Dark Times Ahead
The Darkness is everything we hoped it would be. And more.
Published: July 17, 2007
There are times when it can be tough to be a comic geek. For the most part, movies made from comics rarely get the feel of the source material and video games, despite being able to tell a story for more than two hours, actually end up feeling even less involved with the books in a lot of cases -- which is why it's so cool to see developer Starbreeze Studios manage to pull yet another merger of the two mediums out of their hat.
Their previous title, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was actually a prequel to the similarly titled box office near-flop, but it was as cinematic as a first-person shooter has ever been. Between the first-person fistfights and the damn fine visuals, it rightly earned a place among the few -- possibly the only -- movie license game to actually play like a real game.
The Darkness, despite being far more about gunplay and evil powers, and taking place on a next-gen system (Riddick hit on the original Xbox and PC), carries the same cinematic torch with an intro that is so damned cool you'll likely end up firing up the game just to show it off. From the moments Jackie Estacado, hitman for the Franchetti crime family, first gets a taste of the powers that are gifted to him on his 21st birthday, the game becomes a runaway mine cart that hits some slow patches, but rushes to an abrupt and amazing end, with you at times riding shotgun as the evil within Jackie constantly fights with him for control.
It isn't an absolutely perfect recreation of everything in Paul Jenkins' run on The Darkness (he also penned the script for the game), which was actually a re-launch of the original story, but it's damn close and one of the biggest things I worried about, Jackie's struggle with himself and the Darkness welling up inside him, was handled brilliantly. By the end of the game, you get a sense that Jackie really is a good guy deep down, but that he doesn't always make good guy choices, and unfortunately, people very, very close to him will have to suffer for it.
But what makes the game really work is that underneath all the gunplay, all the shot-out lights that give Jackie his unholy powers, there's an actual person that's being built up. When Jackie is with his girlfriend Jenny, his voice changes, his demeanor changes; the harder edges get filed off, and thanks to a combination of wonderful storytelling and some bang-on voice performances from every single major character in the game, you actually start to care for Jackie. And then, of course, his world is torn apart.
When the major events in the game go down, it was the first time in a while that I actually felt bummed out. One of the things those pure action movies do to stir the testosterone and alcohol in the blood is deliver one of those perfect, "ohhhhhhh shiiiiit" moments where you know there's gonna be hell to pay. It's just that here, you're actually the one dispensing the pain, and Hell happens to be at your command.
It's hard to talk about the game without spoiling anything (and if you've read the comics, it won't matter, though you'll still pump your fist and cringe and gasp during all the big moments), but the gameplay, the core of the game isn't terribly difficult. Jackie can wield all manner of normal weapons like shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and the like, but once all of the major light sources in the area have been snuffed out, all of Jackie's rage becomes corporeal in the firm of a handful of little imps called Darklings that do everything from jackhammer a guy's face into the floor to kamikaze a group of enemies to slash out all the lights in the room.
The Darklings, however, are more or less autonomous (your only real task it to point them where to go and make sure you kill any light nearby because it harms them), the real fun comes from the stuff you have control over, which ranges from a tentacle that can enter grates and climb walls to rip the faces off your enemies and eat their hearts (eating hearts is actually how your powers level up) to creating a black hole that sucks enemy and chair alike into it for a few seconds to dual pistols that run on pure darkness and can either fire shots as fast as you can pull the trigger or shoot out a pulse wave not unlike the weapons seen in Minority Report.
The game teases you initially with all these powers, but they're taken away and then slowly unlocked as you play through the game, giving you time to learn how to use that massive tentacle to lift cop cars and toss 'em around like they were Matchbox toys before you're given some of the other powers. It not only keeps you playing to see what you can do next, but slowly layers in more types of enemies and gives you more tools to deal with them. The pacing of the game can be a little uneven, mainly because the story missions are launched from the same hub world (a little slice of New York that lets you travel by subway to some other areas) that all the side stuff is in, and partly because there are some missions (I'm talking about you, church shootout) that can be unnecessarily difficult.
Their previous title, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was actually a prequel to the similarly titled box office near-flop, but it was as cinematic as a first-person shooter has ever been. Between the first-person fistfights and the damn fine visuals, it rightly earned a place among the few -- possibly the only -- movie license game to actually play like a real game.
The Darkness, despite being far more about gunplay and evil powers, and taking place on a next-gen system (Riddick hit on the original Xbox and PC), carries the same cinematic torch with an intro that is so damned cool you'll likely end up firing up the game just to show it off. From the moments Jackie Estacado, hitman for the Franchetti crime family, first gets a taste of the powers that are gifted to him on his 21st birthday, the game becomes a runaway mine cart that hits some slow patches, but rushes to an abrupt and amazing end, with you at times riding shotgun as the evil within Jackie constantly fights with him for control.
It isn't an absolutely perfect recreation of everything in Paul Jenkins' run on The Darkness (he also penned the script for the game), which was actually a re-launch of the original story, but it's damn close and one of the biggest things I worried about, Jackie's struggle with himself and the Darkness welling up inside him, was handled brilliantly. By the end of the game, you get a sense that Jackie really is a good guy deep down, but that he doesn't always make good guy choices, and unfortunately, people very, very close to him will have to suffer for it.
But what makes the game really work is that underneath all the gunplay, all the shot-out lights that give Jackie his unholy powers, there's an actual person that's being built up. When Jackie is with his girlfriend Jenny, his voice changes, his demeanor changes; the harder edges get filed off, and thanks to a combination of wonderful storytelling and some bang-on voice performances from every single major character in the game, you actually start to care for Jackie. And then, of course, his world is torn apart.
When the major events in the game go down, it was the first time in a while that I actually felt bummed out. One of the things those pure action movies do to stir the testosterone and alcohol in the blood is deliver one of those perfect, "ohhhhhhh shiiiiit" moments where you know there's gonna be hell to pay. It's just that here, you're actually the one dispensing the pain, and Hell happens to be at your command.
It's hard to talk about the game without spoiling anything (and if you've read the comics, it won't matter, though you'll still pump your fist and cringe and gasp during all the big moments), but the gameplay, the core of the game isn't terribly difficult. Jackie can wield all manner of normal weapons like shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and the like, but once all of the major light sources in the area have been snuffed out, all of Jackie's rage becomes corporeal in the firm of a handful of little imps called Darklings that do everything from jackhammer a guy's face into the floor to kamikaze a group of enemies to slash out all the lights in the room.
The Darklings, however, are more or less autonomous (your only real task it to point them where to go and make sure you kill any light nearby because it harms them), the real fun comes from the stuff you have control over, which ranges from a tentacle that can enter grates and climb walls to rip the faces off your enemies and eat their hearts (eating hearts is actually how your powers level up) to creating a black hole that sucks enemy and chair alike into it for a few seconds to dual pistols that run on pure darkness and can either fire shots as fast as you can pull the trigger or shoot out a pulse wave not unlike the weapons seen in Minority Report.
The game teases you initially with all these powers, but they're taken away and then slowly unlocked as you play through the game, giving you time to learn how to use that massive tentacle to lift cop cars and toss 'em around like they were Matchbox toys before you're given some of the other powers. It not only keeps you playing to see what you can do next, but slowly layers in more types of enemies and gives you more tools to deal with them. The pacing of the game can be a little uneven, mainly because the story missions are launched from the same hub world (a little slice of New York that lets you travel by subway to some other areas) that all the side stuff is in, and partly because there are some missions (I'm talking about you, church shootout) that can be unnecessarily difficult.
