The Darkness Shines Bright

Published July 19, 2007

There is no qualifying descriptor that can be laid upon The Darkness with any confidence. It is simply too unique to be easily classified, too fluid in its melding of different gameplay mechanics to simply call out a genre and be done with it. It is equal parts shooter, adventure, exploration, and role-playing, along with a dollop of puzzle solving and a healthy dose of paranormal-laced noir storytelling.

Poor guy has no idea.

Developer Starbreeze—responsible for the surprise blockbuster The Chronicles of Riddick™: Escape from Butcher Bay—has stepped forth once more with a game brimming with hardboiled personality and brooding originality.

The World of Darkness
The Darkness—based on the Top Cow comic of the same name—follows the exploits of New York mafia trigger-man Jackie Estacado. After being dispatched to a construction yard to carry out a hit for his Uncle Paulie, Jackie finds some heavily armed resistance, and outright naked betrayal.

For every gamer that pines for something cut from a different cloth, there may be no more unique experience this year.

Jackie finds his target already dead, strapped to a chair and sporting a ticking bomb duct taped to his body. Gruesomely painted on the wall behind the corpse is the message, "Happy Birthday, Jackie." A video of a livid Uncle Paulie plays in the background, ranting away at Jackie.

Darkness Born
Throughout his journey in the opening level, Jackie is waylaid by wheedling, psychotic voices of Darkness whispering in his ear, but when he's thrown clear of the bomb and falls seemingly to his death, the Darkness erupts from within our anti-hero, yanking him from certain death and instilling him with alarming power.

That's rough.

The Darkness element takes the form of two, heart-devouring, worm-like creatures that sprout from Jackie's back, and they serve a wide variety of gameplay functions:

• They act as a shield, protecting Jackie from damage and replenishing his health over time after he gets hit.
• Jackie can use the tentacles to snake along the ground to sneak up on enemies, perform stealth kills, scout ahead, and enter otherwise inaccessible areas.
• The Darkness allows Jackie to summon creatures called Darklings from portals to wreak havoc with enemies.
• It absorbs shadows to refill his energy, and devours the hearts of enemies to increase its overall power.
• Jackie can activate a Demon Arm to impale enemies, shatter lights, and generally rip through the environment.
• The Darkness can be used to create miniature black holes, then grab hold of something nearby and drag it into the void.
• Jackie can see clearly in the dark when the Darkness is active.

Unnerving as the Darkness tentacles may be, Jackie can also banish them when he wants to, though he then loses the powerful effects.

The Story Told
The Darkness is many things, but what it's not is constant action with linear levels of progression. There's a story here that must be told and a world that begs to be explored, and developer Starbreeze is only too eager to allow you to do just that.

Could use a little flossing.

In between each action sequence are welcome lulls of exploration where you poke around the world, discover side quests, interact with residents, uncover secret content, and generally do as you please. While the action is fantastic, it's these slower, more dramatic sequences that make The Darkness so distinctive. The dark, gritty alleys of New York provide an incredible subtext for the core story.

Total Immersion
Whether it's in the midst of a raging gun battle or during a quiet conversation with a thug on a subway platform, The Darkness makes every effort to convince you that you are Jackie. For example:

• Perspective tilt: Unlike most first-person games where you seemingly float around the world, each step and stagger on Jackie's part is accompanied by an appropriate tilt or shudder of perspective. When you're walking slowly, it feels like you're shuffling along, and when you're running for your life, it feels like it should.
• Perspective shift: A series of third-person moments occurs throughout the game that helps add life and personality to our haunted hero. Watching the character you play talking to your girlfriend, making a call from a payphone, or hauling a corpse in a body bag out of a butcher shop, gives you a fresh perspective on Jackie Estacado.
• Freedom of choice: Unlike so many games that push you along a straight path, Jackie boasts a wide variety of options for dealing and reacting with nearly every situation. Most conversations with other characters offer widely varied options that shape the tone of the conversation, and have significant effect on the game challenges.

Not your everyday run of the mill villain.

Beyond Offline
Though the single-player mode is enough of a treat to recommend The Darkness across the board, it also carries over to multiplayer matches on Xbox LIVE®. Sure, there's standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag modes, but there are a few unique twists, too.

• Survival: One player is the survivor, whose sole goal is to escape death for as long a period as possible. The rest of the players must simply hunt them down as quickly as they can.
• Last Darkling: One player begins as a Darkling, and with each kill, transforms their prey into Darklings. The goal is to be the last remaining human alive.
• Last Human: One player begins as a human and the rest are Darklings. Only the human can score kills, but if you kill a human, you turn into one and can start racking up points.

The Darkness is a shockingly original endeavor, and for every gamer that pines for something cut from a different cloth, there may be no more unique experience this year.

Article by Ryan Treit