Imagine vampirism as sort of a high-society drug which for some might be an involuntary affliction rather than an addiction: “I awoke to a world of pain.” You know right from the begin that playable Eric Bane is no ordinary vampire as he ignores his “creator” and so the blood of an ancient vampire of high social standing is just good enough to complete himself. Blooming, Vlad, Steiner are all influential persons in society whose privileged position permits to privately cultivate their idiosyncrasy. You wouldn't expect vampires to be truly solidary among themselves, though, so besides being surrounded by guards and ghouls, those elite bloodsuckers won't give their blood voluntarily. Not an easy task as this signifies die-hard stealth in order to get into Harding Museum and Geoforge, Eric being a lone, low-AI thug facing countless of enemies bestowed with paranormal powers such as teleporting and awakened instincts—or was it supposed to be contrariwise?
“The cool thing about us vampires is that we can do some pretty cool shit.” Vampires don't seem to wear any weapons apart from their genuine vampire powers but that are yet to be acquired and upgraded thanks to Experience and Power Points gotten from successful actions, basically kills and missions. However, the eight Vampiric Powers some of whose functioning doesn't even seem certain (Obscure?, Distract?) are not free but need the Blood from feeding on enemies, which again is impossible when they are armored (increasingly) or while getting shot (incessantly).
With enemy guards instant doubled whenever an inevitable alarm is raised, having only stealth plus the unrestricted Vampire Vision and short-distance Shadow Leap to rely on makes sneaking through the nocturnal Museum and Geoforge buildings quite a game of supernatural patience. Fortunately, DARK gets better after the first two chapters with Steiner's Atlantis Night Club requiring the timed stealth strategy that seems so useless otherwise, and the plot taking an unexpected turn: the vampires now become the hunted, with their "Sanctuary" destroyed.
Yet whereas the first part of the six chapter-long story does use all registers of the vampire cliché, without getting the ironic stance quite right, the second part unconvincingly goes for the genetic experimentation one as Cryogenic scientist Samantha Fields seems willing to capitalize on the vampires' near-immortality and shadowy powers in a project called “Ascension”: “Dying is so 20th century!” Paradoxically though, the M17 hunters manage to kill almost all vampires except Eric and his tech guru-gone-girlfriend Rose and turn Steiner into a monster with the vampire virus acting on the DNA.
“His blood flowed slowly into my mouth. It tasted delicious, irresistible”: While Eric (Doug Cockle) relates the story in a plain literary style, the clichéd dialogue lines of both vampires and hunters seem taken directly out of a B-movie: “The admission prices they charged at Geoforge were so high you got altitude sickness.” – “The guy more or less owns the city. He's like the vampire dictator, man.” – “Coffin? Yeah maybe, if you're an idiot determined to fit all the clichés. I prefer a soft mattress.” Sure enough, DARK's narrative is as inconsistent in style and storyline as is its enemy AI: one moment nearby enemies are well-aware of your presence since they riddle you with annoyingly unreal bullets—and phrases: "Little vampire, come out and play." – "Come out before the sun comes out," and the next instant they seem dead surprised when stumbling across a colleague's body thus restarting an almost ceased hostile alert. Then again even a dozen close-by guards can get oblivious of your location when you just hide and wait behind a crate for the alarm to go down (or else rush through the next door), whereas once aroused they still do see you when putting your “Obscure” power on (hence wasting one precious Blood unit).
Even upgraded your steps make far more noise than the enemies' ones so it is advisable to acquire “Enhanced Sneaking” early on in order to proceed quickly while crouched, yet unless getting the Vampiric Speed power (which again uses Blood) Eric can neither run nor jump, which again makes any swift evasion impossible. Albeit with no weapon you can melee a guy with a single move, whether frontally or from behind; however, enemies do usually block attacks they are aware of, in particular when armored which they are most of the time in chapters four through six.
Advancing from door to door and stairway to stairway as in the dreary M17 Base becomes notably easier when maxing out Inherent Powers such as Silent Kill and Perfect Shadow Leap—in addition to the Passive Powers (Blood, Toughness, Assassin, Awakened Instincts) and rather than the consuming Vampiric ones: if only once you had the Blood for a longer distance Shadow Grip or Shadow Kill!—yet the gameplay and AI flaws remain nonetheless the same.
There are several other games that come to mind while playing DARK: Thief for the hooded stealth, The Darkness for the blood powers, Castlevania for the vampiric touch; however, while it is the dual-wielding vigor that gives Darkness's Jackie Estacado some bloody charm, the nearly defenseless stealth imperative in DARK seems rather intended to slow you down in order to unnecessarily triple an otherwise roughly five-hour adventure.
Likewise the cel-shading technique seems handy in order to not bother giving the game some neater visuals, yet together with mechanic moves and mannered voice acting make the game look older than it really is. DARK doesn't pretend taking vampirism seriously, however, the story is so silly and the game so poorly executed as to graphics and gameplay mechanics that choosing the easiest difficulty level it may still be fun to play, whereas those that didn't yet get enough in the story campaign may try themselves on the five Challenges' levels (Siege, Backyard, M17 Vault) in sort of a stealth speedrun to once more take out all enemies without triggering an alarm: “And you made me a vampire just for that ...”