The Darkness

The Darkness is a FPS from Starbreeze, the developers of Chronicles of Riddick. In the game you play as Jackie Estacado. On the night of his twenty-first birthday, Jackie finds out he's being possesed by a demon called The Darkness. Manifesting as two demon snakes sprouting out of his shoulders, The Darkness helps Jackie out in taking revenge on his Uncle Paulie, who has wronged Jackie, and at the same time attempts to manipulate him. And you eat hearts from fallen enemies in this game. It's awesome.

The Darkness has a very compelling story, with interesting characters that are voiced really well by the voice-cast.

Jackie's voice gets the rasp in the voice just right, which is good because Jackie narrates the story during load times, which there are quite a lot of. You will see quite a bit of repetition in the random stuff you get while you take the train for example though. Overall though, the voices are great and even the side characters are fun to listen to.

Graphics are great, the New York setting is very recognizable, and the "WWI in hell"(you heard me) is also very good. The characters look quite lifelike and the ragdoll when you use your Darkness Powers, which I'll get to later, is impressive. It's a very goodlooking game overall.

The gunplay in The Darkness feels somewhat weak, and your pistols are pretty much the best guns in the game. Making dual pistols more effective than a shotgun, even when shooting an enemie from upclose, is lame. The weak gunplay is more than made up for by the Darkness Powers. You get Creeping Dark early on, which allows you to send out one of the snakes on your shoulders to sneak around, even on walls and ceilings, breaking vents

and taking dudes out from a safe spot in the shadows. You've also got a demon arm, a giant spike jutting out of your side with which you can impale enemies. The demon are is hands-down the coolest abilitie in the game. Casually throwing aside an enemie with the arm is awesome and makes you feel like a powerhouse. There's also a blackhole that will suck up enemies, kill them and then send their limp bodies flying. You also get demon pistols which have unlimited ammo but take up Darkness Energie, which you regain by standing the shadows. In fact, you'll always want to be in a dark place to use your full power. You're much weaker in a light locale, so you'll find yourself shooting out a lot of lights, which can get annoying after a while. In the end, The Darkness doesn't have the twitch-gunplay games like COD4 boast, but the powers make the combat enjoyable.

The Darkness can be compared with games like Bioshock, that have it's atmosphere as a main selling point. I'd say if you liked Bioshock, you'll The Darkness. It's not terribly long, but it's a fantastic experience.