Since the beginning of time, mankind has always been afraid of the dark and everything we fear it contains. According to Starbreeze’s upcoming The Darkness (based on the hit comic with the same name), the shadows contain boogy-men who are far from imaginary… and they’re yours to command. Play your cards right, and they’ll be the first thing to wind up your thumb.
The Darkness follows the origin and antics of Jackie Estacado, a mob hit-man who finds himself pitted against three very real dangers: the New York crime families (who suddenly consider him a threat in need of elimination), corrupt cops (um… apparently more of the same), and The Darkness within him (Jackie finds himself at war for control over his own soul). The demo on display behind closed doors at 2K Games’ booth showed off one of the first levels in the upcoming PS3 and Xbox 360 title: Jackie and a clean-up man known simply as “Butcher” are cleaning up a hit scene when the cops arrive. Jackie, as a result, must battle his way out of the area using any means necessary.
The Darkness bears a number of similarities to Starbreeze’s previous game, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, mainly in the way it uses light and shadows as major areas of importance. This time, however, pools of darkness are necessary for Jackie to access the mysterious powers he finds under his control. This is relatively easy to do in outside environments, but artificial lighting makes interior areas a little trickier to let one’s inner demons out. As a result, it becomes necessary to create shadows by eliminating lightbulbs by any means necessary (the two examples we saw were through simply shooting bulbs our or using a shadow tentacle to smash them).
Estacada has a number of powers at his command: aside from enhancing his strength and durability, the Darkness allows him to summon “Darklings” (goblin-like creatures whom will fight on his behalf), materialize shadowy tentacles which are capable of tossing heavy items like cars and dumptsters around with the greatest of ease, and create black holes which will eat up all the enemies in a room.
The final thing the guys from Starbreeze showed us was “Starbreeze TV”, which will let players watch live TV and movies on the various television units throughout the game. According to the demo, Starbreeze TV is something that can be watched whenever a television set is encountered in a level, should a player desire a break from the game’s missions.
All of this looks quite cool, but the demo we were shown was actually pretty small, so it’s tough to say whether or not The Darkness is actually going to have enough unique and memorable qualities working in its favor to make it as ground-breaking as its developer’s previous game was. So far, it has all the makings of being a great game, but I’m going to withhold judgement until I get to actually play the game for an extended period of time.