The Darkness is based on a comic book series, created by Top Cow that was popular in the late 1990s. The series was created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis, and David Wohl. Other noted writers, including Paul Jenkins, have also worked on The Darkness. Paul Jenkins developed the story for the game.
You play Jackie Estacado (voiced by Kirk Acevedo – Band of Brothers, Oz) a contract killer for the Franchetti crime family. He and his girlfriend Jenny (voiced by Lauren Ambrose – Six Feet Under) grew up in an orphanage together until Jackie was adopted by Paulie, the vicious head of the Franchetti crime family. On Jackie’s 21st birthday Uncle Paulie tries to kill Jackie, but Jackie is saved by release of The Darkness (voiced by Mike Patton – Lead singer of Faith No More) which has been waiting deep inside Jackie growing stronger until it can reveal itself on this 21st birthday. The Darkness is passed on from Father to Son at the moment of conception, at which point the father dies.
Jackie is no saint, he has been a hit man for the mob, but in this game his mission is one of revenge. He is out to bring down Uncle Paulie, his men, and the corrupt cops who work for them. And if a ruthless killer can be a good guy, this is probably as good as he will get. He is walking around New York City killing guys more ruthless then himself.
The Darkness inside Jackie gets more powerful by eating the hearts of the men that Jackie kills. Yes that is what I said, after you kill them you let the two serpents, one over each shoulder that represent The Darkness rip the heart out of your victims and gobble them up. If by some miracle you mistakenly leave someone alive, you don’t get prompted to take their heart. I usually just shot them again and took the heart. Power is power after all. And devouring hearts is how you go up in levels of darkness power.
Light is the enemy of The Darkness. If you get in the light you will likely die, but if you can stay to the shadows (or shoot out the lights) then you will live and your enemies will die. The game takes place at night, and a lot of your time is taken up by shooting out light bulbs while other people try to shoot at you.
But if you do your job well then they will die and you will live to devour the hearts of the guys you just whacked. As you use your powers, your darkness level will be drained, shown by the dimming of the light on the serpents. But if you stand in the shadows their power will recharge.
For a shooter, Jackie does not have a large selection of guns to draw from, but any game that starts you out wielding two pistols is always good in my book. For the pistols you can fire them separately by pulling the left and right triggers too, which is an innovative control method. Guns aside, The Darkness also gives you access to some cool (and a few useless) supernatural powers.
The first power that you gain is the creeping darkness. Basically you send a supernatural snake out which can explore around corners, as well as open locked doors and climb over walls and open locked gates. I found this to be very useful and fairly easy to control, with the exception of climbing over walls where I always had problems controlling it from the moment it started up the wall.
The second power you get is the Demon arm, which is extremely useful. You can use the long tentacles to attack your enemies and to knock out lights.
The third power is Darkness guns which I found to be worse then normal guns and they quickly drain away your stored Darkness power.
The final power is the ability to form a black hole to suck in your enemies. With this final power the game becomes super easy as Jackie is almost unstoppable.
Besides your Darkness powers you may also call upon four different Darklings, which are basically like gremlins. Their names are Berserker, Gunner, Kamikaze, and Lightkiller. Just like you, they are vulnerable to the light, so it’s best to call upon them once you have knocked out all the lights in the area.
The Berserker is the first one you get access to and he is what he sounds like: he will kill anything he sees, and he can also lead you to where you need to go, but you had best have killed every light you can before you summon him to do this. The second one is the Gunner and he is a little gremlin with a Gatling gun. The third one is the Kamikaze. He runs forward with a bomb strapped to his back and when he gets near bad guys he goes boom. The final one is the Lightkiller and his job is to go forward and kill the lights by shooting out an electrical current.
The level of detail in the few areas of New York City that you can visit is extreme, but the problem is that there are only a couple of them. I am not going into extreme detail here, besides mentioning that if you find a TV, you can literally sit down and watch a one of a small selection of full length movies. If you’re not in a rush, I recommend doing this the first time you visit Jenny’s apartment early on in the game. She’s got a good TV.
Twice during the game Jackie will travel to another world where Zombies are fighting the First World War too. I actually enjoyed this area more, and also found it more challenging, as you have to devour the hearts of the zombies fast or they will get back up and start shooting at you again.
The only two areas of the game that were a bit disappointing were the last quarter of the single player game where you are pretty much unstoppable because the enemies have not gotten progressively harder as the game continues (thought this is balanced out ever so slightly with some good cut scenes), and the waste of my time multiplayer levels. In the four multiplayer options (death match, team death match, capture the flag, and sole survivor) you and seven friends take on the role of mobsters and Darklings on one of a dozen small maps.
With some of the best voice acting for the PS3 to date, a good story line, some very detailed and well thought out settings The Darkness comes together to make a really fun/gory concept for a shooter. I really enjoyed the single player game which takes about ten hours to finish. If you do some of the side quests which can mainly be found in the subway station it may take you a bit longer. In my opinion this makes The Darkness the second must have FSP out for the PS3. (The first one being Fall of Man) The Darkness earns 4.5 GiN Gems.
Note: Review Conducted With A PS3.