The Darkness
July 2,2007 - Note: Make sure not to forget to enter into our Darkness Prize Pack Giveaway.

In 2004, Starbreeze, a relatively unknown studio released The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. This was by large expected to be just another movie cash-in on the completely average blockbuster releasing the same summer. Anyone who expected that was wrong in every sense of the word. Riddick’s gameplay and graphical advances over just about every other Xbox shooter at the time was astronomical. It was not just the best movie tie-in the Xbox had but it was one of the best games on the system, period. Starbreeze finally just released their follow-up game to Riddick and while it may not be as revolutionary as Riddick was in 2004, it’s still every bit as good. The Darkness is a unique blend of stellar storytelling, white-knuckle action, and superior graphical and sound design. The Darkness, though anticipated more so than Riddick was, still sort of just came out of nowhere. No matter what you’re looking for in a shooter or action game, The Darkness surely delivers.

The Darkness stars Jackie Estacado, a 21-year-old Italian gangster residing in New York. You start off the game on his birthday in what is one of the most cinematic car chase sequences we’ve ever seen in a video game. You’re on your way to make a hit for your Uncle Paulie. In a turn of events, you find yourself betrayed by Paulie, and, for whatever reason, this sets off a demon inside of you that makes you in to a crazy super-killing machine. The story in The Darkness is simply divine. It’s one of the most original and creative narratives we’ve come across in a really long time. It’s based off of Top Cow’s popular comic book, so the characters and setting are already fairly well established. Jackie Estacado is sort of like a gothic mobster hybrid, which may sound sort of ridiculous in theory but it works really well. He sounds just as tough as he looks when you hear him talk, and the animations working for him, such as the cliché hand gestures when mobsters talk really give him a lot of credibility.

As you progress through the story a lot unfolds as to why you are the way you are, and eventually you make your way to the darkness realm. The darkness realm is sort of like hell, but it a ultra-stylized depiction of World War I. Whether or not it’s supposed to be some sort of commentary on anything is beyond us, but the world is just as nightmarish as any war game has ever been; and that’s just the side-setting to the unbelievably realistic New York City they allow you to traverse a good portion of the game.

In The Darkness you’ll be doing a lot of shooting in the first portion of the game. You get darkness powers as you progress through the story and without a doubt those are your best attacks. The conventional weaponry, such as the dual pistols you start the game with, or the shotgun for example, are all decent as there is pretty obvious auto-aim. You never really find yourself in a pickle with the difficulty. That being said, compared to the darkness powers you won’t find a lot that’s very useful for you later on. There are number of different powers you get throughout the game. The darkness itself is like two snakelike creatures that come out of your back and act as a shield and a way to view darkness-realm related things like darkling summon spots and things of that nature.

The rest of the powers are attack based. You get the creeping dark which is like a stealth creature that can attack enemies from the ground. Sort of like those creatures in that movie Slither, if you’ve seen that. You get the demon arm, which is probably the most usable power, as it basically impales your enemies and also knocks out the lights and moves otherwise unmovable objects. Then you get the darkness guns, which really aren’t that cool, except for the fact they’re more powerful than your regular guns and they draw power from being in the dark. But the last one is the best, and that’s the black hole power. It’s basically like a swarming black hole that will pick up your enemies, whirl them around, and then throw them so they die. It’s a pretty nice feature. One other power you get, which isn’t exactly in the same sense, is the ability to summon various darklings to do your bidding. You can get them to tackle enemies, shoot them, blow stuff up, or shoot out lights with electric bolts. It’s actually really nice to have these little guys around to help you out when you need someone to take the heat off of you for a second or two.

Much like Riddick, the action in The Darkness is more intimate and intense than your average shooting game. Whenever you kill an enemy you will want to devour its heart so it can feed your darkness power. Also, you have the ability to do fatality moves, such as shooting someone in the mouth or the back of the head, or heck, even in their knee cap. These fatality moves are unbelievably violent and extremely graphic—you don’t miss a thing when it’s happening. That being said, however, they really add to the intensity of the action and will probably make you yell out in joy the first time you do it; even if you’re playing by yourself.

The story plays a big part in the actual gameplay, too. If you’ve played games like Oblivion, Riddick, or Shenmue (yes, we know these games have very little in common), you’ll know what it’s like to trek through a world with tons of non-playing characters (or NPCs). In The Darkness most of the time when you do any sort of interaction with anyone it’s with story related characters, such as your girlfriend Jenny or various people in the subway station that you’re somehow related to. But there are so many random people walking around New York that it would have been nice to see some sort of mild interaction with them. When you approach any of the NPCs that aren’t story related all they really say are, “Hey,” or “Are we good?” like that even means anything. It’s sort of weird and feels lifeless.

The Darkness also has a multiplayer mode that is fairly fun, but feels tacked on when compared to the incredible single-player. There are several different play types in it, including deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and survivor. None of them are really anything special on their own, but what makes them good is the use of The Darkness’ gameplay gimmicks. Playing as a darkling or something and running up and down walls is really fun, granted, it’s still usually better to just play as a regular guy with guns. There is, however, a seriously large drawback to the multiplayer mode; it’s eight players maximum and usually, when you get higher than six, it plays unbelievably slowly. We’re not exactly sure why that is, maybe it needs a patch or maybe the graphics are just too much for a game like this online, but it has seriously terrible framerate issues in the multiplayer mode at times. Other than that, though, it’s a nice little addition, even if it feels completely tacked-on.

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