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By Keith B (23rd Jul 2007)

In a world of mediocre first person shooter romps through the never-ending landscapes of WWII, killing wave after wave of evil Nazi’s, it takes something special to perk an avid gamer’s attention. The Darkness is one such game.

First of all, a bit of background. The Darkness is based on a successful string of comic books, and although your first thought may bring a tear as you remember the completely under-utilised Judge Dredd abomination, rest assured. You play as Jackie Estacado, rescued from an orphanage at a young age and sent to live with the mob, where your new uncle Paulie grooms you into one of the organisation’s most successful hitmen. All seems to be going well, until your twenty-first birthday. While on a job for Paulie, you discover he’s got other plans and attempts to blow you to pieces when you reach your mark, a construction foreman. Cue a big explosion and you being propelled through a window and onto the street below.

This near-death experience also sees the emergence of a creature, called the Darkness, a sort of surrogate entity which surfaces in Jackie and speaks to him in guttural tones with promises of eternal pain, and continually telling Jackie he is nothing but a puppet to this evil manifestation. Initially not particularly a pleasurable experience, the game soon picks up pace and before you know it, you’re been provided with your first dark power, and this is where the whole picture distorts.

By hitting the left shoulder button you activate the Darkness, which sees a flurry of tentacles surround you, two of which are fronted with glowing eyes and razor sharp teeth. You can send one of these snakes on recon missions ahead of your character, sneaking up on enemies who you can kill with a snap of your jaws, then devouring their hearts for more of your dark power. Staying away from light makes you more powerful, while stepping into the light sees your appendages sizzling in pain.

Aside from the powers themselves, while in Darkness mode you see lots of little portals scattered throughout the game. Approach one of these and you can summon a Darkling, little imp like creatures who scurry around doing your bidding. There are four types - suicide bombers, light destroyers (handy for getting rid of light sources if you’re a fan of the dark side), gunners and berserkers. Each of them is handy in a variety of situations, and all of them are funny companions, shouting abuse and very potty-mouthed insults at every opportunity.

Providing any further plot outlines and details may indeed turn out to be spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that. It’s safe to tell you that your mission in life is to track down your uncle Paulie and administer some justice on him, for the attempted assassination on you and a whole raft of other things that emerge throughout the game.

On my first play through, it took a while for me to get into The Darkness, for a number of reasons. The game isn’t strictly a first person shooter, and if you have played Starbreeze’s other creation, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, you’ll know what I mean. Based around a couple of train stations in New York, which provide access to all the games’ areas, there is a considerable amount of talking with NPCs and unlocking side quests, all of which provide a little more meat on the bones of the game. The main quest accelerates quickly enough, but a Max Payne-styled noir feel to the proceedings prevent the pace from quickening too much. Suffice to say that the story is superb, and the timing, initially slow, becomes impeccable, keeping the player entertained and excited about finding out more. This is what really sets The Darkness apart from the crowd - its driven and entertaining storyline.

When you look at it as a whole, there is a range of things that aren’t stellar about this game. Despite being set in New York, the streets around Chinatown rarely have more than two or three people on them (there are more people in the train stations). Despite looking luscious and well designed you can’t enter most of the buildings, making them little more than nice textures. Of all the NPCs in the game (not quest characters, but the randoms walking the streets, only six people voiced them, and they all say the same thing (click on one and you get a: “We OK?” All the time.)

Add in the finicky controls for your powers, like your snake seeming to climb walls in a most unusual fashion, causing serious disorientation (and forcing you to retract it all the way in order to start your journey with it again); your demon arm having a less than fantastic range of abilities (want to throw that car into the group of mafia hitmen? Sorry, no dice).

The AI themselves are rarely any threat either (especially on Normal difficulty), and often just hide behind cover and pop their heads out regularly, just waiting for you to put one between their eyes. And finally, throw in the weird underworld stages, where you travel back to WWI (there had to be a WW in here somewhere), which are foggy, boring and while atmospheric and plot-developing, they really only serve to highlight how much better the New York stages are.

But it’s hard not to like The Darkness, and there is a lot of respect for both the developers and the game itself for being something new, something interesting that carries players along like reading a good page-turner of a book. The options available to the player, on just about every element of the game, are impressive and the ways of approaching the gameplay are excellent. Feel like being a behemoth of the dark side and disembowelling everyone you come across, you can go for it. Prefer a stealthy approach, killing people without them knowing where you are? Easy. Prefer guns blazing in typical FPS fare? Take aim.

There are also a whole host of little innovative touches that add to the whole experience. Gone are the typical loading screens, and in place we have Jackie standing in a pool of light, talking to someone off screen, explaining his thinking. Only if you die 37 times at the one place will it get annoying as some screens loop, but throughout the game it’s a refreshing touch and a genuine reason to love loading screens, if you can believe that.

Multiplayer is also a refreshing experience, with a couple of options available with regard to game types. It’s not going to be a Rainbow Six: Vegas, but it’s worth a look.

It’s this side of The Darkness which keeps you entertained, providing an interesting tapestry of options to get through the game. You forgive the oversights and lack of polish because the game just wants to make you happy. It just wants you to enjoy yourself, so much so that it’s all but impossible not to. Good concept, good story, good execution �" good game.

PS: I was dying to hear Mike Patton, from Faith No More fame, voicing the Darkness itself, but the hype killed the experience. Could have been anyone.