The end of the world has never really sounded very fun. Death, destruction, violence - none of these things make the apocalypse sound like anything I want to be in line to see. Vigil Games, the developers of Darksiders, have decided to make the apocalypse more interesting though by introducing a unique story and combining it with some huge swords and even bigger guns. I didn't know the Four Horsemen carried guns until now. You learn something new every day!

This trailer deviates from most traditional game trailers in that it features CG and in-game graphics interspersed seamlessly to continue the flow of the trailer. Usually it's one or the other - CG for teasers and more in-game graphics for gameplay trailers.  This latest trailer features more of the CG work that was no doubt recently finished in anticipation of the game's January release.

The story is laid out briefly and we are also treated to some nice CG scenes. I'm really liking the horseman's horse seemingly running out of hell at 10 seconds in - that's very well done.

At 17 seconds in it looks like we switch back to some game engine graphics. The look of the polygonal characters is what makes me think we've moved away from the crisp CG and back into in-game graphics territory. This cut back to graphics is seemingly a segue back into the first shot from the trailer. This is probably done to ease us back into graphics as opposed to cutting directly from CG back to the original shot, which may be jarring.

The sound design is done well for the most part. The mix is a little low and I almost can't make out the deep, echoing voice of the fire breathing narrator. His voice is deep, but he still doesn't beat Tim Curry's modified audio in Legend! That guy still takes the cake for scariest devil-like creature.

The text effects at 31 seconds are hit and miss. I like the fact that the seven seals are implemented into the design, but the font and general 2D look of the rocks at the bottom of the screen are a little flat for me, no pun intended. The text also has some wiggle applied to it to give it movement, seemingly to keep it "upbeat". The glowing "shoot out at the viewers face" effect is not working for me at all. If that's the best action-esque effect they can think of, it'd be better to just leave it out altogether. Earlier trailers for this game featured better text treatments.

On the editing front, the music is very epic from 31 seconds on and the cuts work well to showcase key action scenes. It seems to me that at this point in development they want to show what the final game mechanics are like, but also rely on quickly cutting to CG to avoid any nitpicking of the gameplay itself.

You can see at 51 seconds what the CG cutscene character looks like. Compare that with the view of the in-game character and you can see that Vigil has done a lot on the modeling and shading of the in-game character to get him to match.

Speaking of 51 seconds in - get a load of that gun. They have guns like that in hell?! And why does a Horseman of the Apocalypse need a gun, anyway?

From 50 seconds on we're treated to a nice montage of action scenes that climax in a nice teaser of a huge enemy in the game. After the title plate we get one last look at the in-game character before we are reminded that we have to wait until January 2010 to play the game. Yes, that is the Day / Month / Year format. It screwed me up at first, too. We'll actually see this one in the US on January 5th.

All in all not too bad of a trailer but I'll want to see more gameplay before I make any decisions. What are your thoughts on Darksiders? Did this trailer peak your interest?