An original story accompanied by great gameplay make this a unique shooter even for newcomers.
Let's get the graphics out of the way first. I didn't like it -- the ingame environment felt limited (very few sets and small ones at that), and cramped. Even the "outdoor" areas of Otherworld, Chinatown and Lower East Side didn't feel "outdoor" at all -- these areas felt cramped and claustrophobic -- perhaps in part due to the overall "dark" lighting throughout the game. Even on an HDTV, the textures didn't seem good enough -- the walls, concrete floors, and other materials throughout the game all looked the same (very repetitive, and lacking in detail). Lighting was drab and uninspired (this perhaps was by design), and the character models looked blocky (except for Jackie Estacado himself). Don't get me wrong, however -- there was nothing wrong really, except that I didn't find the graphics exceptional. One nice thing though was that the motion capture and animation of the models were realistic, and captured nicely the feel of characters in an Italian-American mafia movie.
The sound is a slightly different story. The music was catchy, and in good timing with the in-game situations. Some parts combined with the great sound effects here and there really helped build tension and disbelief. I thought that voice-overs were very nicely done also, with most of the characters very believable.
The story is where this game shines, I think. I found the story to be very exciting -- far outweighing all the other negative impressions I have with the presentation. Well-paced, smart and full of surprises, the story highlights Jackie's internal struggle with the darkness, allowing the player to experience a few emotional twists and turns here and there. The end of chapters one and five particularly struck me -- these showed the height of the Darkness' cruelty and Jackie's abject helplessness in the face of it all. All in all, a very intriguing glimpse into this comic-based world (prompting me to plan picking up some back issues for my collection).
As far as gameplay goes, I found the controls to be quite intuitive, with a variety of weapons to choose from (including the darkness powers). It could have been balanced better though, since the darkness powers seem to make the guns useless (for the most part, I just used them to kill the lights -- and even this became obsolete when I got the Demon's Arm). In fact, the guns seem especially underpowered -- while playing HARD mode, I had a difficult time getting past the first few levels using only the guns (getting the Roadkill accomplishment was especially difficult), but when I got "Creeping Dark", things got WAY lot easier. Better balance between guns and darkness powers could have been achieved, in short.
There are no trophies for this game, and instead, players will just have to rely on the "accomplishments". Most of the accomplishments are standard fare, but there are some that feel darn near impossible to do: Roadkill, Completionist, and the Multiplayer accomplishments in particular. This should not have been the case. For example, to make "Roadkill" hard but not near impossible, they could have provided a checkpoint right before the shooting starts. For "Completionist", some of the collectibles are in areas that are so unlikely (for example, in small, hidden spaces that require the use of Creeping Dark). For these areas, there could have been at least a hint system or a plot twist that would require exploring those areas.
These shortfalls would have been tolerable if the game provided a lot more checkpoints than the 6 it made available to the player in the end. As it is, players have very little incentive to play through again once they finish the game for the first time. Given that the story - while great - is a bit linear and the graphics are nothing special, playing this one through more than once feels more like a chore than anything else.
Still, this is a game worth playing at least once.