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Video Game Review: The Darkness
The Darkness
Starbreeze Studios
X-Box 360, PS3
As you play The Darkness, you will probably notice a special ability that your character has. It is activated when you walk up to the corpse of a recently killed mobster, and the option of eating this enemy heart with the press of the button is given. That basically sums up the entire game. You get to eat HEARTS.
The Darkness is a first person shooter, in which you play as Jackie Estacado, a mob hit man for the vicious Don, Paulie Francheti. Because Paulie is a very nervous man, who realizes that Jackie might try to overthrow him, Paulie puts a hit out on him, for lots of money. Luckily for Jackie, as he is about to be killed by Paulies goons, he is possessed by The Darkness, an evil force that is essentially the devil. This starts off Jackie’s quest to kill Paulie, before Paulie kills him. The story of this game is surprisingly solid, and the voice acting is amazing for a video game. Where the game really shines though, is the darkness powers.
When you are first possessed by The Darkness, you gain a limited number of powers, but the number of powers grows quickly. One of the main powers is to summon darklings, which are evil little demons that do your bidding. These things can maul the face off your enemies, mow them down in a hail of chain gun fire, or blow them up in an insane kamikaze explosion. But probably the best of all these abilities is the demon arm, which can be used to pick up nearly any object which is not nailed down, or just impale a bad guy through the chest and toss him around. It’s very satisfying.
Because of the nature of this demonic entity, these powers do not work when you are in the light. So you must destroy all of the lights that you see in order to let these powers work, and thus, survive. At first it is tedious to kill every light there is but after a while you get used to it. The only other major flaw I can name is the steep learning curve that the game has. If you’re not very good at first person shooters, you’re going to have a hard time getting through some parts of the game. Besides that the game is all good. It has solid controls, a good story, awesome graphics, and some incredibly bad-ass demon powers. Basically, if you have an X-box 360, or a PS3, buy this game. You won’t regret it.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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