Time to Let the Darkness Out
Later you gain three other powers, a demonic arm which can impale victims and is especially useful for taking out lights, which drain your darkness power. Then you get some cool looking guns that use the darkness power as ammo, and finally, the black hole. You just aim and “shoot” and a black hole will open up and kill anything around it, throwing people around violently before slamming them back on the ground. Towards the end of the game where you’re fighting large groups of enemies, the black hole becomes very useful.
Your darkness power gains strength by devouring the hearts of your victims, which after you two new best friends get through eating so many, your darkness powers level up, which comes in handy with the Creeper power because you’ll be able to go longer and last longer. And even though there are only a handful of animations for the two snake heads to devour hearts, and even though it’s always the right one that eats it, I swear, it never gets old. How can you not enjoy a game that lets your eat out the hearts of your victims?
The guns are your standard affair and to me after a certain part in the game, took a backseat to the powers. You’ll double wield pistols, knock people back with a shotgun, dual wield uzi’s, and my personal favorite, the riot shotgun.
Truth be told, there’s a lot of backtracking that you have to do, but considering how great the graphics are, it never really got old to me to keep wandering around. The game centers itself off of two subway stations, and at each station, there are different routes you can take that will lead you to the “levels” of the game. And if by some weird chance you get bored with the main story, you can always find people wandering around the subways that will give you side quests. The story, by the way, was great. Although, being a fan of the comics, they didn’t really seem to borrow too much from the comic universe. But the main storyline kept me going all the way through. So much so that the first time I played the game, I beat it in one night. And the game isn’t that short, it’s you standard length for shooters these days.
Like I said, the graphics are awesome. The only annoying things is that the lip synch is really off, almost like everybody is talking out loud but their mouths are just mumbling the words out. And for some reason, when you use a phone and there’s that click one somebody answers, Jackie’s hair will bounce. Nothing major and defiantly doesn’t distract from the game at all.
Sound is awesome. I guess the best thing about the sound has got to be the voice of The Darkness. The guy who did that voice is awesome with the way he will change his tone and creepiness in mid sentence. And I even read online that he used no electronic filters on his voice, it was all him, which to me, seems really amazing and creepy at the same time that one could do such a thing. Guns sound awesome with enough bang, and the voice acting of all the characters is top notch. And the slithering noise of a heart going down the throat of your little buddy never gets old.
There’s really not much replayability, except for the simple fact that the game is so good that you’ll want to play it again and this time maybe use one power more over the others. Throughout the game you can collect collectables to unlock bonus content, which is nice. The game plays smoothly with no real hiccups or frame rate issues whatsoever. Basically, the game is a lot of fun to play and enjoy. It’s one of my favorite, if not my most favorite 360 game right now. If you enjoy a good FPS with great graphics, engaging story, being the bad guy instead of the typical good guy out to save the day, and the ability to summon black holes, then you should defiantly give this game a try. And if you haven’t already, I recommend checking out some of the Darkness comics.