No. It’s not any state or college elections I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about The Darkness by the publishing wizards 2K and the development warlocks at Starbreeze. The Darkness is a game that will make you beg for more. It will eviscerate all you had come to expect from shooters. It will rip to shreds the horrible; “comic-book-hero-meets-video-game-and-dies” legacy that a certain developer has been fucking up EVERY time with my favourite arachnid hero. It will make you believe in a real world. It will make you believe in an alternate world. It will make it worth the investment.

Fancy, no?

 The Darkness is a game based on the comic by Marc Silvestri, following the tragic story of a Mafia hitman - Jackie Estacado of the Franchetti crime family in present day New York. It builds on a story of betrayal, death, demonic possession and ultimately revenge. It’s not too original, I must confess - but the sheer execution of this story kicks every other game in the nads.

The game starts off with you in the body of Jackie coming around from what’s said to be a blackout with no explained cause. It ultimately leads to a mad-crazy car chase sequence with you at the pain-receiving end of the entire chase. When you get your bearings, you remember your ‘mission’ and get around doing what you’re best at - whacking people off. As you play through the game, an ominous sentient being reveals itself to you as “The Darkness” and bestows you with demonic powers that put you at such a great advantage against your enemies that it’ll make you cry. (But more on that later!)

As you play through the game The Darkness bestows you with more abilities and you can make The Darkness stronger by devouring the hearts of the enemies you kill. Yes: devouring = ripping out of chest and chomping down on it. It’s pretty cool actually and it looks oh-so-sweet!

The Darkness gives you the ability to see better in the dark - so killing the lights out puts your enemies in a scramble while you go about happily fucking them up. The powers that you’re able to summon include -
Creeping Dark- One of the Darkness tentacles will detach itself from you and will creep up or down to places you can not access. Excellent for stealth kills and getting hard to reach collectables.
Demon Arm - pretty much like the aliens tail in the AVP game, except with more range and control. Use the Demon arm to kill lights without wasting ammo, clear paths, throw objects and enemies and generally have lots of fun with corpses.
Ancient Weapons - Darkness Guns, rather. Pretty dumb power if you ask me but it’s there.
Black Hole - Yeah. Your own personal singularity generator. Summon a black hole and watch the bodies pile up. This baby even takes them choppers down!

In addition to these, you can also summon “Darklings” to do your bidding and strike fear in the hearts of your enemies. You’ll be able to summon Berserker, Gunner, Kamikaze and Lightkiller darklings to help you out of dead-ends or to assist you in a hard-to-win-alone type fire fight.

With these powers you’re at an excellent advantage and can face even the toughest of enemies without too much trouble. In addition to these, the game also gives you a wide range of firearms including handguns, Uzi’s, Assault Rifles and Shotguns. In fact (and this is the part I said I’d come to later) - once you learn to use these powers effectively, you’ll be able to complete the game in almost 10 hours. I know I completed the game on hard difficulty, looking for all collectables and watching all cut-scenes in about 10 hours. Skip all the candy, and I’d say 9 hours the game gets done! In terms of game play what this means is simple - hard mode isn’t that hard after all! While this isn’t intended to be a put off, to people who look for a real challenge at increased difficulties, this may be a bit of a bummer. But never to the extent that you’d scoff it away.

Another thing that I noticed straight away when I started playing this game was the fact that it “feels” so much like Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. Sure, it was made by the same studio - but seriously - everything feels so much like it - from the graphics, to the game direction to the lighting. That’s not a bad thing though, bear in mind. It’s a great thing. Those were some of the things that made CoR:EfBB such an awesome fucking game. This is similar, but like a much improved and polished implementation.

Obviously since the game focuses primarily on playing with the light, the lighting effects have been very well done. Game textures are AAA grade and the sounds are extremely authentic and believable. Locations have been created with painstaking detail and if anyone reading this has ever been to the Canal or Fulton street stations, they’ll see just what I mean. It’s creepy!!

Speaking of sound - that brings me to my next observation - the voice acting. Abso-fuckin-lutely BRILLIANT voice acting. With Kirk Acevedo voicing Jackie, Lauren Ambrose voicing Jenny and Max Patton voicing The Darkness - this is an all star cast on a sonic epic. All characters have been voiced exceptionally well and are ultra-believable, even though there is virtually NO lip-sync!! Honest! While this did strike me as odd, it perfectly fits the mood of the game and the fact that the game is being narrated back to you - so it’s effectively the past. Max Patton is fucking GOD! He’s made The Darkness sound genuinely sinister and evil and it’s devilish genius! I honestly can’t describe just how good he’s done this - so it’s best to actually play the game and listen! Kirk Acevedo does a brilliant job with Jackie as well. Truly authentic NY Italian accent and makes the character believable and someone you’ll want to be when you grow up! Period. A full list of voice actors can be found here .

The controls of the game are responsive and easy to get accustomed to, although I did find the Demon Arm quite pissing off at times, in that sometimes it’ll just miss enemies completely and just go around them - like I was trying to fucking hug them or something.

The Game AI is good and gives you a challenge, although there are a few times when the Creeping Dark goes into noclip mode or an enemy will just pop up a few inches or feet off the ground for no apparent reason. But this is rare and therefore doesn’t make you lose focus on the task at hand.

In terms of achievements - I just wish Starbreeze had known of us poor saps in India where we don’t have Xbox Live! (hear that Mohit Anand?). I’ve unlocked most of the single player achievements (50/100) and I guess there’s probably 10-15 more to go - but seriously - that means a lot of the shit is multiplayer ONLY achievements! How sweet. Anyways - interesting achievements to be won here and how.

Overall, this game has once again proven 2 things:
1 - Starbreeze have done it again. I’d be so happy to see them make more games and how about if they did a new Kiss:Psycho Circus game!! Wowa Wee!!
2 - The Darkness delivers on what it promises. A journey through hell and back. Twice.

Get the game - buy it, rent it whatever. But play it! What? No PC version!!?! Why you little….

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