Sets a new standard on narrative in a video game and straight-up ass-kickery!
User Rating: 9 | The Darkness X360
The Darkness is the new game by developer Starbreeze, who's last game The Chronicles of Riddick was quite possible the greatest movie based game ever made. But that dosn't really mean anything, since most movie based games suck, but The Chronicles of Riddick was also an excellent game on it's own merits. Now that the back story been filled in, The Darkness is based on a comic book of the same name, the story of the game features many of the same characters as the comic, but is more like a hollywood-ification the source. This isn't a bad thing at all, it makes for a much tighter story. The story goes, that Jackie Estacado, a mafia hit man for your scumbag uncle Paulie Franchetti. Everythings going just fine, until you don't collect for him and he gets pissed at you. Look at the bright side though, it's your 21st birthday and you inherited The Darkness. The story in The Darkness is one of the biggest draws, featuring many heart wrenching twists and turns that will leave you on the edge of your seat 'til the very end. In the game, the darkness is embodied by these two snake-like heads on the left and right side of the screen. With the press of a button(left bumper) they will appear and give a handful of unique and endlessly usefull powers. The first is called creeping dark, and it allows you to control one of the snakes and use it to open locked doors, do recon, and perform stealth kills. Next, is the demon arm(my favorite) which allows a tenticle to shoot out and impale enemies and lift up objects which can then be thrown and most commonly, to bust out lights which up until then had to be shot out with fire arms. Then you get the darkness guns, these two guns which are powed by the darkness, the left gun fires a sonic boom type power shot, while the right one is like a mini- chaingun. The last power is a black hole, which can be used as a grenade, when fired into a room it will suck up everything in the room from furniture to enemies, it's really powerful but is balanced out by the fact that with each use it drains all your darkness power. Along with all those powers you also get a halo-y type shield which lets you absorb more damage and the ability to devour hearts, this means that the snake head(always the right one, I feel bad for the left one) bites the heart right out of the dead enemies chest and chows down on it. It's incredible nasty and awesome and bad ass and... your response will vary but I think it might be the coolest thing in a videogame in way too long. The game is not very challenging at all but it is incredible satifying. The gun play is awesome, mainly with the inclusion of execution moves which occure when you get right up close to the enemy. These are really awesome and really violent, one particularly good one was when you sneak up on an enemy with the dual pistols and you go on to shoot out both his kneecaps(from the back) and then shoot them square on the chest as they fall to the ground. The story mode a lot of fun, but it won't last you very long(even with the various side missions) it'll take the average gamer about ten hours. I'm not sure how others feel about this but I think there's a lot of replay value, go back complete all the side missions or attempt to get an achievement you may have missed. The graphics for the game are pretty great, the game has a great atmosphere and lighting engine, there are some minor short comings with some not so great animations, but it's not too bad. But whats even better than the excellent graphics is the incredible sound, all the voice actors did an incredible job, with the standout being, atleast in my opinion, Mike Patton as the Darkness. His voice is so creepy and over the top... it's just too awesome. Last we got the multiplayer, it's not much. I personally think it's quite a bit of fun, expect for when it lags which will happen no matter how good the hosts connection is after a certain amount of people join. The multiplayer is standard fair except you can change from standard human to darkling, the little demons you can summon in the single player storyline. As a darkling, you can crawl up the walls and on the ceilings, and you can jump really far. Overall, this game is awesome, if you liked Riddick you'll love this. If your in need of a kick-ass shooter, you'll love this. If you just are a straight up shooter fan, you should at least give this a rent. 
