Starbreeze never fails to impress. The Darkness is a great shooter with a compelling and deeply disturbing storyline.
In The Darkness, you play as a mafia hitman named Jackie Estacado. The game begins on your 21st birthday. Unfortunately, your "special day" quickly turns into a nightmare. Right from the get-go, your psychotic uncle (who happens to be the New York Mafia Don), Paulie, is trying to kill you. During a typical job, you were knocked out and, unfortunately, something went wrong and now Paulie has put out a hit on you.
From a gameplay standpoint, The Darkness is actually just above-average. You have your standard weapons - dual-wielded pistols, d-w'ed SMGs, shotguns, rifles, etc. The Darkness has some very neat tricks, especially a big tentacle which you can use to impale enemies and hurl them (and cars and other stuff) through the air. However The Darkness' final unlocked ability - the black hole - is actually a bit of a letdown, not because it is too weak or unimpressive, but because it is actually too powerful. Once unlocked, the black hole makes the game much easier. So much so, that it is safe to say that the second half of the game is easier than the first simply because the black hole is such as powerful weapon. Also, I would've liked to see more abilities from The Darkness and if not more, than simply more creative ones. With only four different abilities, The Darkness does not stay very interesting to use for long. Apart from these flaws, the gameplay in the Darkness is pretty great.
With much of the New York mob and a bunch of crooked cops on your ass, things don't look to good for you. However, not far into the game, you become possessed by a sadistic demon known only as The Darkness. With the aid of this demon (manifested as some snakes and tentacles on your back), combating the mob becomes less difficult. You hurt Paulie's business and wait for the higher-ups to take him out as punishment for his incompetence. Unfortunately, Paulie only gets angrier and murders Jenny - the love of your life and the only pure soul in this twisted, f-ed up world. From there, things only go downhill...
The Darkness is a great achievement in that this great storyline (which is actually pretty breathtaking once you play the game) is melded into a game which is already pretty damn impressive.
Technically, The Darkness is pretty astounding. The graphics, while not top quality, are very good and really add to the atmospheric quality of the game. The main points of interest are the excessive and yet oh so necessary amounts of blood and gore. If you want a gauge as to how violent this game is - it has a mechanism through which you can eat hearts - human hearts. Awesome? Or just disgusting? Either way, this game is gory as hell. The audio in Darkness is even more impressive than the visuals. Every single voice actor/actress in this game is superb. Every line of dialog is made convincing by the great cast of voice actors. In addition, there's a lot of good ambient music.
However the most impressive technical aspect of this game is found in the little details which make the world more realistic and immersive. For instance, the TV channels feature real shows and full-length movies (such as To Kill A Mockingbird). Also, the game is just downright creepy and disturbing as hell.
The Darkness is a great game with only a two major flaws (both of which are mostly made up for by the great story). However, don't let these flaws keep you from playing the game because I guarantee you will enjoy it. It's just a shame that your attacks are so limited because this makes the game's replay a value a lot lower. I hope Starbreeze makes a sequel to this game because judging by the ending to this one, I would assume that the sequel would be insane amounts of fun.