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Standing in the pitch dark with the electric energy flowing through every fiber of your being. Your mind racing what has
happened and what will happen. The demon within calls to you, it is time to end these thugs and get your final revenge.
Life will never be the same, but the day she died; you knew it no longer really mattered anymore.
The Darkness is loosely based on the Top Cow comic books series of the same name. The tells the story of Jackie Estacado
a hit man in 21st Century New York who gets into some trouble with his Uncle Paulie who thinks that there was something fishy
with his last money collection deal and this guy just snaps. The game begins with the player coming back from the collection
deal that goes wrong and over the course of a few well done scenes the player finds out his Uncle Paulie has put a hit out
on him. As the game goes on things begin to get a little too unbelievable. Not that having a parasitic demon within you
that wants to control isn't believable, no that's the part that wasn't a problem. This Darkness entity emerges now, because
it's Jackie's 21st birthday. This all takes place within the first hour of the game and it's all good. The Darkness is very
powerful and it will keep Jackie alive throughout the game. But the player MUST shoot out the lights in the areas that they
visit and there are plenty of lights. The pistols are the player's best friends, only they will have enough ammo and accuracy
to not only take out gangsters and lights alike.
In the end the biggest problem with the story elements in the game is that they are not expressed enough in the narrative
of the game and player finds themselves constantly looking at their objectives menu to find out what to do next. The game
is very linear, yet they tried to make the game more open by having side quests. Problem is that these side quests just open
up extras in the EXTRA CONTENT menu rather than giving the player anything new to play with in the game. It would have been
nice to see some story elements added to these side quests so that the player could learn more about the story if they played
through them. The story itself is pretty good until you reach the last two or three levels; there the story just breaks down
and there are at least two anticlimaxes that could have been the end of the game. I'm sure the developers figured that the
game was pretty short to begin with and they needed to do something so that people felt like they are getting their money's
worth.
The problem with this area is that every time Jackie steps out of the subway people start shooting at him. This is totally
unbelievable, the idea that these guys are just sitting around waiting for Jackie to walk out of the subway tunnel is insane.
There is a part in the game where Jackie has to go see this guy, Dutch. Every minute of getting to Dutch's place, Jackie
is killing these guys sent to kill him. Once Jackie gets to Dutch's place these guys are literally hang out in front of the
place. When I entered the building I fully expected Dutch to be dead, I began shooting out lights until the game took over
and there Dutch was complaining and talking like nothing happened. The added problems with the enemy A.I. Don't help the
game's believability either. The A.I. In the game is just too stupid to believe, they actually run at Jackie to make it easier
for him to shoot them. They will take cover but they don't usually stay there and sometimes even when they do, they hide
behind cover so long that you can walk right up to them and kill them.
Also it is easy to shoot these guys in the head, but then sometimes they get right back up again. This is probably a
bug, but it is certainly annoying when the enemy was obviously shot at least once if not twice and that same enemy rises again
just a couple seconds later.
The other problem is that the Darkness is frightening, even in the comics, it's very freaky. The game doesn't seem to
acknowledge this. Except near the end when there are some comments in the enemy voices, but no reaction other than that.
The enemies and the non-enemies alike see to ignore the Darkness and focus just on killing Jackie, as if they were players
themselves. Even near the end of the game when the enemies comment on the Darkness it doesn't change the fact that they are
completely focused on killing Jackie. When the tentacle headed Darkness is creeping toward someone they don't fire erratically
and begin screaming they just shoot it. This kind of thing is probably also to create some more difficulty in the game.
But given how well done the rest of the game is, it makes this even more jarring.
Another problem with the A.I. Are the Darklings, these dudes are summoned using the Darkness and they are supposed to
work for Jackie like little minions. They do everything from providing cover(Gunner Darkling), to knocking out lights(Lightkiller
Darkling). But these guys are not as useful as one might think, why? Because their A.I. Is horrible. Most of the time when
you summon one of these guys they just sit and look at you like, “Well, now what?” When they are supposed
to go out and look for trouble. The player can send them in a direction by pressing X, but normally this only makes them
walk a few feet in that direction and look around, if they don't see anything to do immediately they will just sit there and
just wait for redirection again. The worst part is that when the Gunner Darkling is sent out, sometimes he just stands in
the line of fire, and before he can fire he is destroyed. Many people have complained about the Gunner shooting them in the
back, but that was usually while the Gunner was firing and it won't stop if Jackie walks into his firing line. This isn't
much of an issue, just something the player needs to keep in mind.
The graphics in the Darkness are great! The depth of the models and the detail that were used to make the city, characters,
and Darklings look amazing and detailed. The depth of the game with things like graffiti and blood splatters in appropriate
places are impressive. I played the game on all most full look mode. This can be a problem here and there, as there is some
screen tearing. The reason I needed to do this was that Jackie moves like a tank. The speed of movement of Jackie should
have been dialed up, although perhaps due to the size of the Darkness image this wouldn't be possible. The fact that the
Darkness snake heads were so animated and ate hearts very believably the processors must have been really chugging. Also,
the fact that each head has a meter of glowing stripe that shows how much Darkness power that Jackie has left at any point
also probably taxes the system. All of this coupled with lots of in-game television screens that play public domain movies
and newscasts really make this one of the most immersive game experiences I've ever had playing a video game.
The most important issue about the Darkness, is the FPS mechanic this is the one thing that games like this usually nail;
and miss all the other aspects. This is key in this game, because you are duel wielding. Some games allow the player to
fire one trigger and shoot the too guns at the same exact target. Others allow the player to pull both triggers and fire,
more or less at the same target. Considering how weak and unsatisfying the guns are Darkness; the developers probably should
have stuck with the former rather than the latter. Unlike any other FPS, because you are taking out lights; the player runs
out of ammo. The player is constantly switching guns with ammo in them rather than just reloading. In some instances, when
Jackie is in a safe area he will reload his guns. This whole mechanic of switching guns is annoying and the player really
has little grasp of how many bullets are left or how much ammo they are using. As I've said before Jackie is slow and somewhat
difficult slow to maneuver. Certainly no one is going to be doing any strafing in this game. The fact that the guns aren't
more satisfying to shoot is tragic considering the player is going to be shooting with the highest frequency compared to any
other FPS; mainly because the player is shooting out lights constantly. Besides all this, none of the other guns in the game
are satisfying to shoot and some are just annoying. The WWII rifle that you pick up about halfway through the game is just
a pain to shoot. The rifle is a single action that has four or five shots in the clip that can be chambered. The rifle takes
forever to reload and isn't much better than the two guns; as far as power.
The audio in the game is absolutely incredible. The voice acting is the best that I've ever seen in video games. There
is no game out there that so appropriately coupled actors voices to the best character possible. Jackie sounds a bit too
much like Al Pacino or Joe Pesci but in the end you get used to it. Considering the large number of characters in the game,
it was incredible never to hear repeated voices. The voice of the Darkness is very well done as well, creating an especially
creepy feel. The sound effects in the game were very good and I certainly appreciated all the environmental sounds as well
as the background voices that you can hear during fire fights or from your Darklings. The music is the typical movie style
music, which is all right but nothing special. The coupling of unbelievably good character models and incredible voice acting
really gives all the characters in the game good personality and keeps them from being two dimensional.
Multuplayer, Oh multiplayer... The game has the typical deathmatch, team deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. These also
have variants that allow for Survivors or Shapeshifters which allows the player to either have all humans only and then as
people die they become Darklings or during the game the humans can turn from Darkling and back on the fly. This would be
fine but, the number of models for multiplayer would be fine if they weren't all so ugly. The Darkling end of course, is
great; but the human side should have been more thought out. With all this, the problem is that if one person is laggy it
creates all sorts of issues within the game. Everything from tearing to sticking. Also for some strange reason due to this
fact no one is playing ranked matches which seems to prevent players from getting achievements. Considering the large number
of online achievements it is hard to understand why the developers didn't spend more time getting this area right.
Certainly given that the Darkness was a licensed game it is hard to really see where Starbreeze could have improved on
the story of the game. A few of their art choices were questionable compared to the comic book; but I'm sure they had to
make stylistic choices. The issues that I had with the game were mechanical, hopefully a patch could fix these problems.
In the state the game is in now, I have a hard time giving this game a very high score. I did, for the most part, have fun
playing the game and really enjoyed the graphics and the Darkness powers. If you are a big fan of the comic books you will
really love this game. If you really love FPS games, you might consider renting this game. To simply have a deep experience
from a video game like no other, it might be worth checking out. A definite rental and a cautious purchase, at 8/10...
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