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The Darkness (Xbox 360)

By Matthew Steele Winters on Thursday, July 5, 2007 at 8:00 PM East
Filed Under Reviews  

The Darkness
In The Darkness, you assume the role of Jackie Estacado, an Italian orphan turned hitman with a soft spot for a girl and one small problem…an alien/demon/symbiotic organism called the Darkness. You are never really told what exactly the Darkness is, but one thing is for sure…it’s not letting you go without a fight.

The game begins with you being betrayed by your Uncle Paulie, the mafia don who “rescued” you from St. Mary’s Orphanage as a child. If that wasn’t bad enough, you have snakelike creatures growing out of your back with a taste for human hearts. And so begins your journey of revenge. Although there is no true tutorial, every additional power or ability you receive is explained in the pause menu, along with items you have picked up and your next objective. This serves to help explain the game without detaching the player from the experience with a tutorial.

The first thing you will notice when playing The Darkness is that there is no HUD. You have no life or darkness meter and your only reticule is a small red dot. The point of doing away with these bothersome but useful game staples is to increase your immersion in the game, which The Darkness manages to do flawlessly. This effect is only heightened during the frequent in game cutscenes where the Darkness takes control. This becomes even more important with the lack of any major boss battles in the game. Although it takes some getting used to not knowing how close you are to dying or running out of Darkness juice, the elimination of the HUD allows you to focus on the game without distraction and really makes you feel like you are the Darkness.

So now we’ve established that you’re an evil force to be reckoned with, but what can you do? First, you can raise darklings, demonic imp-like creatures, from darkness portals found throughout each level. There are a total of four darklings, each with its own ability. Your starter darkling is the berserker, which carries a machete and stabs any nearby enemies foolish enough to wander out of the light. Gunner darklings carry a small chaingun, kamikaze darklings run up to enemies and ignite the explosives they carry, and Lightkillers destroy sources of light, giving Jackie more darkness and thus more power.

The darkling system, while imaginative, is ineffective at best. Your darklings will more often than not die before being useful. Even when they did manage to help, I found myself more annoyed by their presence than thankful and I tended to ignore darkness portals unless completely overwhelmed.

Your second set of abilities is where the game really starts to shine. You receive a total of four darkness powers. The first allows you to control two small, snakelike creatures that extend from your shoulders and can climb walls, dethroat enemies, and unlock doors. While fun at first, this power is quickly overshadowed by your later powers, since only one can be selected at a time.

The demon arm is a powerful appendage that can be used to impale enemies, break lights, and lift and throw heavy objects with ease. The black hole creates a devastating vortex that is used to suck up any enemies unfortunate enough to be caught near it. Finally, darkness guns are powerful weapons that use darkness power, rather than traditional ammo.

Light is your enemy in the Darkness. It drains your powers and kills your darklings. Therefore, it is your job to create as much darkness as possible. As you would imagine, the lighting effects in the game are excellent. Almost every light source is destructible. Unfortunately, how easily each light can be destroyed is not a simple question. Towards the beginning of the game, your only means of destroying lights are your pistols, which are only given a very slight auto targeting when pointed towards a light. With an average of 4 lights per room, feeding the Darkness can be a very time and bullet consuming experience. While frustrating at first, the game later provides a multitude of fun and creative ways for you to remove light sources. By the end of the game, I was not only extremely proficient in creating darkness, it was also one of my favorite activities.

The graphics in this game are nothing short of breathtaking. The environments are incredibly detailed. This is best demonstrated in the subway levels, where grime realistically covers spray painted walls. Attention to detail is evident everywhere. The walls are covered in original posters that may look familiar if you pay close enough attention. My favorite is one that pokes fun at a certain bar-coded hitman.

The game’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The voice acting in The Darkness is superb, with the actors expressing just the right amount of emotion at exactly the right moments. Unfortunately, the effect is partially ruined by the horrible lip syncing. Characters mouths hardly move, even when screaming. It’s like every character has something caught in their teeth and they’re trying not to be rude. Even so, this is a forgivable issue, although I don’t understand why it wasn’t rectified.

The game is set in the lower east side of Manhattan, and for the most part the creators did an excellent job of recreating the city, which I can comfortably say having grown up in NYC. My only problem is with the bystanders. When you approach them, their dialog includes such phrases as “Hi, how are you?” or “Are you alright?,” which no New Yorker would even think about saying to a stranger, especially one in a long black trench coat with vengeance burning in his eyes.

Like an out of tune note at the end of a symphony, the last scene of The Darkness almost ruins the experience for me. The story, while convoluted, is entertaining, at least until the end. You could make the argument that its purpose is to set up a sequel. While this is true, this set up is at the expense of this title’s story. There’s no point in setting up a game for a sequel if you mess up the original so badly that no one wants to play a second one. While not quite bad enough to ruin the game, there’s still no excuse for an ending that made me sit through the credits hoping for an explanation and then visiting Wikipedia when there was none to be found.
Multiplayer is hardly worth mentioning. It was definitely an afterthought thrown in for good measure. The gun combat system is not great to begin with, but I can forgive that in the single player game since they make up for it with awesome darkness powers, which are nonexistent in multiplayer. From what I can tell, there are a variety of modes, including capture the flag, and one or all players are either human or darkling. Being a darkling is about the only thing even remotely interesting in multiplayer. You are 10 times faster than humans and you can leap across the entire map in a single jump. But, I felt like I was just jumping around like an idiot hoping that maybe an enemy would happen to be standing in the way. Add lag to this equation and the game is totally unplayable.

Overall, The Darkness provides a fun albeit short experience (10-15 hours). The levels are difficult enough to be challenging but not enough to be frustrating, although you will spend some time wandering searching for your next objective. The graphics are top notch. Also, if you’re into that sort of thing, this game gives out achievement points like an old lady with pennies on Halloween. After receiving the “Romantic” achievement for sitting on the couch with your girlfriend, I was expecting to be next awarded the “Itch Killer” achievement for scratching my ass.

Even with its faults, The Darkness is one of the best games out right now for the Xbox 360 and Starbreeze and 2K should be applauded for taking risks in an industry where unoriginal movie properties and rehashes are becoming the norm.

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