The Darkness (PS3)

The Darkness is a game that seemed to arrive and disappear without any fanfare whatsoever, which is a shame because it seems Starbreeze have pulled another fiesty rabbit out of the bag.

If you've played Starbreeze's previous creation "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher bay", either on the Xbox or the PC you'll feel right at home with The Darkness. It has much the same feel to it - a very different story but another oddly gifted and intriguing protagonist.

You play the role of Jackie - an Italian-American in his early 20's with the stereotypical mafia connections. During the game you'll take on Jackie's demons - both metaphorically and literally.

You see, Jackie has been posessed by a demon who answers to the name "The Darkness". This demon will spend much of the game trying to take control of your soul and speaking to you in a typically demonic way (voiced by Mike Patton from Faith no More). Aside from the talking he does provide some very useful skills which you earn as you progress through the game. From the start you can bring your darkness heads from out of back - these look like snake heads that weave around and fight with eachother if you leave them alone long enough. The one skill you start off with is the creeper, which lets you send one the heads crawling around on the floor, through open windows and vents to open doors or just sneak up on an unsuspecting victim and rip out his heart (nice!). You can also summon "darklings". These are goblin-type creatures that run around doing your bidding for you and offer a general supporting role. You start off with a "berzerker" and then collect a "gunner", "kamikaze" and "light killer" along the way. Later on your darkness skills develop - some big thrusting probes that allow you to lift heavy objects, a "black hole" that sucks in everything around it and a few others that are revealed as the plot progresses.

The game is a first-person shooter first and foremost, but unusually it plays like an "open world" style game. You start off in one area of New York and gradually open up other areas and you have the freedom to move between these areas as you wish - mainly to collect the pieces of paper you find lying around. These collectables unlock bonus content if you use one of the payphones dotted around the city. Later on you'll find letters that need to be placed in mailboxes in order to unlock bonus content.

Graphically it is functional, not hugely impressive but not bad either. The sound changes between atmospheric and hard rock depending on the situation and the story is great - well paced and often leads into some really exciting situations and shoot-outs.

It could be described as short, but its a game that sucks you in and leaves you wanting more rather than being too long and drawn out.

Highly recommended.

The Darkness is a game with a good atmosphere, accomplished moments of tension and creepiness and a few problems.
First of all, there are a lot of loading times. You have to take the subway to go to the different locations, to do the missions and every time there's a loading screen. The developer tried to mask this by putting in little monologues by Jackie Estacado, the main character, to advance the story but all these loads get old really fast.
Another problem is the fact that Jackie can't run. This is very annoying, not only during the combat sequences but also as you walk through the streets, slowly, just to get to your destination. There's also no map. You have to watch the street signs and try to find the way. At the start of the game this is very disorienting.
The game is in essence a FPS with a revenge story. Jackie Estacado is a hitman for his uncle, a Mafia boss. On his 21st birthday Jackie not only finds out his uncle Paulie wants him dead, he also gets a visit from the darkness, a demon of sorts, who's origin is never really explained, that needs a host and has haunted the Estacado family for generations. The darkness gives Jackie some powers, like a demon arm which can impale enemies or pick up cars and throw them, two darkness guns, a black hole which sucks enemies into hell and "creeping dark". Creeping Dark sends one of the snakes that accompany you through the game, slithering away to do stealth kills, open doors, go through small openings, etc. Some of these powers are useful, some aren't. Creeping Dark is hard to control as is the demon arm. The Darkness guns are ok but not very powerful and you never lack ammo for the other weapons, so not much use for them. The black hole is the biggest power and is so strong it almost feels like a cheat at times. All these powers feed on the dark which brings us to another problem. You have to shoot out all the lights in the game. For a game called The Darkness, there's a lot of light, everywhere and you'll spend a lot of time just shooting it, again and again to be able to use your powers. Very dull. You could use a light killer darkling to do it but his AI is simply awful. Darklings are little creatures you can summon to kill enemies with guns or bombs or many other ways but their AI is so bad they're also close to useless. Jackie is also surprisingly weak. The beginning is the hardest part of the whole game. You don't have any powers yet and Jackie dies with two or three shots. Very frustrating. The weapons, all of them, also feel very weak. You don't get any thrill with shooting them, they just don't feel powerful.
The game does have some very entertaining moments. Two chapters are spent in a place resembling hell, where you fight zombie Nazis and it's creepy and exciting. The story is well written and the voice acting is superb. There's plenty of violence and mayhem. To make your powers stronger you order one of those snakes to eat the hearts of the dead enemies and it's cool and disturbing at the same time. There's something you don't see everyday. There are also execution moves, when you get close to an enemy. Jackie among other executions can for example shoot him right in the face and blow his head off. It's just nasty and very cool too. A shame you can't do it often because Jackie... yeah he dies easily.
Even so, the game is not hard and you won't have a hard time going through it. I took about 8 hours to unlock most things and finish it on normal. The multiplayer is dead so single player is all you get.
The Darkness is fun. The open world experience fails, there's no cars, almost no people on the street and a map is sorely missing but the graphics are very good and everything is seedy and or macabre. The atmosphere is perfect. There's always a feeling of unease and creepiness. The gore and carnage is amazing.
Still, I get the idea that with a little more work and some tweaks this could have been an amazing game. This way, it's a good game which fans of the genre shouldn't miss.

To be honest, I purchased this game with low expectations, thinking that it would probably be rather dull. But being a new PS3 game that I didn't have, I decided i would buy it to add to my collection.
How wrong I was; as soon as you start playing, you are thrown into a world of interactivity. You start off in a car, which most games would have a simple, drawn-out cut-scene, but the darkness for PS3 goes a step further - allowing you to use the analog sticks to shift your view in the back of the convertible. Most games only allow cut-scenes like this to be viewed from one angle every time, but this allows you to view it in multiple angles, making it feel a lot more realistic!
However, cut-scenes are not what games are about; direct game play, in a game for this price, needs to be impressive. The darkness tops this, and goes a step further just for the sake of it. The whole environment surrounding you is interactive, ranging from light switches; trains pulling up in stations, allowing you to board them, and then travel to a new environment; great execution techniques that you can perform on your enemies (almost makes me nostalgic of manhunt); and even flushing toilets.
The diversity of weaponry is also amazing, ranging from multiple pistols to heavy-duty machine guns. And the graphics... the graphics... they are awesome on HD, easily rivaling Resistance and high-spec PC games such as DOOM 3.
It's not often that I give a game a perfect review; I believe there is always room for improvement, no matter how good a game is, but I really struggled to think how this game could be improved, and eventually came to the conclusion that, for the first time, a game deserves perfection for the attention to detail and the enjoyment that it offers its players.

Because I have only had the game for a day, I remain ignorant of the rest of the game play from the point I am at, at the moment (which is not very far), so I can only judge the first few chapters of playing. However, I'm sure "the darkness" will continue in its spectacularly formidable game play.