The Darkness (Xbox 360)

New York is fairly well designed, linked by a Subway Hub system that allows you to visit various parts of the city. The city itself feels empty, vacant and lacks the life that it really needed to bring the game alive and suspend your disbelief. The respawning lights I can forgive this time.

The Darkness game looks nice and the character models are really well detailed, Jackie looks a little different to his comic self and takes some getting used to. The graphics and animations are spot on and the manifestation of the Darkness looks cool from a FPS perspective. I wasn't so impressed with how he appears in reflections, you can pop-out the Darkness suddenly and it looks a little false compared to turning off the power, where the tentacles and stuff slip away gradually.

There's a real feeling of character to the actual left and right tentacles, though rightie always seems to get the action (and the hearts) compared to poor old leftie. I would have liked to have seen more done with those two, especially if you could actually use them in hand to hand combat. The Darkness is a pretty gory game but its comic-book violence and nothing to write to certain Florida based Lawyers about.

The animations for the NPC's are excellent, they talk a lot with their hands which takes some getting used to. But the range of motions and the expressions on their faces is some really top notch stuff. Especially when combined with the gorgeous graphics engine that delivers some superb visuals and effective lighting/shadows.

The Darkness TV is another excellent addition, it reminded me of Max Payne and having some of those old shows on the game TV's was an inspired bit of lunacy, especially Flash Gordon and some of the older cartoons. Yet it shows what the technology can do.

Starbreeze added a bit of a knock-about multiplayer mode, but it's nothing that hasn't been seen before. It's pretty run-of the mill and generic, with the ability to shift between Darkling and human forms added to spice it up a little. I can't see there being much mileage in the mode but people will play it to rack up a few achievements they can't get from the solid singleplayer.

The music and sound in the Darkness is top quality, there's a deeply creepy atmosphere to some of the tracks in this game, especially some of the down-time music when you're moping around the Subway looking for answers. The voice acting in the game in superb, with the likes of Dwight Schultz and newcomer, Mike Patton (Frontman: Faith No More) to provide the dialogue. Mike plays the voice of the Darkness and a top quality job he does of it too, scratchy, creepy, vindictive and thoroughly evil.

All in all the Darkness is a step in the right direction, if Starbreeze removed the multiplayer and added more story it would be a really top-notch game. But against the likes of Riddick it still falls a bit short, not even Mike's creepy Darkness portrayal and demonic overtones can save it from the cruddy Darkling AI. The AI in general is passable except for those little buggers, who end up acting like tools rather than being tools the player can use to help them accomplish a mission.