Darksiders franchise has been brought back from the dead by THQ Nordic but there was a catch. The reviews have not been generally favourable towards Darksiders III and now stands at the difficult junction of mixed reviews with the Metacritic reviews for PC, Xbox One and PS4 being 72, 71 and 66 respectively.
While there are people finding the game to be good regardless of mainstream reviews, ultimately Darksiders III will have a tough time finding an audience during this busy quarter in the industry where competition is really fierce.
But THQ Nordic CEO Lars Wingefors remains pleased with the final product and believes it is a testament to how the publisher is honouring its forebear’s legacy.
“The promise we made was to deliver a game to the fans of the franchise, and I’m really proud of it,” he tells GamesIndustry.biz. “I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to show you, I think [developer] Gunfire has made an excellent game, and even my publishing team in Vienna has been working really hard to execute on this — all the marketing, all the behind-the-scenes things.
“Everything around publishing the Apocalypse Edition has been a logistics challenge. A lot of people have spent a lot of time over the past few months to make this happen.”
Addressing the reviews, he continued: “There are always a few people not enjoying this kind of product, but there are also people really enjoying it. If we stick to our promise and deliver a product that the fans really enjoy, I think we’ll be [fine].”
He also praised Gunfire games for releasing the game under such time constraints.
“With Darksiders, we have been fairly quick,” he says. “It only took five years from acquisition to actually bringing out a sequel. That’s the time band we’re working with.”