A decent shooter with a great story.
The Darkness is a game that does many things right. The story is very entertaining, and it is a shining example of how voice acting can be done well in a video game. There are a lot of Starbreeze touches as well. Anybody who played The Chronicles Of Riddick will notice the familiar touches in the character interactions and even in the graphical look to a certain extent.
The gameplay is entertaining, but not spectacular. There are more visceral and satisfying shooters on the market, especially now. The FPS genre is an especially hard one to stand out in these days. The twist on the gameplay is brought about by the introduction of The Darkness. They possess the lead character, Jackie on his 21st birthday, and as a result he can use them to defeat his enemies in devastating and very entertaining ways. So entertaining in fact, that you never really want to use the normal weapons. The trade off is that The Darkness can only be used in the dark. But the game never really makes it difficult to find dark spots or to take out overhead lights. The enemies, save for a few, never really get more difficult or more interesting as the game progresses. You never feel that your darkness powers are ever pushed to their limits with difficult boss characters. It can make combat a feel a little empty as Jackie is the most powerful being in the game. You hardly feel like you overcame the enemies with wit or skill. The result is a feeling of opportunity wasted.
In fact the game is full of these wasted opportunities. For example, they have the good idea to let you wander the streets of New York, but the environments are pretty small in size, and you will be going back and forth between them fairly often. It never feels even close to being like a real city. Its a shame, because the characters that fill the game world are all well voiced and probably would have been really interesting in a more populated game world.
Though the game had the potential to be so much more, there is a lot of high quality to be experienced in this game.
In the end its a rare case of story surpassing gameplay.
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