THE DARKNESS: VIOLENT WALKING SIMULATOR
"i played this whole fuckin' thing with the music muted by complete accident. it's an immersive masterpiece and i took several pages of notes about how i adore it to pieces, but i don't even know how to review it anymore knowing that i drastically altered the sound design..."
there was a moment a few hours into the darkness where, after wandering around like 20 minutes, i found a massive, rusty train in the middle of this otherwise barren landscape. as i've drafted review after review of the game, i keep coming back to the train. the sheer size of it. the rusty sheen. the moody ps3 full-screen color tinting and aliasing making it come alive off my screen. maybe it was the pharyngoconjunctival fever hittin but i felt like i was there, like i could reach out and rub its surely gritty surface if i wanted to.
at their peak, starbreeze was the best licensed studio to ever do it. they didn't just "faithfully" adapt the ips they used. they made them better. no title exemplifies this more than the darkness, a gothy atmospheric switchup on an edgy bastard garth ennis comic. where the darkness ii (the more-beloved sequel) was a typical shooter that adhered to the comic's style, starbreeze's take is an fps in which walking, train rides, more walking, long cutscenes (with phenomenal voice acting), phone calls, brooding, and even walking watching tv take up more than half the runtime. movement speed is slow, but the map was carefully designed to accomodate your speed and prevent nauseating boredom while remaining realistic. these living, breathing environments feel like the full realization of the "detail-optimized" spaces of starbreeze's riddick series. unlike riddick, the artists took advantage of ennis' wild source material to constantly change up the vibes. there's everything from mafioso shit, gothic, noir, lovecraftian horror, to some certified nu-metal edge, all while maintaining a smoky wispy aura that glues it all together.
in one of the first rooms in the game, i noticed a tv. the man with the golden arm was playing, and so i turned down the in-game music to hear the dialogue better. watched about 70 minutes of the movie, it was good. i never remembered to turn the music back up. and honestly... that's how i'd recommend playing. i feel part of the reason i was in tune with the slower pace was cuz i didnt have shitty melodramatic made-for-tv-film-tier string music during the cutscenes or equally shitty metal riffs blasting during the combat.
the story and combat of the darkness orbits around its titular demon, who lives in the back of mafioso protag jackie estacado. if you'd like to know my thoughts on the story, they're in a spoiler-tagged backloggd review (or down below, if you scroll to the "story section"). all you need to know is it goes places. crazier than any of the classic mafia films that inspired it. anyway, the combat drops typical fps ammo rationing in favor of darkness energy bar management. with your energy filled, you can spawn little gremlin allies and kill people in gnarly ways. this is not a running-and-gunning kind of game, at least not if you want to have a good time. combat's been a huge point of contention for gamers in both the slow clunkadunk of its ability system and the minimal weapon feedback. however, given everything else i've described here i think it fits. this is one cohesive ass experience.
the only thing i'd say doesn't fit are the side quests. listen. a few of these are fine, and make the world feel even more alive. but when everything is so dedicated to selling the world to you, the bethesda-ian hitman jobs shatter the illusion completely. you can waste over an hour on these shits and they screw up the npc dialogue in a real "ludonarratively dissonant" ass way. so other than taking your time and turning down the music, my advice to anyone looking to play the darkness to avoid the hit jobs wholesale. when heather of all people tells you not to kill bitches in a video game, that's when you know shit's screwed up
this is the weirdest 5 star i've ever given out. soundscapes are so important to me and a bad soundtrack is enough to kill most chances of me enjoying a game. this one's just too special to pass up. play it.
END GAME REVIEW
ENTER STORY SECTION
Jackie Estacado is not what I expect of an FPS protagonist. My supposed "golden age" of the genre (1996-2004) houses very few even comparable to him, and the era thereafter was by and large occupied by Dickhead McWarguys. Well then, what makes him so different?
He's a dickhead with depth.
For all this "vengeance for Jenny" talk, Jackie acts like one selfish bastard. I understand that the trauma of being exposed to abuse and mafia life so young molded his cold demeanor. I don't doubt that he loved his girl. I do, however, doubt the motive behind the bloodlust that he indulges in. Jenny seems to fade further out of sight as the killing continues, and never once does he stop to question if she even would have wanted this.
I'd like to pose a theory: the titular Darkness is a metaphor. As Chandler mentioned in his review, the only people who acknowledge its existence are its victims, Paulie, Shrote, and Jackie himself. It's plausible that it may be nothing more than Jackie's own self-righteousness, hatred, and hunger for power. Just look at how the game ends: Jackie slaughtering and destroying in a (literal, at points) blind rage and becoming the new mob boss. I don't think this scene is supposed to be any kind of triumph! It isn't "badass", it's an emotionally stunted and traumatized manchild with a gun killing a sociopath. I also find it interesting that the only main characters to acknowledge the Darkness are Shrote and Paulie, the other two whose selfish impulses - their own Darknesses, perhaps - propelled them into positions of power. In the end, all Jackie accomplished was making himself like the men he hated most. "War, your gift. War, your heritage. War, your burden."