrative is awfully hard to follow. It's so wrapped up in coming up with myriad reasons to justifyDeath needs to go spelunking through dungeons that by the time you reach the end you're not exactly sure what happened or if you've even succeeded.That said, the actual act of exploring and playing through these dungeons remains good fun. Sure, at their core it's always the same: find the key to unlock a door, fight a dungeon boss, rinse, and repeat. But I love this kind of game design -- it harkens back to a simpler time, when I'd sit on my parent's living room floor on a hot summer day playing Legend of Zelda. Darksiders 2 borrows many ideas from the likes of Zelda, Diablo, and World of Warcraft, and makes them work well together with its challenging dungeons, a decent loot system, and a wide-open world full of sidequests to explore.It takes awhile to really get things moving -- roughly five or six hours, by my count -- but that's when the more creative dungeon puzzle designs start to appear: split yourself into two separate entities to solve pressure-plate puzzles, use portals to traverse large gaps, reverse time to cross a bridge before it crumbled. It's nothing revolutionary, but these and other puzzles and tools constantly evolve the challenge of the later dungeons over the course of the extremely lengthy 30-plus hour adventure.Death is also a fully customizable character. As you earn XP from completing quests and dispatching various enemies, you can apply attribute points to turn him into either a minion-summoning Necromancer, a powerful melee-based Harbinger, or a combination of the two. Along with the ability to respec makes Darksiders 2 awfully friendly to those (like me) who like to tinker with their heroes until they feel just right.Here's where the loot system comes into play as well. Considering there's seven distinct areas on Death that you can customize, from weapons, to armor, to gloves, to boots -- there's just a ton of stuff to collect from fallen enemies, treasure chests scattered throughout the land, or vendors. Combined with earning XP and the skills, it's a great character-progression system.Death controls really well if you're using a gamepad with your PC, and honestly that's how I'd recommend you play it if you can. Every attack, move, and dodge felt really quick, responsive, and fluid as Death cut demonic dogs in half or turned skeletons into dust. Unfortunately the keyboard and mouse controls don't feel as finely tuned, and I found myself fighting with the camera while navigating through narrow dungeon passageways.But Darksiders 2 suffers from some short-sighted design decisions. My biggest peeve is that the sidequest dungeons don't indicate what level you should be at to play through them. Their loot rewards don't scale, so the incentive to play these extra areas evaporates quickly unless you do so immediately after they unlock. Don't wait until after you beat the main story campaign to revisit areas you glossed over like I did.The bigger issues I ran into were all of a technical nature. These range from the irritating (opening a treasure chest only to have the loot vanish), to the frustrating (random crashes to desktop), and the mind-boggling (displaying the incorrect button to bring up the world map when playing with a gamepad [push down on the left analog stick instead]). Throw in the lack of PC options , and you've got a mess of a console port. We deserve better after shelling out $50.What makes those technical problems so frustrating is that Darksiders 2a good game, and it deserved to be launched in better condition (especially after all those delays). There's hope, however, especially after Vigil's admission of the poor technical quality of the PC version and that a patch is considered. Today, however, you'll have to look past the poor keyboard and mouse controls, the bugs, and the low-quality graphics to see how good Darksiders 2 is.: It's always a damn shame to see a potentially great game held back by a bare-minimum port, but that doesn't automatically mean it's junk. Mike certainly didn't hate his 30+ hours with Darksiders 2, after all! What's the worst port you've played to death anyway because the game was worth the effort?Looking for our Darksiders 2 Port Authority ? Click through to the second page of this review to read our breakdown of its limited PC options.