The Darkness Review

[Nick]

The Darkness is spreading.”

This is the catch phrase that 2K Games has been throwing around to promote their new First Person Shooter: The Darkness. I have to be honest, this wasn’t on my list of must have games, but after spending some quality time with it I’m genuinely surprised with how good it really is.
The single player story puts you in the shoes of Mob hitman Jackie Estacado who is seeking revenge upon “Uncle” Paulie Franchetti; the Don of the Franchetti crime family which Jackie is a member of. The twist that makes more than just your basic Mafia storyline is The Darkness. The Darkness is a demonic, parasitic force that is passed from father to first born son at the moment of conception, killing its former host in the process, then manifesting on the new host’s 21st birthday.
The whole game is based during the night of Jackie’s 21st birthday when the Darkness shows itself. Without giving too much away, this creature is an integral part to the story and not just a way for Jackie to do cool stuff. As you blast your way through the game you unlock more powers to use and find out more about this thing inside of you. These powers are a lot of fun; ranging from a tentacle, which can be used to move objects around or impale your foes, to the ability to summon a black hole which sucks pretty much anything nearby into its crushing embrace. You also have the ability to summon forth “Darklings:” these four little guys form your own personal gang of hoodlums who will perform various tasks for you, depending on which one you have summoned. There’s Berserker, your basic grunt that will run up and maul enemies, but likes to dress up if you find him the outfits hidden around the game. Then you have Gunner who, funnily enough, sports a Gatling gun. That leaves us with Kamikaze, who runs up and explodes in the face of your enemies, and Light Killer, who will hunt out and destroy any light source in a room, which is more important than it sounds. You see these powers aren’t infinite, your power level decreases in the light but recovers by hiding in shadows and while you’re using the Darkness you can see in the dark, which means that fighting in the dark will always be your best bet.
These also keep this from being your standard, monotonous first person shooter, instead introducing some RPG and puzzle solving aspects. There are parts where the only way through is to use the Darkness, although often how exactly you need to use it isn’t very clear. As for the RPG part, as you progress through the game you unlock more powers, and to make these powers more potent you consume the hearts of your fallen foes. This is as gory as it sounds: you walk up to the corpse and press A on your controller. One of the demon heads sitting above your shoulder then proceeds to punch into the corpse and tear out its heart which it swallows whole.
Now is probably a good time to point out that this game is rated MA and for good reason! The game is incredibly gory and violent with the player tearing peoples hearts out, impaling them, setting lose your darklings to stab or shoot them and various other fun things. The cinematics while well done both graphically and script wise do feature course language to a level that almost feels excessive, although at least the context is kept true and they aren’t just swearing for the hell of it.
Something I found really cool was that instead of showing a boring loading bar between levels, the bar is hidden by short cut scenes featuring Jackie talking about various things, usually snippets of his past or something about your current mission. Although skipping these clips does cause the bar to appear, they are usually worth watching anyway even if it’s just for a chuckle. Cinematics during gameplay are all done using the in-game engine which are almost as good as their pre-rendered counterparts, and unlike normal cut scenes you can rotate your camera slightly to change your view of what’s going on, this isn’t usually very necessary but it’s a nice touch.
This freedom carries on to the gameplay where although you have your main story line to follow, you can take a break to do a few side missions which are given by various people in the places you visit. Why bother? Well these missions, along with random notes and letters found in the game, unlock extra content in the main menu such as concept art and screen shots. The side missions themselves are usually fun to do in themselves, going from your standard “Go there, kill them, return here” style of mission to one where you have to try and pick up coins from the subway track before the train hits you..
The game takes place in two areas; the slums and subway of New York City and a place called Otherworld which looks like World War One being fought in Hell itself. These environments are incredibly detailed and fun to play in: the slums feel dark, gritty and oppressive whereas Otherworld features a hellish landscape of trenches and dark smoky horizons that really set the mood for where you are and what you are doing.
Now this all sounds fantastic but there is one more part of the game that hasn’t been mentioned… the multiplayer. The nicest thing I’d say about Multiplayer is that it’s a box well left unopened. The not so nice thing I would say is that it’s a box that should be dumped in the deepest part of the ocean that can be found and purged from all records. Okay, it’s not that bad but I really think it was unnecessary and feels like they just threw it in so they could say it had multiplayer. There is no Co-op play, which is understandable considering the story, so that just leaves us with Versus multiplayer. They’ve given us the usual spread of game types; Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, etc. Nothing you wouldn’t find in most FPS games. Their only real attempt at originality was the ability to shape shift into a Darkling in some game types, but this gets old quickly with most players preferring to just stick with being human and shooting people (Darklings cant use weapons in Multiplayer). The actual gameplay could have just been ripped from Quake, although The Darkness has less weapons to choose from and none of the fun things like gravity lifts and pits. Getting kills is ridiculously easy, all you have to do is point your gun in the general direction of the opponent and let loose hoping to hit something. This can be done even when suffering from lag, which is clearly good because if you are playing via Xbox Live, lag is something you’ll need to get used to.
The match making system is simplistic and not in the good way, as there is no way (at least that I could find) to tell if a match is going to lag or an optimatch feature such as those in Halo 3 or Shadowrun. The only ways to find a match is to either look for a custom game or just go quick match and select one of the list. The former offers very few games to choose from and the latter shows more but is almost guaranteed to lag anyway. There’s also a choice between Player and Ranked matches, but matches are basically the same whichever one you choose.
After playing just a few matches I was ready to hurl my controller at something small and cute. Some people said that the multiplayer was tacked on as an afterthought. I say it was slapped on with some double sided tape in the hope that no one would actually play it.
The Darkness is certainly one of the best games to be released recently; the Single player is amazing with a good story and excellent gameplay, although the multiplayer has neither and should be ignored at all costs. The addition of collectables to unlock extra content is a nice touch, adding a bit of replay ability to keep you interested after finishing the story, plus the extra content is pretty cool in itself. The Darkness is definitely worth a look if you want a good game to play by yourself and don’t mind a lot of mature content.

Gameplay: 8.0
Graphics: 9.0
Sound: 9.0
Lifespan: 7.0
Overall: 8.3