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Great review Chimpy but I heard that the multi player is really bad and laggy at the moment. Have you had a chance to play it yet?
Spurred on by the success of their XBOX title 'The Chronicals of Riddick', and signed up to a new publisher in the form of Take2, Swedish developers Vivendi have created an amazing, passionate piece of gaming history in their first 360 title 'The Darkness'.
The Darkness is based on a Comic book and its main protagonist is Jackie Estacado, a young Italian New Yorker who on his 21st birthday undergoes a transformation as he aquires 'The Darkness'.. a demon from hell which possesses him and his family before him.
The main thing that strikes you about The Darkness is the sheer quality of the voice acting and storytelling. From the opening scene which lets you know exactly what you are in for as within the first minute you have witnessed a full on decapitation and are in the throes of a huge car chase / gun fight with the NYPD as you career through the transit tunnels under the City. You would be forgiven for thinking so but this isn't a run and gun game. Its quite unforgiving, and its very easy to expose yourself and die quickly. You have to have you wits about you and think about what you are going to do before executing your move.
The firearms are a good mix. From dual weilding pistols / smgs to shotguns, rifles and full on machine guns you blast your way through the storyline until you aquire The Darkness... where from this point on, everything changes.
The Darkness appears in the form of snake type tentacles which take on different abilities as you progress through the game and eat the hearts of your victims. From the power to slither through gratings and summoning voids or black holes, to actually picking up vehicles and objects or impaling people. All these powers however can only be used when the Darkness meter contains energy, and this can only be kept full by staying in the dark. As such, the game begins to play out in a whole new way as you progress, as you are constantly taking out light sources which enables you to stay in the dark, thus enabling you to take out your enemies with the Darkness rather than your human firearms.
You can also summon 'Darklings' which are little creatures that run around and do damage to nearby foes, or which self destruct to blow up walls to create new pathways to progress. Each darkling (there are 4 types) is unlocked at various progression stages of the main storyline.
The game, appropriately, has a very black sense of humour and loading screens are not the normal type and each have a cut scene of Jackie talking and telling a little story. The whole game feels like you are watching a movie and the quality shines through, with you actually wanting the conclusion to come just so you can know what happens. There are also side missions thoughout the game which can be activated by talking to the NPCs in the tube stations, which also act as the link to the different parts of the city.
The graphics are suitably next gen, the sound is great and the whole atmosphere sucks you in. There are a few niggles here and there with NPCs walking into walls etc but nothing that spoils the game in any way except maybe there was no need for such bad language so constantly throughout the game. The gore is quite horrific at times also. Definitely not for the kids.
The game will take you about 10 hours to complete on the normal setting and there are plenty of unlockables, cool artwork and DEV footage to view on the disc. There is also multiplayer which is CTF and Elimination, both solo and team in maps which are taken from the single player campaign. In my forays online I have not really had any of the Lag that is being widely reported but the Multiplayer is a muted affair, with nothing really to write home about.. its simply.. standard.
This game is a MUST BUY for anyone with a next gen console.
