The Deep Dark Demonic Game does not Disappoint!
The dark, deep, and demonic game does not disappoint! The Darkness is the much anticipated game from Starbreeze Studios, the creators of the brilliant Chronicles of Riddick for the original Xbox have pulled off another successful title!
The Darkness is based around the life of the main character, Jackie Estacado. Jackie is an orphan who is eventually adopted into a Mafia crime family by a man you come to know as Uncle Paulie. The game starts on Jackie's 21st birthday, where Jackie wakes up in the back of a convertible with some mates from his gang escaping from a money collection deal gone wrong. Before they even think about returning to home base, they have to take out the boss of a construction site even with cops speeding up behind them. Little do they know, is that Uncle Paulie suspects Jackie of deceit and has set a hit out for Jackie himself. Being the type of person that won't go down, Jackie makes it his personal vendetta to get revenge on Paulie. Once Uncle Paulie gets the message he brings his attention to Jackie's girlfriend, Jenny... This leads onto a brilliant cinematic story!
Very early on in the game you get to play with your new friend, The Darkness. Who is some demonic entity that has decided to possess Jackie that likes to talk to you in a very entertaining nightmarish voice. The Darkness takes the form of two snakelike heads that appear to come out of your back and stay on both sides of your shoulders.
The Darkness is very powerful even early in the game, when you bring them out for some air, you can get one to slither across the ground, up walls, or in vents, and then rip the unknowing enemies face off and then devour their heart. Later in the game, you can use the Demon Arm, to pick up objects and kill people. The Darkness Guns that harness darkness power as ammunition and the Black Hole that creates a rift that sucks everyone in and spits them back out. The Darkness has some flaws unfortunately for you; every move you use drains your darkness energy. Moving in the light with the darkness out will automatically drain their energy until it's depleted, moving into the shadows replenishes your energy very quickly. Devouring enemies hearts is your ticket to getting stronger, this can get slightly repetitive and its slightly disappointing that its always the right head that gets to eat the hearts, it would be nice if both sides had their fair share of dinner.
Game play in The Darkness is great, using darkness powers on your enemies always feels satisfying, especially since the difficulty of enemies do not get harder, meaning the more powerful you get, the more you own everything. Gun work is not as impressive. Guns include pistols, shotguns and rifles. Your starting weapons, dual pistols are the most useful guns in the game. Pistols have the most execution moves to perform and are easier to pull off. Execution moves are one hit kill close combat animations that don't expend ammunition. But as the game progresses and The Darkness becomes much more powerful, the guns become just a tool to shoot out lights so you can exploit your darkness powers. Shooting lights can get annoying as you just want to blaze through your opponents without remembering to shoot lights to be in darkness.
The Darkness bestows you one more power, to be able to summon forth Darkling's, your new companions, there are 4 different types; Berserker, Gunner, Kamikaze and the Light killer. All have their own different abilities, but once you are able to use the Light Killer, you will use that one the most, so you don't have to shoot as many lights.
The Graphics are pretty good in the game, but there is not much to say about them. It's more about the presentation; no HUD makes you appreciate everything more. The names of people appear very neatly displayed when you talk to them. The subway appears like a real station. Attention to detail is realistic such as graffiti on walls. Voice acting is superb; you can actually believe that the person talking actually sounds like that person, the voice acting can be very emotional as well and you sometimes feel for the characters mood.
Overall the game is a brilliant single player storyteller with gruesome violence, and with multiplayer not worth mentioning.
I embraced the Darkness 8.5/10