Should be called "COVER" instead... Alternatively "Purple Stealth Vampire", take your pick.
Question: what do you do when you can't afford flashy graphics?
Answer: cell-shade the f*ck out of it!
This works wonderfully in the insane world of Borderlands, but in what is supposed to be a "serious vampire game" , this art style doesn't work at all, and only serves to make the game look cheap. Which it does. It looks cheap.
The same character models are re-used over and over again. In the hub-world, I found 3, THREE(!), different types of character models, with slight colour differences in their clothes. The enemies fare little better: there's guards (2-3 models), vampire hunters (3 models INCLUDING the bosses), ghouls (1 model) and vampires (1 model). As you can imagine, killing the same clones over and over again gets tiresome.
The levels have the same assets copy pasted all over the place. There's a nightclub, a museum, a skyscraper, a casino, an office, some back streets and a secret lab. Each level looks almost the same throughout. The end.
Oh, and there's no lip synching either, the characters just flap their jaws like puppets. Eyew...
Animations suck throughout, they are either super stiff or simply poorly done. Not what you would expect from a 45 euro title. There are large gaps between the mouth (which is closed) and the neck of your victims when you bite them (and your victim just looks ike a mannequin, no facial expression at all), and there's no animation at all if you turn your character while moving. Seriously, it makes him look like a sprite from a 2D game. If you press the movement keys fast enough, the character exists in two spaces at once.
As for sound, the game is voiced by none other than our beloved Geralt of Rivia. No, not just the same voice actor, but Geralt himself - he reads all his lines EXACTLY the same, which works great in the Witcher, but just sounds forced and contrived here. The rest of the voice acting is of varying degrees of suck. The dialogues on the other hand is pretty much all bad, and they repeat the same things over and over again just with different wording. On top of that, the audio tracks play much too fast after each other, it's like watching the Flower Shop scene from "the Room" (for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S9Ew3TIeVQ).
There are about 2 songs played over and over again in the nightclub, and I can't remember anything else from the rest of the game. So in my mind, there are exactly 2 songs in the soundtrack, of the usual "techno-vampire" quality.
Well then onto the gameplay! Hello 90's, how I missed you! Just let me turn on "What is love" and get this over with...
The gameplay consists of you pressing against a wall in cover in order to sneak past guards. Yes COVER, not DARK[ness]. In fact, darkness doesn't do anything in regards to whether or not you get spotted, only cover does. When in cover mode, enemies won't see you until they are standing right next to you looking at you. Even if you are hiding behind a glass railing or TV which allows half your body to be seen... When not in "COVER", you can get spotted from across the rooms easily, so don't bother trying.
If you do get spotted, all guards in the entire area will be instantly alerted and swarm down upon you in the dozens, and will never leave this alert state, and will always look to were you spotted, sometimes never moving (which made it practically impossible to get past a door early in-game). If you do get spotted, you will also only get 25% as much XP from any kills, meaning it will take a lot longer to level up and will cut you out from keeping many of the powers. The game also forces you to take out the enemies rather than just stealth your way through the level at times, which doesn't sit right with any stealth game imo.
The AI is absolutely awful, and so scripted and un-dynamic that it is impossible to not get pulled out of the game. Heck, the tutorial even says that "some guards will stand still in one direction, sneak up on them from behind" and "some guards have scheduled routes, use this to your advantage". These routes consists of them moving back and forward between two spots, and that's it. This applies to ALL guards, meaning it's not really stealth, it's just a boring puzzle of "wait until all guards are looking the other way, then punch them in the ass". Some guards even stand looking straight into the wall just so you can "feed" on them to restore your powers...
Speaking of powers, these make AND break the game. At the start, the game is ridiculously difficult, as enemies will see and hear everything you do right away, making the game frustrating (oh, and on normal difficulty you only get 2 saves per section/room. I had to play to easy or I would lose my mind!). However, once you get enough vampire powers, the game becomes a breeze. I didn't even need to bother with stealth after awhile, I just ran up and punched people in the face under a hail of gunfire.
The game tries to solve this by throwing dozens of guards at you at the same time, but unless you try and challenge yourself, these really aren't much of a threat. In later levels, I just used variations of teleport/super speed/invisibility to get through the game faster due to boredom. Yes, the game is incredibly repetitive.
Here's what you will be doing:
1. Talk to people in hubworld, get told you need blood from a strong vampire to avoid being turned into a ghoul.
2. Go to location, sneak past bunch of guards in a room (sometimes with the variation of having to find a key card to open a door, wow!).
3. Get a headache and visions of a purple angel.
4. Proceed to next room.
5. Repeat steps 2-4.
6. Sneak up on boss, find out he has the wrong blood.
7. Repeat from step 1.
That's pretty much it (including the storyline). Oh, and the game has the stupidest end boss fight ever. It's not difficult or anything, just incredible dumb. You run around in a small "arena" while a monster tries to punch you (you have about 2 sec to get out of the way) and press a bunch of terminals about 6 times. Then you get the marvelous choice of either saving the girl (who is good with computers...aaaand that's about it as far as character development goes) or stop the "evil scientist". And if you hate making tough decisions don't worry, you can just reload the last save 5 sec before making your stupid choice and see both ending that way. I didn't bother.
In short, "DARK" is a boring unbalanced stealth game with ugly graphics, boring story, terrible dialogues, annoying characters, and repetitive environments and gameplay. It's nowhere close to being worth it's asking price, and not really worth playing at all to be honest. If you want a good vampire game, play Bloodlines instead. Well, at least the vampires do not sparkle...