Critique: The Darkness (XBOX 360)

The Darkness is a first-person shooter by Swedish developer Starbreeze Studios, developer of The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a game made special by being a thousand times better than the movie that stars the same protagonist, Vin Diesal. But enough about that.

In The Darkness, you play as Jackie Estacado, a New York City, Italian hit man who wears black clothes and long, black, gothic hair. What makes him extra special is that he is semi-possessed by his friend The Darkness, a tentacled monster, demon thing that speaks to you with a voice that sounds like a mixture between Lord Sauron and Gollum. Because it is hard to understand what Mr. Darkness says, every time he speaks, words appear on screen in the font you would use when writing ominous, bloody messages on walls next to people you kill in real life. Other than putting voices in Jackie's head, The Darkness also gives Jackie tentacle-heads-with-razor-teeth-sticking-from-his-back, demon powers and the ability to summon imps who help you by yelling obscenities and killing everything. (Other than Darkness powers, you also get the usual assortment of cliché guns.)

Your goal in The Darkness is to kill "Uncle" Paulie, the worst family member you've ever had based on the number of times he tries to kill you. I won't tell you the plot, but I will tell you that the game is so replete with stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue that you'll come to realize that the writers nailed writing stereotype, New York City, Italian gangster dialogue in lieu of composition that would actually make you think about the meaning of life or not be bored into killing yourself. The writing is so bland that I didn't laugh or cry once. It's so stereotypical that the protagonist compares the New York City subway to spaghetti and meatballs. Even the dialogue's liberal mewing of "fuck" and "cocksucker" doesn't temper the game's eloquence deficiency since it is used boringly. Hell, I can write a more affecting poultry language sentence than any of The Darkness splurgings right now: Barney the Literacy Dinosaur walks onstage and says: "Hey Kids! Let's sing a song about suck focking! Hur! Hur! Hur!"

Speaking of unhappiness, the graphics do a wonderful job of reminding you how miserable you're supposed to be with its omnipresence of black and grey, the melancholy alleviated now and then by vandalism. And it's rendered using the Starbreeze Engine, which looks like the Doom 3 (id Tech 4) engine. Luckily for victims of the game, many of the animations are impressive; it's satisfying to see you grab an enemy and fill him with bullets. It's also satisfying to watch your tentacle heads eat your enemies' hearts for the first three times (there are only so many animations for eating a heart). At the same time, many of the animations are bland, like the unchanging facial expressions. The world slowly comes off as fake, especially when an old lady I retrieved a bracelet for kept staring into the subway rails looking for her lost bracelet; then there's the mob guy who I couldn't give a thingy to even though I had the thingy and the game instructions ruled that I must give it to him to get whatever trinket the developers forgot about; then there are your mafia friends failing to react to major events (usually at least one reacts).

Not that I am against unhappiness-themed games. But unhappiness themes only work when that and other factors mesh into an effective, interdependent, love-obsessed unicorn whole; and with games, the most important factor tends to be fun; that's where this entertainment fails. I played The Darkness on normal difficulty, and the game was so easy that, in the first half of the game, I only died a few times and only because I was prancing around fire fights like a gothic, pistol-wielding ballerina of retardedness. I was so bored that when I eventually saw a few WWI, British soldiers get their brains blown out execution-style by a German soldier, I felt like the game was presenting an allegory of itself.

The Darkness isn't completely bad. The voice acting is decent. The heavy metal music that accompanies the fire fights gives that warm and fuzzy feeling of belligerence (at least, during the few good gun fights). And, you can watch To Kill a Mockingbird in the game. I don't know if the game has the whole film, but still, I like To Kill a Mockingbird.

But really, the game, when fun is the goal, fails. There is some dialogue about love and evisceration with decent cinematography that touched my heart, but seeing as that lasted, and I'm being generous here, for thirty of the 320+ heart-eating minutes I burned on this romance, I can't recommend this game over the comic book series it's based on.

Stay away from The Darkness.