April 10, 2008

The Darkness Impressions (360)

Just as I was hoping, I found The Darkness for a discounted price ($29.99) and I decided to pick it up, since I always had my eye on it throughout its development and I am a huge fan of Starbreeze's previous effort, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.
 
I've played it for the past few days and so far I am having a great time!  I find it a shame that the game did not get more press when it was released, because it is right up my alley.  The game has some down time where you are left to do a bit of exploring and speak to characters, plenty of ways to dispose of your enemies, and it does a great job of making you feel like a bad-ass character possessed by an evil demon entity.  In fact, my biggest compliant so far is that I wish enemies would react even more to the fact that you have glowing eyes and two snake-like shadow tentacles emitting from your shoulder blades which go around devouring the hearts of their dead comrades.  I would have loved to have seen more "real-time" reactions like the ones your see in the cutscene where your powers manifest for the first time (enemies fleeing in terror, dropping their guns and running, etc.).  Granted, the game already gets kinda easy once you acquire all your Darkness powers, so having enemies terrified and not wanting to fight you would have been too much, but the fact that they don't seem to mind much bothers me.  That being said, it still is a great feeling walking into a room, taking out the lights with a giant demon tentacle and then impaling enemies with that same tentacle as if they were nothing but a minor nuisance.
 
Some general observations:
 
- The graphics are solid, with great textures and lighting.
- Character models are adequate but suffer from poor lip-syncing.
- The voice acting is pretty solid.
- The storytelling is great.  I actually feel the hatred towards my enemies that my character is supposed to feel.
- Controls take some getting used to.  Not as silky smooth as Halo of CoD4.  If you've played Riddick (or Fear) you know what to expect.  A lot of head-bobbing, etc.
- The game is definitely for adults.  Very dark, gritty and violent.  Fits the tone of the story  perfectly though.
- Just like Riddick, the game goes to a 3rd person perspective when climbing ladders, etc.  I think this is pointless and feel that staying in 1st person all the time is much more effective.
- Playing with the lights off and headphones is fantastic!  =)
 
That's it for now.  Might do a final write-up when I beat it.
 

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