The Darkness is a semi-open world FPS centered around a mafia hitman called Jackie Estacado. We start off on a car ride with two fellow mafioso men as they freak out over a job we just botched. Our boss, Uncle Paulie, is not well known for his forgiveness and we quickly find ourselves embroiled in a world of trouble. It won’t be long until you are on your own and forced to fight for your life on the New York streets. You will be relying on your dual pistols throughout most of this section and are able to shoot each individually using the left & right triggers.
As fate would have it, you won’t be alone for long. In your greatest time of need, a dark power will manifest itself and massacre your enemies. It is far from a friend though, it is arguably your greatest enemy despite the power it grants you. It is simply known as The Darkness. This being appears to you as tendrils coming out of your back, yet even when it is not in sight, it is always in your mind taunting and asserting its will. With this sudden turn of events and your survival of a seemingly assured death, you are now free to roam New York.
It is a title with a heavy emphasis on exploration. Throughout your journey, at most you will be given a name, a street, and possibly a general location. It is up to you on figuring out how to get there. Don’t count on your map, it is nearly useless. This can be quite obtuse at times. It is best to think of each of the two subway stations as hub-worlds to access certain areas of the world. Carnal subway leads to Chinatown and Lower East Side. You have to physically enter another train to reach Fulton station, which then leads to Grinder and The Orphanage. If you are the type of person that always forgets where you parked your car, this may prove to be too much of a nuisance.
The world is pretty small, it won’t take you long at all until you hear a name or area and can pinpoint the location like its second nature. This is where the game really shines. Just walking around and taking in the atmosphere. It is a tiny world, yet it is packed with detail and people to see. Even the NPCs that you will never interact with have a surprising amount of variety to them. To the point that I’m not even sure if there are any duplicates as I think back on this eight-hour journey. The environments are just as dripping in atmosphere and variety. It just all perfectly captures that grim and moody tone that they were going for while maintaining a distinct look for every area.
Walking around the world will occasionally lead you to secondary missions or secret collectibles. Those quests are entirely optional and grant nothing but more collectibles. They simply unlock videos, concept art, comics, and all matter of behind the scene goodies for those that want them. With how slow Jackie walks, and the fact that every area has quite the long loading screen, they quickly lost their appeal for me personally. The main story, on the other hand, is magnificent. This is a tale that will hook you in from the start and keep you more than invested enough to see it through to the end. It has tragedy, drama, and a very personal feel to this adventure. This is about Jackie. We are not here to save the world or bring justice to evil. It can actually be argued that we are worse than the villain here.
That Darkness will be your only constant companion. It is there as you watch a movie with your girlfriend, it is there laughing as you are forced to murder slews of hitman after you, and also there to help you do so. As counterintuitive as it may be in the long term, its power greatly helps you in combat. Without it, you are weak and die in a few shots, but with it active, you can take far more punishment as long as you are away from any light. To grow stronger you have to quite literally allow it to rip and eat the hearts out of your enemies. Every firefight’s aftermath will see you going around to corpses and feasting. In doing so you will eventually gain a level to take even more damage before being reverted to your human self. Eating a heart mid-battle will also completely refill your darkness, allowing you to use your abilities again and healing you completely.
The abilities themselves are not gained by leveling up but in key moments of the story. Your first skill has you dislocating a tendril and allowing it to crawl around the surrounding area to fit through tight spaces, as to open doors or sneak kill enemies. The second has you grow a tendril to pick up objects or stab enemies. By the end of it, you will even be able to summon a black hole. It remains an FPS at heart, however. Guns will be what you’ll be mainly using and the abilities are secondary. So it is sad to see that the gunplay is sub-par. It is mainly due to the auto-aiming not functioning well. It does as it pleases far too often and makes combat pretty confusing at times as it decides to shoot someone far off in the distance, instead of the guy about to stab you from a few feet away.
Worsening the auto-aim is the absolutely terrible PS3 port. Performance is really unstable and it rarely reaches the standard 30 fps. It just chugs along, dropping even lower seemingly at random making aiming that much more of a pain. Directly tying into this issue is the light mechanic. You need to be in the dark to activate your powers and in order to do so, you will have to shoot out lights. Hitting these small targets will quickly being to grate on your nerves, especially with how often you do it. Even in the depths of hell, the bloody place has a ton of lightning you have to deal with. By far the best ability is the Tentacle as it allows you to jab out a light source with relative reliability. Even at the max level, the dark powerful being will sizzle out faster under any light than a moth in a flame.
Walking around in your human form you don’t have to worry about lights. It is just a problem in the already tedious combat. I mentioned hell briefly and that is, in fact, the second zone you will be visiting. It is a wild difference from New York. If you thought New York was grim, wait until you experience the WW1 setting that dwells within the Darkness’s mind. This is not a place you will soon forget. It also introduces some enemies that are effectively immortal unless you rip out their hearts, causing you to rush towards them instead of camping behind some cover. An ability does show up to negate their resurrection eventually. This is another point in where the game is too obtuse. In order to discover all the benefits of an ability, you have to go into the menus to see. It does not tell you or finds some way to naturally imply them in any way. I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get past a certain section before figuring out you can move objects with the tentacle ability.
In my defense, that is the first time you needed to do so and it is something you only ever do once more. With the second time, you can see a gas rising out of a vent. It’s not hard to put two and two together. Your first time you will only see a bell lodged in a hallway. Every other occasion of being unable to progress involved finding a way around or using your detachable tendril ability to find some way to solve your dilemma. I greatly enjoyed the lack of handholding, but there are a few situations that are simply not well constructed enough for that approach. Most thankfully are. On that note, Hell isn’t a place you can just visit at will. If you are into finding secrets, make sure to do so in the opportunities where you can.
You can technically walk around through most of the world in New York, but there is little point unless you are searching for secrets. Mobs don’t respawn in areas, you will simply be walking in empty silence throughout. Most of the life and NPCs are in the subway, while the above-ground areas are more like your traditional levels or stages. Scattered throughout the environments will be ethereal holes in the ground. Out of these you can summon some imp minions. Eventually, you will unlock four types, all with their own differences or uses. Well at least in theory. Classes like the LightKiller are nigh useless given that he doesn’t scout out ahead and sending him to do so is slower than just shooting a light source yourself. The others are combat-focused. They are slightly more useful, as distractions if nothing else.
It has interesting ideas and ambitions no doubt, yet they fall flat more often than not. What you should consider playing this title for is the atmosphere, story, and the setting. Those are extremely well done. The somber music, occasionally stunning voice acting, and overall pacing amplify its strong points. It has its over the top fights as you’d expect from being a demon-possessed professional hitman, but it is not afraid to contrast that with quiet, inconsequential moments. My most memorable moment was not gawking at the hellish landscapes in a realm whose mere existence is a mystery that we are suddenly thrust into. Or fighting for my life in the grimy New York streets, creating more darkness to slowly but surely make my way towards what will soon be a one-sided fight. It was simply crouching next to a sleeping homeless man on the subway bench and watching entire episodes of Flash Gordon from the TV he had in his shopping cart.
A close second was a moment that is a massive spoiler, but one that anyone that has played the game knows full well what it is and what it leads to. I’ve originally played this game when it came out back in the medieval age of 2007 and I still think about that, alongside many other events from this game. This is coming from a guy that doesn’t even play video games for their story, as well as typically forgets what a title is even called after a few months thanks to reviewing so many of them. Having a generic name like The Darkness and being able to accomplish that is an indication of just how unique an experience is on offer here. It can be jank at times, and even kind of annoying to play at some points, but this is one of those titles that is well worth a look to anyone that values story or world-building. Just be sure to get the Xbox 360 version if possible, the terrible and unstable performance for the PS3 will impact your experience in both gameplay and immersion.
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