The Darkness

The Darkness is based on a comic by Top Cow Productions, although it seems significantly different in visual style. Starbreeze Studios reworked the concept to work better in a first person shooter, and spent more time with the mafia aspect and World War I setting than the more supernatural stuff. The Darkness comes off of Starbreeze's previous hit, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a prequel to the Vin Diesel movies.

The Darkness is a fun game, although the shooting action itself isn't all that good. Apparently that's a quirk of Starbreeze, they make good first person shooters without good shooting. From what I've gathered, Butcher Bay succeeded because of atmosphere, graphics, and hand-to-hand combat, while The Darkness succeeds because of atmosphere, graphics, and the darkness powers. They just make you feel like a badass and add immensely to the experience. Which scenario sounds cooler?

1) A door opens, and a man walks through and shoots the other men inside the room.
2) A door opens and a sharp black spike darts in, smashing out all the lights in the room, covering it in shadow. An ominous figure walks in with the appearance of a man, but he has several demonic appendages protruding from him, including two ravenous-looking snake-like creatures. The man dispatches the others in the room with his guns and lashing, impaling tentacles. When it is over, the two creatures greedily consume the hearts of the fallen.

Other cool touches include Jackie, the protagonist, merely dropping his pistols and pulling out new ones when they're out of ammo, and the brutal "execution" moves he performs when right next to the enemy. The game's not all just violence though. If you want, you can spend time helping out the normal citizens you see around you, and there are plenty of calmer, even tender moments, like going to see Jackie's girlfriend at her new apartment and watching To Kill A Mockingbird together (The PS3 version includes this and other movies, plus some cartoons and music videos, in their entirety on various televisions in the game world). They really try to immerse you in this world, which can help gloss over some of the other flaws and adds to the success of the story.

The plot has two main threads, as Jackie deals with his traitorous uncle Paulie and the Darkness inside him that is trying to control him. The two are mixed well, and it moves along with generally good voice acting and presentation. The conclusion is a bit... inconclusive, though not totally unsatisfying. The sound design is pretty good, with nice music and effective sound effects. Some of the textures look bad up close and the people can look a bit weird, but generally the graphics, lighting and overall visual quality are quite good. The game can be a bit glitchy, and the core gameplay isn't quite as solid as you might like, but thanks to the peripheral touches it's a good experience. It's also a very funny game, the main story is very serious (and well, dark), but there are lots of humorous phone messages, posters, and NPC conversations sprinkled throughout. The story might be a bit short, but you should at least try the game if you're interested.