The Darkness.

The Darkness is a game based on the Dark Horse Comic book of the same title. The game is about a young mob henchman who becomes cursed with his very own evil moray eels growing out of his back that feed on the hearts of evil doers to help you gain more dark powers so you can feed on the hears of more powerful evil doers. The game begins with your "Uncle" trying to make you into precooked bite-sized morsels. Had he succeeded this would have been a might bit short for a game. The action does set into motion a series of events that drive the game forward with a structure that belies its literary structure.

The story is written by Paul Jenkins, one of my favorite comic book writers. He has written The Darkness comic book series among others, including some of my favorite issues of The Incredible Hulk. As a matter of fact. before the Darkness, he wrote one of my favorite guilty pleasures, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (with its inclusion of Savage Banner.) Jenkins has a real feel for the characters he writes and while in this game they come off a bit cliché, it fits the over the top style of the game that helps it feel like you are in a comic book.

The game play is pretty straightforward FPS. The controls were responsive enough that I didn't swear and throw the controller at all! Big step for me. There are a lot of really fun weapons that come standard in these types of games... Shotguns, Pistols, Sniper Rifles, etc. The Darkness powers are the reason to play this game. They are graphic little bastards. The heart eating is particularly fun in a graveyard humor kind of way. The eels literally rip the hearts out of the chests of the bad guys and then fight over them in front of your vision ( don't eat in the middle of a fight. It turns out how you might expect.) There is also the ability to detach an eel and see through its eyes as you control it, Damage Shield while the darkness is active, and more. The most visually impressive is the ability to summon a black hole that pulls everything into it and then collapses... it is frickin' sweet. You can also summon "Darklings" in four flavors to have them help you in fights... or in my case kill all of the innocent civilians I have just left alone because THEY WERE INNOCENT CIVILIANS!!! (turn around and they are all dead... grumble grumble grumble. Can't even eat their hearts.)

Online play to me was not very satisfying. In multi-player you get to be a Dude with a gun or a Darkling with claws, but all of the stuff that makes the game fun is missing. No eels... Eels would have been cool. The ultimate camping weapon. No Black Hole. No Darkness at all. I though it was fun for about 10 minutes, but then I was putting Rainbow Six Vegas back into the 360 and playing on War Town. I will give the online play another go when my friend gets done with it, but for now it was underwhelming.

The games length is a problem for me to recommend this game for purchase ( and the limp multi-player.) This is a comic book game with a comic book length story. This is no Oblivion epic. This is a bite size morsel that I was able to finish in about 8 to 10 hours. For me it was a weekend. It also doesn't hold any replay value for me either. The story is pretty straightforward without any twists or turns (sans one that isn't something I would want to "relive".)

This is defiantly an M rated game with a capitol "M." There is blood, evisceration, murder, suicide, patchwork zombie things, patchwork zombie people, urination on the dead (humorously done, but still present), and for all of those parents who feel all of that is ok but do not like your kids to hear dirty words... Lots of the "F"! It is about the Mob... in the Bronx... it is clichéd, so the "F" is prevalent.

This game is a solid rental. I wish I could recommend buying it sight unseen, but I can't. Given the ease of which I finished this game on normal and that I have no wish to go through it again (even for the achievement,) it is the Gaming equivalent of settling back on a summer evening with a semi spooky paperback book and giving yourself the heebie-jeebies before you go to bed.

Gameplay 90%
Story 90%
Online 60%
Replay 40%

Overall 70%

Up in your darkness, Eating your hearts,
GYulus