Game #1125: The Darkness

 Careful not to stumble in the dark.

 It was but a few months ago that I played The Darkness II and discovered a surprisingly fun and often forgotten game. I had heard and read great things about The Darkness, the first game that took a stab at the dated comic, so I wanted to give it a try. Made by the same studio that developed the fantastic Chronicles of Riddick videogame, this is a very peculiar take on the character.

 For you see, they went with a more realistic and subdued take on what is otherwise a very generic super anti-hero. The Darkness is still a dark entity that grants Jackie Estacado super powers, but he doesn't don a super costume, he simply grows slimy appendages from his back. There are no super villains in the story, only a Mafia leader that wronged our hero. The comic is also much raunchier, vulgar and, frankly, dumb. Not to say that the script and dialogue in this game is high art, but it does have a few moments that stand out. That said, being an early HD game... the color palette is made up of greys, greys and a few browns, complimented by some rather stiff animations. It's not a good looking game, which is a stark contrast with how colorful the sequel looks.

 Y'know, I'll give you that the most often talked about moment in the game is well earned, but, for the most part, I found the dialogue to be quite bland. The whole revenge story was pretty trite, and after that key, spoilerific moment it never quite reaches that height. I was also miffed by how uneventful Jackie getting the darkness is, and how little emotion or reaction we get out of him. Some loading screens have Jackie speaking to Jenny, his girlfriend, and sometimes he talks about the darkness, but there's no shock, no surprise, no nothing. Even the enemies you fight barely react to your slimy tentacles with TEETH. The game is pseudo-open ended, as you have a small piece of town you can explore at your leisure as it opens up. It's not very large, but there are two train stations that act as hubs, and you can speak with NPCs and trigger sidequests. I didn't even know about these because you actually have to take your time, walk up to the NPCs and listen to them so that they'll trigger the sidequest conversations. Decent world building, yes, but sadly, the rewards aren't interesting in the slightest, so there's no real incentive to partake in them.

 The game is a simple first person shooter. The walking speed is annoyingly slow, you get regenerating health and the aiming and shooting feels weird. Shooting down baddies isn't very satisfying, and you have to rely on a red targeting reticule that locks onto enemies but sometimes your shots will miss anyways. You can aim down the sights but you die so quickly and move so slowly that it isn't very worth it most of the time. To aid you in combat, you get the Darkness. At first, their use is to enhance your survivability, but eventually you get a few abilities, such as a black hole that sucks enemies in. But you can't use them willy nilly, they need energy that you can only recharge by being in the shadows, so you'll have to destroy light sources. Gauging how much darkness you have left is kinda hard since you can only tell by how lit up the eyes on your tentacles are. Using the Darkness abilities also feels clunkier and boring like it does in the sequel, in this game it feels as if they were just a boring tool or another game mechanic, while in the sequel you do feel like a powerful monster.

 When not shooting you'll have to traverse the town, on foot or by train, from place to place, but the map is useless. Where is the Fulton Station? Where is the Orphanage? The map lacks any detail too, so besides highlighting in which area you are, you don't get your exact position or anything that would actually help you. I guess it's to help with immersion since you can interact with electronic guides inside the station, but I had no way to guess they were interactive in the first place. And the slow walking speed didn't help.

 I'm... quite disappointed, but I feel like The Darkness was as forgettable as the comic that spawned it. It's definitely not a bad game, not at all, but the story left a lot to be desired, considering how lauded it was, and the gameplay is stiff and rather boring. The sequel was a much better game in pretty much every way, shape and form.

 6.0