The is my first review, so please try to bear with me if it is a bit tedious. I'd be more than appreciative of any constructive critisism.
The Darkness is an FPS game released in 2007 on PS3 & Xbox 360. It was developed by Starbreeze Studios (Their most popular titles probably being Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay & Dark Athena). It's based on the comic book that was first published in 19966.
The Darkness was one of those games that i heard was fairly underrappreciated, so i after reading a couple of reviews from gamespot (yes i know, it's sacrilege) i decided to try it out. Unfortunately i didn't quite enjoy it quite as much as i was hoping. When playing through the game i couldn't help but often think that the game was mostly style over substance, particularly in terms of the characters and storyline.
In the Darkness you take control of Jackie on his 21st birthday. Jackie is a member of the mafia whom becomes the target from the scumbag Don, Uncle Paulie. He soon finds that he also has 'The Darkness' manifesting itself on his body. The Darkness is an evil creature (somewhat reminiscent of two eels with veru sharp teeth) that has a disturbing spiritual nature and has it's place in Jackie's family history. Also his girlfriend get's caught up in the mess of it all as the often described 'fat prick' Paulie is stepping on many toes, especially those of the old school way of the crime business.
You are immediately thrown into the action where you're in the back of the car and your driver is hectically trying to evade persuing police cars. Initially this seems rather exciting, however i found it a little too unrealistic. Of course games do have a strong place in fantasy, it failed my suspension of disbelief a number of times as you're driver goes head on with oncoming traffic and after often scraping with another car seems to loose little control of the vehicle. But anyway after some time you are thrown into the world with a job of killing someone, and you are immediately given two M1911A1's with special engravings and told to finish the job.
Fairly quickly i noticed that the guns all feel quite underpowered, especially when you get the darkness powers. If you get close enough to an enemy and press the fire button you will perform an instant kill/finishing move (i'm not really sure what to call it) with the guns you are currently holding. These are often reasonably gruesome and cool, however it's the only time when the guns live up to their worth.
The Darkness powers come into play fairly quickly, and when they do they play a very substantial portion of the gameplay. The darkness will cover a large portion of your HUD, sometimes too large. The darkness works as such; you must be in shadows or dark area's for the darkness to have to power to manifest. When the darkness does manifest it automatically acts as a shield, meaning that whenever you get into a gunfight you will pretty much want to summon it. One of the things i did like is that because the darkness requires, well, darkness you can often shoot out lights indoors and outdoors to aid your journey.
Also throughout the game you will gain a few darkness powers that allow you to perform some sort of special move; a sharp tentacle strike that can kill an enemy or pick up an object, Creeping darkness where you can send a tentacle to scout ahead and attack any enemies up ahead or sometimes open up a door (though these events are highly scripted), darkness guns which are pretty much just guns that run on the darknesse's spiritual energy, the darkness black hole thingo which can suck up nearby enemies (which is actually pretty cool) and summoning abilities on a number of different creatures (though i often found them fairly useless in combat). Of course, i almost forgot, you can sustain darkness energy but eating the heart of an enemies corpse, which is actually really cool. I think by the end of the game i got the darkness to eat about over 200 hearts, and i still didn't get tired of seeing it happen.
At first, the darkness almost gives you the feeling that it is a sandbox-game, even though by all means it isn't. The events that happen are highly scripted however you will often have to take the subway to another area where you will meet someone or go to a phone and ring someone up. The four or so area's that you move between are of decent size, however there is very little exploration involved. This brings me to another problem with the game, i often found that in between 'missions' the gamne didn't give me enough direction. Not that i want a game to spoon feed me, but being told to meet someone yet having little idea where they where often made me feel a bit startled. With that said when your in a 'mission' where your shooting and devouring the hearts of a whole bunch of enemies it will be fairly obvious which corridors to take.
The characters is probably the part i liked least of all. Jackie is this sort of rough mix of a goth and the archetypal Mafia member. His long black hair, long leather coat, and Marlon Brando ish Godfather voice (sort-of) create a somewhat splintered character. Alot of the time Jackie just seems like a tough dude, but then at other times he seems to have more to say but this is never really fleshed out. Alot of the mafia members have dialogue that are absurd black comedy, but become a bit tiring eventually. Also for a main character that i didn't find particularly compelling, you sure see alot of seeming as everytime you move between an area that you need a loading time for you will have a very short cutscene of Jackie talking; often about past stories or reflecting on the current situation. Whilst i actually enjoyed these, i found that they get tiring after you've seen each one about ten times each.
Jenny is Jackie's girlfriend whom you don't really get much of a sense of, but she plays her part fairly well. However i still cringe when i think about that one line 'Let's just take one day away from fucked up'. I often found that at moments like this the characters would often say things that sounded like as though they came from the mouth of a sixteen year old emo (not offense to anybody who considers themself emo). Dialogue often felt lacking and sometimes even pretencious.
The length of the game was decent. From the impression i got i thought it was a very long game, which it's not really, but it does have a good sized singleplayer campsign. There's also a multiplayer, which i didn't play much of, however it didn't seem particularly innovative, so the game would probably have more use in the singleplayer.
The Darkness uses the regenerative health system in which has been used alot recently in video games. Also it has a decent level of violence, when you snatch the heart from a body there's some nice blood and wounds. Some cutscenes also extend the violence a little (i don't want to give any spoilers away).
With all it's elements combined together, the darkness can end up a bit repetitious. You will end up killing an insurmountable sum of enemies, and in a fairly familiar ways. But in no ways do i mean The Darkness to be a bad game, however it didn't quite reach my expectations. If you're an FPS fan you might enjoy more than i did. However if you're expecting a game that is an underappreciated gem, you may be slightly dissapointed as i was.
The Darkness is an FPS game released in 2007 on PS3 & Xbox 360. It was developed by Starbreeze Studios (Their most popular titles probably being Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay & Dark Athena). It's based on the comic book that was first published in 19966.
The Darkness was one of those games that i heard was fairly underrappreciated, so i after reading a couple of reviews from gamespot (yes i know, it's sacrilege) i decided to try it out. Unfortunately i didn't quite enjoy it quite as much as i was hoping. When playing through the game i couldn't help but often think that the game was mostly style over substance, particularly in terms of the characters and storyline.
In the Darkness you take control of Jackie on his 21st birthday. Jackie is a member of the mafia whom becomes the target from the scumbag Don, Uncle Paulie. He soon finds that he also has 'The Darkness' manifesting itself on his body. The Darkness is an evil creature (somewhat reminiscent of two eels with veru sharp teeth) that has a disturbing spiritual nature and has it's place in Jackie's family history. Also his girlfriend get's caught up in the mess of it all as the often described 'fat prick' Paulie is stepping on many toes, especially those of the old school way of the crime business.
You are immediately thrown into the action where you're in the back of the car and your driver is hectically trying to evade persuing police cars. Initially this seems rather exciting, however i found it a little too unrealistic. Of course games do have a strong place in fantasy, it failed my suspension of disbelief a number of times as you're driver goes head on with oncoming traffic and after often scraping with another car seems to loose little control of the vehicle. But anyway after some time you are thrown into the world with a job of killing someone, and you are immediately given two M1911A1's with special engravings and told to finish the job.
Fairly quickly i noticed that the guns all feel quite underpowered, especially when you get the darkness powers. If you get close enough to an enemy and press the fire button you will perform an instant kill/finishing move (i'm not really sure what to call it) with the guns you are currently holding. These are often reasonably gruesome and cool, however it's the only time when the guns live up to their worth.
The Darkness powers come into play fairly quickly, and when they do they play a very substantial portion of the gameplay. The darkness will cover a large portion of your HUD, sometimes too large. The darkness works as such; you must be in shadows or dark area's for the darkness to have to power to manifest. When the darkness does manifest it automatically acts as a shield, meaning that whenever you get into a gunfight you will pretty much want to summon it. One of the things i did like is that because the darkness requires, well, darkness you can often shoot out lights indoors and outdoors to aid your journey.
Also throughout the game you will gain a few darkness powers that allow you to perform some sort of special move; a sharp tentacle strike that can kill an enemy or pick up an object, Creeping darkness where you can send a tentacle to scout ahead and attack any enemies up ahead or sometimes open up a door (though these events are highly scripted), darkness guns which are pretty much just guns that run on the darknesse's spiritual energy, the darkness black hole thingo which can suck up nearby enemies (which is actually pretty cool) and summoning abilities on a number of different creatures (though i often found them fairly useless in combat). Of course, i almost forgot, you can sustain darkness energy but eating the heart of an enemies corpse, which is actually really cool. I think by the end of the game i got the darkness to eat about over 200 hearts, and i still didn't get tired of seeing it happen.
At first, the darkness almost gives you the feeling that it is a sandbox-game, even though by all means it isn't. The events that happen are highly scripted however you will often have to take the subway to another area where you will meet someone or go to a phone and ring someone up. The four or so area's that you move between are of decent size, however there is very little exploration involved. This brings me to another problem with the game, i often found that in between 'missions' the gamne didn't give me enough direction. Not that i want a game to spoon feed me, but being told to meet someone yet having little idea where they where often made me feel a bit startled. With that said when your in a 'mission' where your shooting and devouring the hearts of a whole bunch of enemies it will be fairly obvious which corridors to take.
The characters is probably the part i liked least of all. Jackie is this sort of rough mix of a goth and the archetypal Mafia member. His long black hair, long leather coat, and Marlon Brando ish Godfather voice (sort-of) create a somewhat splintered character. Alot of the time Jackie just seems like a tough dude, but then at other times he seems to have more to say but this is never really fleshed out. Alot of the mafia members have dialogue that are absurd black comedy, but become a bit tiring eventually. Also for a main character that i didn't find particularly compelling, you sure see alot of seeming as everytime you move between an area that you need a loading time for you will have a very short cutscene of Jackie talking; often about past stories or reflecting on the current situation. Whilst i actually enjoyed these, i found that they get tiring after you've seen each one about ten times each.
Jenny is Jackie's girlfriend whom you don't really get much of a sense of, but she plays her part fairly well. However i still cringe when i think about that one line 'Let's just take one day away from fucked up'. I often found that at moments like this the characters would often say things that sounded like as though they came from the mouth of a sixteen year old emo (not offense to anybody who considers themself emo). Dialogue often felt lacking and sometimes even pretencious.
The length of the game was decent. From the impression i got i thought it was a very long game, which it's not really, but it does have a good sized singleplayer campsign. There's also a multiplayer, which i didn't play much of, however it didn't seem particularly innovative, so the game would probably have more use in the singleplayer.
The Darkness uses the regenerative health system in which has been used alot recently in video games. Also it has a decent level of violence, when you snatch the heart from a body there's some nice blood and wounds. Some cutscenes also extend the violence a little (i don't want to give any spoilers away).
With all it's elements combined together, the darkness can end up a bit repetitious. You will end up killing an insurmountable sum of enemies, and in a fairly familiar ways. But in no ways do i mean The Darkness to be a bad game, however it didn't quite reach my expectations. If you're an FPS fan you might enjoy more than i did. However if you're expecting a game that is an underappreciated gem, you may be slightly dissapointed as i was.