Graphics Tweaks
Out of the box the game is running with more than 400 FPS, for example when showing the main menu or options menu. The in-game Vertical Sync option, which can be enabled by checking Options | Advanced Options | Vertical Sync didn't constraint the FPS to my refresh rate of 60 Hertz. Hence I left the in-game option unchecked and enforced Vertical Sync on my graphics card for Darksiders, by using the NVidia Control Panel.
The NVidia Control Panel can be accessed by the context menu, which appears when right-clicking on the desktop. First I had to select 3D Settings | Manage 3D Settings | Program Settings and Add the executable DarksidersPC.exe, which is located at <Steam Home>\SteamApps\common\Darksiders. The important settings I applied were:
Vertical syncset toOn, to enforce my native refresh rateTriple bufferingset toOn, to improve the performanceMaximum pre-rendered framesset to1, to reduce the work and heat on my graphics card and to avoid potential input lag
Startup Tweaks
Whenever I started the game, I had to watch all the advertisement videos. Hitting the ESC key helped to speed up starting the game, but became annoying over time. Hence I determined which videos were played when starting the game and renamed them by changing the extension from .wmv to .wmv_. This common little trick did the job. All videos can be found at <Steam Home>\SteamApps\common\Darksiders\media\videos and the videos I renamed were:
AMD_Logo_moviemain_menu_introstart_screen_introTHQ_Logo1280x720Vigil_Logo1280x720
Achievement Tweaks
It is imperative to exit Steam before starting to play or after playing Darksiders. In addition you should never tab out of the game. Instead save your progress and exit the game and Steam. Otherwise you will miss many achievements for Darksiders or any other game you start using the Steam client. This is a bug which never got fixed by any patch.
That were all the tweaks I applied to improve my gaming experience. Have fun playing Darksiders!
Logged Off: Harmlezz
