The Darkness

Starbreeze Studios entertained Xbox owners with The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay in 2004. Riddick pushed the Xbox’s visual capabilities to the limit and told a heck of a story to boot. Starbreeze hoped to replicate this success with The Darkness, their first PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 next-gen effort. As a brief filler, The Darkness was originally a Top Cow Productions comic book.

The Darkness tells about the struggle of an Italian mob grunt named Jackie Estacado. Jackie’s bastard uncle Paulie Franchetti, leader of the Italian mob, wants him dead. Worse yet, on his 21st birthday, Jackie inherits the powers of The Darkness. The Darkness is a dark and awful force inside of Jackie that attempts to control him by talking to him in his mind, uttering disturbing statements of cruelty and such. He also sprouts a mass of tentacles out of Jackie’s shoulders, tentacles that feed on the hearts of fallen mobsters and other bad guys. He also grants Jackie the powers of the darkness, controlling black holes and a powerful, deadly demon arm. Not too bad for a parasite, huh? The Darkness’s plot thickens with each of the five chapters, and to say the least, Jackie lives through some tough stuff. Storytelling gets a cherry on top with believable, interesting dialogue and memorable characters. Jackie’s uncle, Paulie, could run for gaming’s villain of the year. The Darkness could easily be the most disturbing and twisted gaming character in years. Bonus points go to Mike Patton for voicing the vicious force.

The Darkness’s storyline fits right into the mean streets of New York City, and eventually the trenches of a hellish retelling of World War I. I don’t intend to ruin anything, so moving on, most of the plot moves through missions given to Jackie by friends and family members. Jackie does a lot of running around New York City, and can interact with NPCs, environments, and enemies alike. Each of the sections of NYC are different; you’ll explore and destroy at a dock as well as apartment houses and even a meat factory. The only problem with The Darkness’s design, especially when considering side quests, is that a lot of useless backtracking is done. This isn’t as poor as it could have been, thanks to hidden unlockable items and collectibles scattered around the world, but it definitely felt like a cheap way to tack on extra minutes to the play time. Still, the missions are a lot of fun. You’ll infiltrate a drug ring and cold-handedly kill the leader inside, fighting off his pissed-off cohorts shortly after. You’ll go after some of the NYPD’s higher-ups, all the while searching for a way to upset Paulie the most. Most missions focus on weakening his infrastructure, like destroying his drug money and killing all of his buddies.

The actual game runs a little slow, and in fact that is one of my biggest complaints. Jackie chugs along at a slug's pace, and although his movements feel quite realistic, they don’t necessarily make the game any more exciting to play. I don't expect Unreal-like speeds when I play a game that is set in such a twisted realism, but I hoped that Jackie could move around a little less awkwardly. At least shooting feels right, and it looks especially cool when Jackie hits two different targets at once with his dual pistols or uzis. It also looks cool, as an added visual bonus, when Jackie hugs up against a wall and raises his guns to avoid scraping them against the wall, as a real person probably would.

The Darkness doesn't push the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 quite like Riddick pushed the Xbox back in its day, but by no means is it an eyesore. Environments appear to be as disgusting and grimy, not to mention dark, as they should be to fit the storyline. The character models are really good, and so are the facial expressions as well as skin details and clothing. The Darkness tentacles look wicked and vicious, with razor-sharp teeth and dozens of bright, neon eyes. As one might have gathered, the art direction is incredible and adds an extra sense of ambiance to perfect the environment. The music is intense when it should be and propels the exciting gunfights, but slows down at the right time to be quite moody and sometimes creepy.

The Darkness ends around the 10-hour mark, not including extra time taken to find well-hidden collectibles (there are a lot of them) and unlockables. Xbox 360 Achievements are quite easy to earn in this game, and PS3 owners get a simple demonstration of how Home trophies will work with Accomplishments in their version of the game. Even though Accomplishments aren’t displayed like Achievements are on the Xbox 360, they are still a notable and gratifying thing to earn throughout the game. These push the replay value a little, but without any sort of multiplayer or extended story, The Darkness will unfortunately and probably fail to entertain after it is completed or perfected.

The Darkness, it’s a tough sell. A 10-hour storyline (15 hours at most) means that you’ll be spending more than $6 an hour with Jackie Estacado. Still, The Darkness is worth its weight. It is this summer’s Prey, and if some of you remember, Prey earned accolades for its innovative, topsy-turvy portal action and interesting mix of styles. The Darkness does almost the exact same thing, minus the portals but with an infinite amount more of the number of heart-eating, wicked-eyed tentacles. Check it out, at least give it a rental.