Let the Darkness consume you.
When this game first appeared in our consoles as a downloadable demo, it immediately captivated its audience with its dark atmosphere and cool gameplay. Some people (me included) had never heard about the comic books of the same name that this game was based on. Still, the demo was so finely made without giving anything about its storyline that a lot of people bought the game afterwards. And boy, were we in for a surprise.
Graphics:
Graphics are usually the first thing you notice when starting up a game (unless you're playing with your eyes shut). In the case of The Darkness, the graphics were absolutely stunning. However, now that time has caught up with it, its graphics should be called average, since a lot of games offer better graphics nowadays. The game's darkness gives the graphics a dark, Film Noir style visual appearance. The only time you'll ever see sunlight in the game are few seconds at the beginning of the game, before you enter the tunnel. As if giving you a last glimpse of light, before the darkness consumes you.
Sound:
Usually sound is at the bottom of my priority list as I don't believe that any game could be made significantly better by topping it's sound effects. The Darkness makes the impossible, by emphasizing its sound and music so well that I'd play the game even if I was blind. The voice acting of the game is the best I have ever heard and is better played out than in most of the movies. The only bad side about the voice acting is the lip syncing, which works well for the most parts, but for some reason, the main character Jackie Estecado seems to be a ventriloquist. You'd think that the main character would be done better than others, but its completely the other way around. It's like the game was supposed to never show Jackie talking (as this is an FPS game), but then they decided to do it anyway and finished it as quickly as possible.
I have a hard time finding any point in the game, where the voice acting was not top notch. During the opening drive with those two hilarious goons, I noticed that the game had better voice acting than most games. Then Jackie starts talking and im awestruck. Kirk Acevedo (who plays Miguel Alvarez in the hit series Oz), who voices Jackie, makes such a awesome job at it that im struggling to find a better performance in any other game before it. And then, just a few moments later im being delivered the killing blow that sends me to videogame heaven, when The Darkness speaks its first lines. My skin goes goosebumps and im genuinely freaked out. Mike Patton as the voice of Darkness delivers the most creepiest, scariest and most addictive voices ever performed in any media. It went so far that I have been looking all over the net if anyone has a compilation of those voices so I could put those to my Windows start up sounds. So far no luck. The music of the game is also freaking sweet. From Marilyn Manson to Defleshed (and of course Mike Pattons Tomahawk), the soundtrack will not leave you cold. Definitely worth checking out, if you are into game OSTs (like me).
Storyline:
This is the big one. The main reason to play this game. The Darkness has a story so twisted and so...dark that it's impossible to stop playing it once you get into it. I'll try to avoid giving off anything that might ruin the experience for you. So I'll give you the back story. Jackie Estecado is a hitman working for the Franchetti crime family. At his 21st birthday he becomes possessed by a dark power called simply The Darkness. The game starts, when Jackie wakes up from a car driven by his two friends that tell him they screwed up some hit. Now instead of going back to his uncle Paulie, who is currently the head of the family, they decide to go for another hit in an attempt to soothe uncle Paulie, who seems to be very eager to kill everyone for the slightest mistake. During this hit, it becomes obvious that Paulie wants you dead and you are forced to run and hide. Then the darkness shows up and aids you kill everyone. Now Paulie is not very pleased with this and the circle of revenge starts. He does something to piss you off, then you do something to piss him off. This cat and mouse game is the heart of the story, but it becomes so emotional and so dark that no other game or a movie so far has ever been as deep or finely written.
The game also has the most pitch blackest humor I have ever seen in a game and so much swearing that it was banned in Singapore. I noticed the harsh language when I played it, but it never got so excessive that it would demean the quality of the game. On the contrary, the swearing brings an element of reality to the whole mess, making it feel more immersive than it already is. A lot of times you will find people conversing to each other with dialogue that makes Quentin Tarantino envious. I thought I'd give you an example with a dialogue that I recently witnessed again, where two NPC's talk about some disturbing stuff.
NPC 1: "Hypothetically speaking, would a moose have sex with me, if I'd give him 10 million dollars?"
NPC 2: "Depends on the moose. If it was a genetically altered moose, with a brain power equal to a human and capable of speech. I'd have to say yes."
NPC 1: "Okay. Anywhere I could find such horny, naughty moose'es?"
NPC 2: "Sweden most likely. And everybody knows that swedes are open minded, when it comes to sex. Cross-species sex too im sure."
NPC 1: "Yeah, those filthy swedes. God bless them."
Im not making this up.
Gameplay:
The gameplay in the Darkness is not at par with its intense storyline, but it also doesn't get in the way of it. Playing with the Darkness powers is fun, for awhile until you get tired of using the same moves over and over. Which makes you want to have a little variety in those powers. From the start you have the Creeping Dark, which is basically a black worm that can climb every wall and ceiling and attack enemies from a safe distance behind a wall. It's the most safest way to kill any enemy that you encounter in this game and basically makes the difficulty curve take a nose dive and drop flat on the floor. Even on hard difficulty the hardest level is the first one, where you dont yet have the darkness powers. After you gain them, the rest of the game is a cakewalk. You also gain powers such as Demon Arm, which is basically like a big tentacle that can impale any opponent and lift/throw any obstacle. Then there is the Black Hole power that sucks all nearby enemies into it and kills them. Oh and then there are the Darkness Guns, which are basically empowered pistols that have infinite ammo. Talking about making it easy for us.
There also seems to be some issues with the controls. When running diagonally to a wall you sometimes come to a halt and even though how much you push forward, it ain't moving. Only after you realize that you have to let go of the analog (let it reset), the movement becomes normal again. Also, Jackie seems to be quite out of shape or just lazy, since he tends to walk everywhere. Moving seems so slow that it made me look at the control schematic to see if there is a sprint button. But there aint. When crouching, you move like Solid Snake when he is crawling. Heck, maybe even slower than that. But wait, there's more. When you are using the precise aiming mode, which basically zooms your view just few inches, Jackie moves again slower. Lot of times I'm moving forward more slower than normal and then I notice I left the zoom on. All these flaws are minor issues that have little effect on the experience. So the gameplay is not as fast paced than most games and it's easy enough for 5-year olds to complete (which they shouldn't be playing, since the game is rated M/18+).
Overall, I love this game. It's dark atmosphere and storyline hooked me in from the very beginning and didn't let go until I had completed the game - 3 times. The game is not that long, you can easily complete it in less than 10 hours. It took me about twice that on my first play-through. It's as they say, good games tend to end too quickly, and bad games seem to last forever. This game had all the ingredients for a perfect game, but they screwed it up by making the game too easy and didn't really emphasize that much on the gameplay. The game has some RPG elements, like Darkness levels that you get by eating the hearts of your enemies, but they really didn't take any advantage of that. All you get from these levels is more damage immunity, which is needlessly high anyway. It may be truthful to the comics, but it doesn't work that well as a game. Despite the flaws, I still recommend it to anyone interested in First Person Shooters with a very good storyline and a decent gameplay. Just don't play it if you are afraid of the dark.
The Good
+ The plot is one of the best ever in a video game
+ The Darkness powers
+ Filled with pitch black humor
+ Beautiful Graphics
+ Voice acting
+ Music
The Bad
- Control issues
- Short and too easy
- Lip syncing