THE DARKNESS: EEVVIIIL 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's a moment a few hours into the darkness where, after wandering around in a desert for like 20 minutes, there's massive, rusty, lovingly rendered train. as i've drafted review after review of the game, i keep coming back to the train. the sheer size of it. the mystique. 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 trace its gritty surface with my finger.
at their peak, starbreeze was the best licensed studio to ever do it. they could take an ip and ground you there. 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, 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 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.
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 and realism 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 darkness orbits around its titular demon, who lives in the back of mafioso protag jackie estacado. i don't wanna spoil too much of the story, but it goes places. crazier than any of the classic mafia media that inspired it while adhering to those inspirations enough for it to maintain the tension of its two worlds. 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. 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 that jackie is Just a Guy attempting to wrangle a demon, 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 is 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 it's serious.
this is the most conflicted 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 LITTLE TINY SPOILER SECTION
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."