This game looks unlike anything else, only bearing some minor resemblance to Starbreeze's previous title, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, which in future I'll refer to as just Riddick (because fuck the acronym TCoR:EFBB). Having already been a huge fan of Riddick, I was dying to play The Darkness, but, since it was a console exclusive, I wouldn't play it until circa 2015, years after I played and loved its sequel. And at that time it was a major disappointment to me. Going into it now, with lowered expectations, I was able to appreciate it a lot more, but still this is one of the most polarizing games I've ever played.

The game's art direction is clearly its strongest suit. I don't think there's another game that conveys the lonely bleakness of dimly-lit streets and alleyways, working-class apartments, secret dens, bunkers, and cathedrals. I think the main visual motif here is "there's always a little bit of light in the darkness," as one of the main characters puts it. Which works really well with reinforcing the game's main theme: the inevitability of loss, and the beauty of transience. There is clearly a point at which the story hints at death being the reliever of pain and struggle, with the implication being that one should learn to let go, but then it does a 180 and basically forces the player to give in to rage and bloodlust. Is it trying to say that a circle of violence cannot be broken? Either way, it felt like it canceled out a lot of what I felt I (and Jackie, the protagonist) had achieved throughout the game. I have a hypothesis on the secret meaning of this narrative, but I won't share it here.

Otherwise there is no clear explanation. The story is quite minimalist, probably on purpose. I think the game succeeds at building an atmosphere and a strong cast of characters, with some of the best voice-acting I've heard in a game, and an excellent visual presentation, as well as the soundtrack. This is the kind of game where just inhabiting its world is pleasant enough, especially if you're in a melancholic mood. It seems to savor the gloomy sadness of encroaching doom, which all characters seem to be trapped in.

When it comes to the gameplay however, oh boy, this just might be the worst mainstream FPS I've ever played. I think I've played budget Polish titles that were more enjoyable.

First of all, for a console FPS, it expects an unrealistic level of precision, while the auto-aim is straight-up broken. Having played Watch Dogs, Sleeping Dogs, and Red Dead Redemption on this same console recently, I can tell that aiming can be done relatively well on a console, but in this game it's abominable. It isn't helped by unstable framerate, which often dips seemingly below 20, and it makes the aiming even less responsive. While I'm at it, I want to point out that I decided to not take this aspect into consideration when rating the game. It's a shame The Darkness didn't come out on PC and that its PS3 version sucks, but that's not necessarily the fault of the game itself.

You are given 4 superpowers, and the aiming becomes a bigger problem when using your most-commonly used power, which I call "the claw" (idk what it's called really). The gist of it is: one of your tentacles has a sharp end, which can impale enemies, grab objects and kill lights. Pretty neat, except it never fucking hits what you're aiming at, except for those times when you're aiming a few millimeters away from your target, which is when it hits exactly where you're aiming at. The thing is so frustrating to use, but basically you need to use it all the time to destroy the lights, because your superpowers (most importantly armor) only work in the darkness.

This is a cool mechanic in theory, but it's so poorly implemented here because all levels are painfully linear, and you have to keep stopping at every light to kill it in case you might want to retreat there when you're being ambushed by enemies. In fact, unlike in the sequel, here you are very vulnerable. So, while the sequel is a fun gorefest, the original Darkness is a slow and methodical shooter. Not because it's designed to utilize such a playstyle but because that's the only playstyle works.

What makes it egregious though is that you're almost constantly forced to get very close to enemies. One of the first things you are taught is that you can perform quick kills by just pressing the attack button when you're up close to an enemy. Except this only works with SOME weapons, and the game will never tell you which ones. Figure it out with trial and error. The aforementioned claw also has a very limited range, except when you're up close to an enemy, which is when it stops working altogether, becoming a real pain in the ass to use. And good luck grabbing an enemy when there are other objects in the room.

Another super-power you have is taking control of one of your snakes, which can crawl through vents and other such shit, and can kill enemies too. It completely debilitates you, and controlling it is a pain in the ass, so I never used it in battle.

Then you have the "super guns" for lack of a better name. It's just a pair of guns that uses your Darkness energy instead of bullets. Another useless power, as you always have ammo, and it's not a good idea to waste your Darkness energy during a fight, leaving you without your armor in the end.

The last power, a black hole, will also suck out all of your Darkness energy, but it's basically a nuke. Throw it into a crowd of enemies, and they will all die. It's a cool power, but its limited range also makes it kinda worthless. Because you wanna use it at larger groups of enemies, but those are specifically the groups you wanna stay far away from, from where your black hole wouldn't reach them.

So the best tactic is to basically forget about the powers and just run around and shoot everyone, except on PS3 hitting anyone is a blind luck.

At certain places you'll find these little holes, which are like portals to another dimension, from where you can summon 4 types of darklings, little goblins that are supposed to aid you. You have:

1. berserker, who lunges at enemies and beats them to death
2. gunner, who doesn't understand the concept of walls, so he will usually stand somewhere and shoot at a wall
3. kamikaze, who will explode upon encountering an enemy
4. lightkiller, who will maybe, sometimes, if he feels like it, kill some lights, but otherwise will very slowly shoot electrical charges at enemies.

They're all worthless because they always stay beside you. If you're standing in front of a room full of bad guys, they will not proceed unless you walk into it first. And obviously the light killer won't kill any lights that you can't kill faster.

And, if you thought walking through linear corridors and stopping every couple of seconds to kill the lights wasn't tedious enough, the game also encourages you to stop at every corpse and devour its heart. Which further discourages you from having any fun with the claw, grabbing enemies and throwing them some place far away, because you then will have to go looking for their corpses.

As a cherry on top, despite the linearity of levels, the level design is pretty confusing. There were several moments where I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. Sometimes it's a tiny entrance somewhere in the corner, which is hard to see in the darkness, as it's not highlighted by anything. Later in the game there were turret sections (because why not at this point?), and after one of them there's a sequence where a monster grabs your vehicle and you're supposed to shoot at it non-stop for like 2 minutes. I died there two times and started thinking I was doing something wrong. Then I looked it up in a walkthrough, and they said you just gotta keep shooting at it. So I tried it a couple more times and finally it worked. I literally didn't do anything different.

When you're not shooting things, you can walk around metro stations and talk to characters, Deus Ex-like (which was also the case in Riddick). Often these characters will give you side-quests, which will send you between different locations and back to metro stations, forcing you to sit through a lot of admittedly really cool, but repetitive loading screens. Completing them will unlock extra content like concept art, comic books and scripts of the game. It's all pretty cool, but I don't care. I'm not gonna be reading this stuff in front of a TV. Towards the end I started skipping any and all sidequests.

In the end, the Darkness is a really mixed bag. I admit I ended up enjoying a lot of it. Despite all the gameplay flaws, there are a lot of memorable and beautiful moments that will stay in your memories longer than the flaws. But, good God, I never want to touch this game again. It is a clunky piece of shit. I can't believe the same developers that did Riddick, which is a near-perfect game, flopped so fucking hard with this. I've heard Nightdive Studios hinted at remastering this game, and I really hope they do. With mouse aiming and stable performance it will be a much more tolerable experience, and with mod support it might even become good. Then anybody will be able to experience the beauty of its world and characters without having to put themselves through torture the way I just did.

One thing I still don't get is how this game got such good reviews, when, for example, Clive Barker's Jericho, a very comparable game in terms of its reliance on minimalist story and strong atmosphere, was trashed by gamers and critics alike. In terms of gameplay, Jericho is a fucking masterpiece in comparison. I hate you all.