Massive potential, massive letdown.
The Darkness is like a car. It's a car that was built from scratch with all of the best car parts from all of the different cars. Unfortunately, since they're all from different cars, they don't fit together nicely and the car won't run right regardless of how nice it looks.
One of the best features is the execution system. Simply, when you get close to an enemy you pull the trigger on your gun and presto, a kickass animation showing you dispatching the enemy with style. There are a lot of animations, and the best never seem to get old. Unfortunately, the game makes your character move very slowly, and gives little health even with the Darkness shield activated. This means that this tactic is mostly only usable against the early enemies, or for those willing to take a risk. That said, the gunplay is quite good and looks quite good. Jackie's arm movements seem true and pretty stylish.
Another promising feature is that of the Darkness powers. These powers are satisfyingly brutal and effective in their own right, such as the darkness arm that can impale enemies or fling objects at them. Unfortunately, the control scheme makes quick use of the skills cumbersome, as you flip through the skills looking for the symbol/color of your choice 2 or 3 seconds have passed by. Many cutscenes also show these powers doing great, but simple and logical things, yet you are unable to do them.
The story was also very promising. Fantastic voice acting, characters and background are set up, but the two stories of Jackie's relationship to the Darkness and the mob both come off as not fully explored and overall unsatisfying. Many concepts and characters who are mentioned don't end up playing a role. For example, in one section, the darkness mentions characters are "one of four" and "two of four". These characters are separated by about a half hour. Three of four and four of four are never mentioned. The story only needed about another half hour to provide some very much needed answers, but instead they ended on a cliffhanger of sorts.
The rest of the game has its ups and downs. The Darkness' vulnerability to light, while central to the story and thus not really negotiable, is often an extremely frustrating mechanic, as you may consider yourself totally fine when suddenly the darkness shrivels away and you are turned into swiss cheese. The open world aspect of the game both helps by making you familiar with the locations and providing for some down time, but also hurts with excessive loading between areas (hopefully any sequel will have fast travel), and constant backtracking.
The visuals are pretty good considering the 2007 release date, and the sound is very good, with Mike Patton's voicing of the Darkness being especially impressive.
Overall, The Darkness is a game of great style and often great execution, but a lack of focus. If the developers had focused on the gunplay and had fewer Darkness powers, maybe the Darkness would have been less cumbersome. The same goes vice versa. Increased run speed, fast travel, all little things that would have made this a truly great game, but unfortunately without them the game is left as purely mediocre.
