I'm playing Darksiders while I wait for Fallout: New Vegas. It's one I have had on my shelf as something to look forward to for months - I was so sure I'd love it. It sounded exactly like my kind of game. I'm about 5 hours in. I'm disappointed, so horribly disappointed.

It's like Zelda, everyone says. Yes, I agree. It's like Zelda if you get rid of the colourful, diverse game world and replace it with generic grey urban ruin. If you paper said grey urban ruin with PS2 era textures. If you turn the varied, enjoyable combat into a brainless, skill-less, tedious button masher. If you replace the puzzles with ... oh, wait, no, just copy and paste the puzzles and hope your intended audience has forgotten the solutions. If you get rid of the catchy music in favour of some generic bland stuff that's so forgettable I can't tell you a thing about it because I can't remember anything. If you get rid of the simple, elegant controls and replace them with an over-complicated mess that makes weird decisions like sticking the all-important dodge/block function on the right bumper button so I have to change the way I hold the controller for a less comfortable grip that doesn't mesh too well with the way it was designed. If you tear out the loads of little upgrades you want to buy for your character, and replace them with stuff the player can't see any point in. If you get rid of the multitude of neat time wasting things to do in the game world and don't replace them.

So it's like one of the 3D Zelda games if you get rid of everything that makes them fun.