The Darkness

"Eat Your Heart Out Vito Corleone"

Another comic book makes it onto the game screen in The Darkness. The Darkness has quite a few flaws, but has a very strong single player that makes it a must play 360 title and sets a model for how you fashion setting up for a sequel. You are Jackie Estecado, an orphan raised by the Mafia and a strong defender of the "old ways" in organized crime. He carries some heavy baggage unbeknownst to him in the form of a dark creature passed down through his family, but earns a living by taking care of the New York City crime family's loose ends by taking advantage of the thing within. The Darkness has a great story, great graphics, excellent music, but a few glitches that take away what this game could have offered-like a multiplayer.

Story

Jackie Estecado works as a hitman for the Franchetti family run by Uncle Paulie, whose maniacal leadership of the family has caused a lot of grief for the old coots who used to run the family as he continually leads organized crime from the "good ol days" into getting involved in more sinister things like selling drugs to kids and corrupting the police. Jackie indirectly crosses Uncle Paulie even though he puts Agent 47 to shame (hence the posters in the subway?) and was personally adopted by Uncle Paulie. Like a mad episode of Titus, Jackie will be sitting in a single overhead light in between loading screens to speak about the current situation he is in or to reflect on some past memory. This is a nice touch as it allows you to get to know the background and more about the personal life of Jackie. One thing that is weird about the story is that Jackie never seems to get freaked out about The Darkness when you are first introduced to the cool new pair of arms. The love interest in the game goes by the name of Jenny and boy is she naive. She and Jackie are childhood friends turned sweethearts, but despite the streets below erupting in massive amounts of gunfire she seems quite oblivious to what Jackie's job description may involve. However, Jenny is the driving force of the game despite what conflict Jackie has with The Darkness. Jackie wants to find a way to get rid of The Darkness, but he depends on it to dish out the revenge killings of those who betray him so he has a major love/hate relationship develop with The Darkness. The story is well developed and even though I would contend the concept is kind of an offbeat of Prey, it is well established and leaves you wanting more. There is no setup for a sequel, but you get the feeling this series is not going to end with this game only. And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you set yourself up for a sequel. Not this Gears of War junk of not setting up enough background for the story and then cutting the game off right when you are about to get into it.

Game Play

The Darkness is a shooter, but you will be more inclined to try out the wickedly cool new moves you can perform with the The Darkness activated. This game without The Darkness would still have made an excellent mob game, however, with the added craziness of 1990's comics you get much more than a mob game. You will have to learn to use all of the moves at one point in time and once you master each for the situation that calls for them you can almost cake walk through the game. First you have to earn your darkness to get all of the special moves, which pretty much well come automatically as you reach certain points in the game. I kind of doubt you would be able to get through the whole game without using The Darkness. There are four very fun abilities to use as The Darkness and you can finish off your enemies with execution style moves with your weapons and then eating their hearts out with your chomp happy tentacles. Eating hearts makes me hungry for some reason when I play this game, but anyway that is how you gain your darkness levels. Getting around is very easy and you have information terminals to check even if you do get lost. A map on your objectives screen is not even necessary. There are main objectives, but also side objectives to do so you get to go play hitman for the old mafia guys as well as be a good citizen and put some holes into subway bullies who would dare deprive a hitman of his friend's harmonica. The only side mission I found unnecessary and totally out of date is where you have to retrieve a locket for a widow of a World War One soldier. Without giving anything away about the story let's just say you would have to be well over 110 years old and the fact that you are still alive and sitting in a subway is completely dumbfounding. That's just one of two dating errors I found.

The awesome perks of this game give it a very realistic feel as you can take a break from the killing and watch a movie or tv show. You also can go unlock extra content by finding letters and phone numbers. These are so easy to find and so numerous in the game that you will find most of them the first time through anyway. So, you will enjoy dialing numbers and hearing the crazy messages on the other end.

Sound/Graphics

What I found excellent about The Darkness is the music in this game. It is simply astounding and very beautiful. And I don't mean the music on the television music videos either. The music can be haunting, nostalgic, and eerie which is exactly what the moods of this game shoot for and these scores hit their mark dead on. The Darkness has one heck of an excellent soundtrack throughout this game. No other game could also present a Big Apple setting like The Darkness has as it definitely justifies everything down to the subways to how civilians and cops look. I have never been to New York, but just sitting here watching Criminal Minds on CBS I was reminded at how realistic the subways look and how well The Darkness captures the whole setting.

You will enjoy the dialogue in this game, and as it is a game centering around the mafia you can expect plenty of fun language. The only problems I had with the graphics and sound effects are that first no WW1 soldier would be using swearing invented from late night TV, and then secondly and more obvious-they seemed to have a hard time moving their mouths when speaking. Still, nothing that takes away from the game, just another overlook and an odd graphics problem. What I love about this game of course are the use of TV's and telephones. This game takes on a much more realistic feel when you get to stop and watch a movie like the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, or the controversial and socially conscious The Man with the Golden Arm, starring Frank Sinatra. You can also catch some music videos and old classic cartoons like Popeye. Stuff like this is what makes games of the future.

Replay Value

As I mentioned before, the extra content can be collected almost in all during your first run through in the single player. Unless you are a big fan of the comic book series, then you probably would not be too interested in playing through again to find all of the content as it does not have too much value beyond visual concepts and development stuff. The replay value is not too good for The Darkness. This game would easily have a 9/10 from me had we thought to establish some dedicated servers for our horrendously conceived multiplayer. But that does not matter because you will not get much out of playing online as there are no diehards out there willing enough to sit and wait a few hours for someone to get on and join in. Lag and connection problems plague getting into a game so even though I did find games available online, I was unable to join in. I still have to advise you that I only saw one or two games available in the unranked modes, but beyond that the leaderboards do not have weekly or monthly records so you cannot tell how many do play online still. The online heyday is probably long over though.

Achievements are split between multiplayer and single player modes and some of the single player achievements are secrets. None of the achievements are too outlandish though so if you can find somebody to play online then you can easily get all of these unlocked.

Final Recommendation 7/10

The Darkness contains one heck of a great single player experience and fans of the comic should be greatly impressed. Not being a comic book fan, but a sucker for those comic book turned summer blockbuster movies, I found The Darkness to be much more of a blockbuster type of game and very intent on establishing a great story and having a lot of perks to make for a very engrossing game. I could not stop playing this game until I reached the end as it is quick to get into and lasts for a considerably long time. There are some beefs I have with this game but nothing a sequel could not capitalize on. The online multiplayer is definitely the worst thing about this game because it lacks a community as well as the ability to start a decent game. The Darkness is a great game to rent, but I would also push this game as a bargain deal.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/29/09

Game Release: The Darkness (US, 06/25/07)