Let The Darkness consume you
The Darkness is a game based on the comic series of the same name. You play as Jackie Estacado, a mafia hitman who's just finishing up celebrating his 21st birthday, when Jackie quickly finds himself the target of an assassination plotted by his "Uncle" Paulie, who adopted Jackie when he was young. Jackie soon finds himself fighting through these mobsters. Not too far into the night while trying to escape from the mobsters, Jackie is possessed by a demon known as the Darkness. With the Darkness, Jackie quickly finishes off the remaining mobsters.
The plot of The Darkness isn't clear from the beginning of the game. It takes a couple of hours for the game to setup what's really going on. But when it finally becomes clear of where the story is going, you'll want to see the game through to end to see how it all turns out. I won't spoil any more; it's really a story worth experiencing for yourself. The story, along with the game itself, defiantly earns it's mature rating, but it feels appropriate considering the game's setting. If the story alone isn't enough to get you to play this game, I can assure you, this game is fun.
The Darkness is a first person shooter, but the shooting itself isn't the reason to play this game. The shooting is pretty fun; it has a loose feeling to it that is for the most part, pretty satisfying. But this is not the combat's strongest point. What makes this game so much fun to play, is the Darkness powers themselves. Using the Darkness to fight is a really fun experience. You start out with just a power called the Creeping Dark. You use one of the Darkness heads to crawl around, and take out enemies without even being noticed. But by far the most fun to use power is the Black Hole. It's exactly what it sounds like. You open up a black hole that sucks all of your enemies. It's also a really cool effect, because you see all of your enemies flying around, trying to grab onto polls, or whatever is around them.
Another Darkness ability you get is the ability to summon creatures known as darklings. These darklings can do anything from blow up a door, to unlocking a gate. The game tries to lean you towards using the darklings only to solve puzzles, but you can also use these guys for combat. You can use a darkling to mow down your enemies, or sneak up behind an enemy and blow them up. You'll need to recharge your darkness powers after using them. You can do this by shooting out the lights and just sitting in the shadows for a minute. Or a more interesting and more fun way to recharge your powers is to eat human hearts. This is surprisingly really fun to do. You'll probably find yourself running around after every battle looking for every heart that you haven't already eaten. All of this is really satisfying to do.
As you probably figured out by now, you become pretty powerful playing through The Darkness. And because you have so many darkness powers, the game is really easy. Even the shooting isn't too difficult. From the very begging of the game enemies go down within a few shots. The shooting turns on auto-aim automatically, you can turn it off. But even so, the it doesn't really make the game any more challenging. And with the game clocking around 15 hours, it's pretty disappointing that the enemies don't get any stronger as you progress through the game, even though you continue to grow stronger. Another problem with the game is that the multiplayer is pretty forgettable. The only real hook in the multiplayer is that you can play as the darklings, but it's really not that fun. So the main reason to get this game is defiantly the single-player.
The Darkness is a really great game. The story of Jackie Estacado is a story you'll want to see through to the end. Using the darkness powers is a really satisfying experience, and you'll feel like you can't be stopped. If you can ignore the fact that the game isn't challenging, and the really weak multiplayer, your probably be able to go into The Darkness and have a blast. If you enjoy first person shooters, you should play this game.