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The Darkness review

Game: The Darkness
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Starbreeze

Reader review by JEFFARGH

October 08, 2007

I have one thing to say about The Darkness: people give this game far too much love. This game wasn't bad. It wasn't good, but it definitely wasn't bad. The graphics are pretty in HD, the search quests are aggravating, controlling your darkness snakes is unpredictable, and aiming is imprecise. I can't tell you how many times I went to shoot for a light as to not be noticed while enemies were around and got slaughtered because they heard ba-bang bang and ran around some corner, guns-a-blazing. I felt I needed a podcast or a CD to listen to while playing because it just wouldn't hold me.

The game is based off a comic book, which can't lead to anything good, where the hero is Jackie. He's an emo kid with an obnoxious voice that works for his Uncle Paulie. In the beginning of the game, the player gets super-powers (darkness powers), and sets off to bring revenge down upon Paulie's head (god knows why).

The first act is the high point, from what I played (I only got through the first bit of the second). It starts you out driving in a subway tunnel shooting construction workers for some reason. You crash, go looking around on your own, and, out of the blue, someone that sounds like Smeagol starts telling you that you've just inherited powers and get to kill mafia men. The voice acting is sub-par and Smeagol is too far over the top.

At the beginning of act two [MINOR SPOILER] you wake up in Hell or some stupid thing like that, where there are soldiers with gas-mask (similar to a Doctor Who episode) or telescope faces, and you go around in trenches shooting guys. When the player first wakes up, Jackie is tied up to a line of what seems to be prisoners of war. The overcast sky is blood red. Old fighter planes are zooming overhead. "Okay," you think. "I just woke up in a crappy rendition of World War 2. But wait, what's that?" A man in a Nazi uniform approaches with a gas mask for a face. You then start to realize that you're tied to a bridge over what seems to be more Nazi officers with funny faces, and there's a crazy demon statue off in the distance. The player then questions, "did I just wake up in Hell? I think I did! Wow, this game just took a steep plunge!"

I will say, however, that it's extremely, extremely satisfying when you shoot the bad guys with your pistols--when you can aim at them. There's a kind of auto-aim that kicks in for about a second before your crosshairs revert to being fixed on the ceiling. In act two, not so much, but in act one, enemies go flying backwards in a manner that's just barely unrealistic enough to make you say "hey, wait a minute," but just kickass enough to make you want to keep playing. There's less of that in the second act, which is probably why I put it down.

All in all, the game didn't grasp me. I think people are only giving it 9s and 10s because of movies like the Crow. On a scale of 1-10, where 5-6.5 is average, this gets 5.5.

Rating: 5/10

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