Starbreeze has done it again, and making a name for itself with games that look and play like being in a movie. An experience many attempt and very few succeed in doing. The story is engaging, and interesting. The interactions between characters is believable and lifelike. The mobster meets supernatural demons is a new spin on both mobster and demon horror games neither of which is over done. While Jackie Estacado is little like his comic book counter-part he is definitely a great main character, he's likable, charismatic, loyal, reasonable (as far as a mobster is concerned) and humorous. He is comparable to main characters of Good Fellas or the Sopranos in likability. The voice acting is spot on for the entire cast, and brings all of them to life. Each voice fits each character surprisingly well. I can only reiterate that the entire game looks, sounds and plays like being in a great action movie. The Visuals are top notch. The art direction is new and makes a dark world that you can almost taste. All of the weapons look clean and authentic. For mechanics the darkness abilities that you gain while progressing through the game are powerful, interesting and definitely new. The gun play, is not believable but certainly keeps you in the action and the game fun. The most basic is dual wielding pistols, instead of reloading you drop them and grab another pair, this makes an almost invisible "reload" time and makes use of pistols interesting by cycling through a variety of semi-automatic revolvers and clip feed hand guns. The automatic machine pistols follow the same reload principle but doesn't have the same variety. The only choices are TMP and silenced TMP. A few other machine pistol models would have been nice. These are accompanied by a Spas-12 shotgun, AK-47, M4, and an automatic 100 round barrel-magazine shotgun. I suppose the unrealistic element comes in that you can carry all of these at once with seemingly no limit to ammunition. At one point I realized I had sixty pistols, thirty machine pistols, as wells as four two-handed rifle weapons and twenty magazines for each and rolled my eyes a little. I found that because ammunition was so plentiful I found a two handed weapon I liked and stuck with it, thus accumulating unreasonable amounts of ammo for my other weapons. If I had been forced into carrying one two handed gun I might have used more of the weapons. But there are a few advantages to having so many weapons and ammo. On a few occasions during the big fire fights, I would "waste" ammo by unloading at my enemies with every weapon I had, and to say the least expending ammunition with every weapon available is both fun and satisfying. I understand that the developers might not have fleshed out the gun play in favor of the darkness powers, but even with all the powers, guns still play a large role in the game. I only have a few grips with the game. To keep the HUD clean, the designer made the reticle a red dot, presumably from a laser sight on every weapon. For what ever reason, this makes "fine" aiming difficult and at a distance fighting enemies or even shooting out street lights that drain your darkness power is a little frustrating. Like the Chronicles of Riddick, one element of the game is collecting. in the case of the darkness its phone numbers. While much of the dialog heard from dialing the numbers is humorous and worth while, collecting them isn't and often bogged down the action. The walking speed in the game is a little slow, but it's not noticeable until your walking around town trying to find a phone number. There are so many phone numbers (100 total, plus a handful of bonus numbers) that you shouldn't concern yourself with looking for any of them on your first time through the game as that tends to make a boring lull of action. Lastly the game does feature a working multiplayer, the lack of which was a huge complaint of the chronicles of Riddick, once you play the multiplayer for the darkness you will realize why it was left out of Riddick. It simply isn't one of starbreeze's strong points. I'm not suggesting you can't enjoy the multiplayer but it is certainly for a niche crowd and even if you were one of the few that enjoys it, that experience is brought crashing down by lag. In conclusion, the darkness is a fantastic cinematic game that really feels like playing an action movie, but when its over, it only offers short lived collecting and a lackluster multiplayer. You should definitely play this game, but buying it is a different story.
What this game can tell about itself is that it's incredibly original. While it might be a first person shooter, it completetly creates an individual genre where only two games belong to: Riddick and The Darkness. Sim... Read Full Review
What can you say? This game is fantastic on every level. I'll run through each section individually to give you better perspective of what this game does right. Gameplay: Top notch. Intuitive and understandable co... Read Full Review
