The Darkness

"The Darkness combines a great story with solid gameplay for a memorable experience"

The Darkness is a unique shooter that blends a deep, engrossing story with intense action to create a gripping, fun game. You play as Jackie Estacado, a gangster who becomes possessed by a demonic force known as "The Darkness" on his twenty-first birthday. The game doesn't feel like most shooters you've probably played, and paints its canvas darkly, with lots of drama and bloody violence. Part mafia, part horror, and part action-adventure, The Darkness will keep you interested and entertained throughout its duration.

I'll begin the more specific coverage of the game with one of its strongest points: its story. The Darkness never shies away from storytelling, and does it largely through scripted events, where the player remains in control and a first-person view persists (an approach made popular in games like Half Life). Compared to most games, The Darkness has a deep, thought-provoking story that is well supported throughout the game. What I mean by this is that all the plot elements come together in a believable manner (well, as believable as is allowed for a game about a demon-possessed hit man); there are no cheap twists or glaring loose ends. The story's depth comes from its constant presence in the game, every action you take helps further the story and your character's development, and it is always clear what Jackie's goals are and how they relate to his life.

As previously mentioned, the game uses frequent scripted events to help tell the story. These manifest themselves namely in talking to characters, such as Jackie's evil uncle Paulie, or his wholesome love interest Jenny. After talking to characters or witnessing an event, the game also usually adds notes or objectives in your journal, which help you keep track of what to do in the game, and what is going on in the plot. The other major storytelling device is the loading cut-scenes in the game. Whenever you traverse into a new section of the world, a cut-scene plays as the game loads. Often, on repeat entries to an area, this will be one of several stock scenes of Jackie admiring his guns or something along those lines, but on first arrival or after major events in the game, you will see a more unique cut-scene, which usually involves Jackie talking about what just happened, what he's doing next, or a memory from his childhood. These conversations are usually solemn and heartfelt, and most gamers will quickly notice that a majority of them are addressed (directly or indirectly) to Jackie's girlfriend, Jenny. All of these elements come together to weave a narrative that is told passionately and smoothly, and really stands out to help make this a memorable game.

Coupling with the story to complete the excellent presentation of the game is its graphics. The game takes place in two alternating worlds, New York City, and a hellish pseudo-World War I battlefield. All the environments are detailed and impressive. The characters are also equally detailed and well modeled, and their animations are smooth. Additionally, as you will learn, the roles of light and darkness have significant effect in the game, so the lighting effects and shadows are particularly notable.

Rounding out the technical aspects of the game is the sound, which is fantastic. The effects, namely gunshots, are crisp and potent, the voice acting is excellent, and the music fits perfectly. It alternates between calm piano and foreboding orchestral pieces during lulls in the action, and thrash metal in the gunfights. Overall, the game looks and sounds very good, and this helps immerse the player in the game's world.

Lastly, the gameplay is solid and fun. The game is a first-person shooter at heart, so good gunplay is expected, and delivered. The game takes a unique (and admittedly more realistic) approach to ammunition management. For large guns like shotguns and assault rifles, a standard one-gun-and-lots-of-bullets approach is taken, but if you reload mid-clip, you'll waste what's left in that magazine. For smaller guns like pistols and SMG's, you stock up on dozens of each (with a wide variety of appearances, there are probably a half-dozen weapon models in each category), and then burn through them in blazing, John Woo-esque dual-fisted gun fighting. When one runs out of ammo, Jackie tosses it aside and unholsters the next one. If you reload before the clip in the gun is drained, Jackie discards the whole gun and draws the next. It might be a little surprising at first, but it makes shootouts a lot of fun and adds that “action movie” feel.

As addressed before, the game utilizes recurrent scripted sequences to progress the story, and this also helps keep the gameplay immersive. You choose who to talk to and where to go, so you must explore to keep going in the game. This is also how you engage in the available side-quests. These are often simple "fetch this" or "kill that" missions, but the way they are presented keeps them fun and fresh, and you sometimes have choices in how to complete them. They are optional, but are largely enjoyable, and help extend the length of the game and your understanding of the story. For completing them, you're often rewarded with secret phone numbers that you call at pay phones to hear comical messages from city residents and unlock game content (artwork, videos, etc.). You can also find these numbers hidden throughout the city like the hidden packages found in many of today's popular "sandbox" shooters.

Oh yes, I've been neglecting that whole "Darkness" portion of the gameplay, haven't I? That's right, in The Darkness, you don't have to rely on just guns to get your killing done. Soon into the first chapter of the game, The Darkness manifests itself and from then on, you must use its powers to survive the game's intense combat sequences. The Darkness basically gives you an assortment of evil super-powers, like a creeping tentacle to scout out areas and bite off enemies' faces, a bladed tentacle for impaling foes, the ability to summon a variety of “darklings” to attack your enemies, and later, the ability to generate miniature black holes to destroy your opponents. All these abilities come in handy for navigating environments and disposing of your detractors. Most are not available at the start of the game, so to level-up your demons, you must command them to consume the hearts of your downed foes, a particularly gruesome and memorable feature of the game.

In addition, activating your Darkness power not only lets you use your new abilities to demolish anything in your path, but also allows you to sustain larger amounts of damage, so keeping it fully charged is of the utmost importance. This is accomplished by staying in the dark. You can hide in shadowy spots, but as soon as you step into light, you will hear a sizzling sound as your darker half is drained of energy. To combat this, a good amount of effort will be spent destroying the light sources in the areas you enter. The game takes place at night so this is usually just a matter of bashing in any light bulbs you see. It becomes a monotonous task after a while, but it's an interesting take on how to rejuvenate yourself, and also helps you notice the impressive lighting engine the game boasts.

Lastly, there is a multi-player component to the game. I can't really say a lot about it though, as it is pretty forgettable. It's fun but shallow, and grows old quickly. With a shortage of memorable areas and a small community, I don't think it's a strong point worth noting. It feels tacked-on, and as a gamer who tends to prefer a solid single-player component, I never felt a need to come back to it after my initial dabbling. It seems like it was thrown in based on industry pressure, and I would have honestly preferred that the developers spend their time enhancing the story mode, which dwarfs its smaller, online sibling.

In the end, The Darkness is a great shooter that knows how to tell a story and generate atmosphere. There is a real dynamic between Jackie and the game's other characters, as well as between Jackie and The Darkness itself. The original elements like your Darkness powers and the light/darkness contrast help fill out the game's impressive setting and tone, and keep it fresh. And of course the action is fun and frantic when you get caught in a shootout. Overall, the darkness has enough flair and feeling to put it a step above most shooters, and is quite an achievement in many aspects (primarily music, storytelling, lighting effects, and gunplay).

So, briefly, what held this otherwise praiseworthy game back from a 10? For starters, it could be a little longer. A lot of the game involves returning to previous maps (just under new conditions or with new characters), so a few new environments would be nice. Also, with how beautifully crafted the story is, when you finish it in 12-15 hours, you can't help but want more. On the environmental note, the otherworldly battlefield maps, while atmospherically impressive in their own right, are not as fun or as charismatic as the urban environments. It might have just been the bleak setting, but I did not enjoy them as much, and felt they could have used some refinement. To keep the replay up, more side quests would also be appreciated, seeing as once you complete the story, there's little incentive to play through again. One other thing is that while I mentioned the loading screens are used cleverly to provide Jackie opportunities for soliloquy, they are frequent, and become a minor annoyance when running errand-type objectives. Lastly, as stated above, the multi-player is not a strong point, but honestly, if they removed it entirely, I wouldn't have cared much; this just isn't that type of shooter. In fact, if the developers would have ignored it and implemented the above changes as a trade-off, this game would have been a 9 or 10, easily.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/10/09

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