Ex Darksiders 2 Developer Has Harsh Words For Wii U, THQ, and Virgil Games

Nothing beats a kick in the scrotum to start your day. Ex Darksiders 2 Senior UI Designer, Xander Davis has said in an interview with Not Enough Shaders that Nintendo's upcoming console the Wii U is "$400 Xbox 360 seven years late."

"I’ve not worked on any Wii U version of anything (luckily). But, y’know, I very early on raised my major concern about this. Anybody buying any Wii U game that’s a port is probably buying it almost exclusively and specifically for how it can play differently through the Wii U’s alleged innovated UI. I’m already a known skeptic on whether the interface paradigm is at all anything but idiotic. But if you’re gonna do it? Fine. Then, you HAVE to do it right. You HAVE to innovate on the UI. You HAVE to enhance game mechanics and gameplay in a MATERIAL way that justifies all the hassle and a $400 Xbox 360 seven years late."

Davis hurled the insult towards Nintendo when asked what he thought of the Wii U, but he did not stop there. Davis went on to say none of what makes up Wii U make sense and that others who have the chance to preview the console are saying it's gimmicky and well just plain sucks.

"I can’t comment on THQ / Vigil specifically. However, just in general, I doubt any studio or publisher is truly giving it the kind of proper UI design and thinking it deserves. Hell, apparently this is a huge leap for regular triple-A console releases. From what I’m hearing from people who have actually played a Wii U as recently as a month ago, the games pretty much suck and the tablet is pretty much a complete gimmick. Still tethered, not wireless. Maybe publishers can pull off something clever. But won’t it just kind of be clever for a little bit, then not really worth your $60 dollars and just annoying afterwards? Kinect comes to mind. PlayStation Move comes to mind. Motherfucking Wii comes to mind. But, sure, we’ll have to wait and see… I can’t comment on specifics. I can only speculate, but as a UI Designer applying experienced critical thinking to game mechanics UI and the Wii U tablet, none of it makes sense to me to truly add value to gamers, even if you try..."

Nintendo was not the only party to feel the wrath of Davis. Davis also took a bite of out both THQ and Virgil Games, the folks responsible for Darksiders 2. Davis called THQ a catastrophe; " ...Catastrophe, is a word that comes to mind. Remember that fable about the desert landfill of Atari E.T. cartridges that crashed the industry? Same thing, except now it’s filled with uDraw tablets that crashed a publisher. That might have something to do with everything else..." and went on to attack Virgil Games by claiming that he was not given credit for his work in Darksiders 2; "Most of my direct experience was with dealing with the management at Vigil. Needless to say, I’m not impressed. All the other people that lost their jobs are not impressed. The person I most directly had to answer to seemed to have no investment at all in the UI. Not part of one meeting for it. But sure, I’ll take the blame, even though I solved his emergency problem and he ultimately used my work."

Virgil Games did release a detailed response to Davis's claims and said that they are not "focused on the issue of employees that voluntarily left or were fired from the company".

"To reiterate, Vigil’s primary concern while doing Darksiders II credits was that we credited team members that were affected by the recent downsizing. We were not focused on the issue of employees that voluntarily left or were fired from the company. We find it alarming that a former employee would personally attack and lie about other team members while falsely inflating his contribution to the game."