The Haunted Treasure: The Darkness (PS3)

The Darkness was marketed as a first-person shooter horror game where you are the horror, and while this was likely done in reference to the commands of the terrifying monster’s main character, it feels like it goes much deeper than that. Most of the game is structured in such a way that it could have been a realistic mafia shooter in New York City, where you mainly have to fight mafia goons and corrupt cops. However, once you start harnessing The Darkness within yourself, you’ll be encouraged to plunge places into total shadow and lurk around with slithering tentacles to surprise enemies. Although not many of the men you deal with seem to express fear, you can easily imagine how panicked someone would be if they saw a man shrouded in shadow approaching no matter how hard you shoot at him , with the tusks of some beast attached to it. for him who feasts on the hearts of your comrades.

However, Jackie Estacado has every reason to turn The Darkness against his fellow gangsters. On the day of his 21st birthday, Jackie is beaten up by his adoptive uncle Paulie, with the two previously arguing over Paulie’s service with the mafia that dealt in the exploitative drug industry. Waiting for this anniversary was a poor choice, however, as the former mafia hitman happened to cast a strange but beneficial curse on this important milestone, a force known as The Darkness that has now invested not only in keeping alive him, but also gave him some money. powerful tools to ensure this. The Darkness absolutely wants to dominate Jackie and use him as a tool to kill as many people as possible, but despite Jackie’s often emotionless delivery, his quest for revenge and desire to protect those closest to him keeps him in control. Jackie teams up with other, more traditional mafiosos and fights his way through Paulie’s men for most of the adventure, with the game waiting quite a while before even starting to discuss this strange shadowy monster that you are constantly fighting used, but when it starts to explain things, it moves away from the gritty, realistic streets of NYC and into a nightmare realm where you’re far from the only horror.

Although Jackie’s supernatural powers take center stage, the emphasis is still on traditional firearms. Most of the time, whether you’re wielding dual pistols, a shotgun, or an automatic weapon, simply firing rapidly in the direction of the enemy is the best approach, and when you start out the weapons are absolutely crucial to continued success as your other forces are deployed . out more slowly. When you manifest The Darkness you make use of a range of additional abilities, the most important of which is a passive shield that becomes virtually necessary at certain points to survive the incoming gunfire. However, a power called The Creeping Dark allows you to approach combat in a different way, with the player commanding a single slithering tentacle that can explore quite far and kill most men in one bite. The Creeping Dark can be almost too good in certain situations, especially since it can open doors on its own, essentially clearing as many rooms as you want with little risk. If shot too much or entered too bright an area it will retreat and certainly can’t be used in more hectic firefights where you can’t find an easy place to hide, but the effectiveness of this ability does provide a number of potential problems. from the game, despite being a fun alternative to running with guns blazing.

One way The Darkness tries to limit your use of your supernatural abilities is by draining the darkness, requiring the player to remain in the shadows to fuel their powers. Initially there may be some risk involved. The only way to take out many lights is to shoot them down and announce your presence. However, as you let The Darkness consume the hearts of slain enemies, it gains new powers, one of which allows you to easily shatter lights without much risk. Later still, you even get the ability to create a small localized black hole that sucks in nearby enemies and almost guarantees kills, and while it consumes a lot of dark energy and you can’t use it on anyone too far away, it’s not so hard to use it on a group of bad guys, replenish the darkness and then move into the next room and repeat the process. The game understands to some extent that it has once again given you a pretty strong power, and much like how it combats the Creeping Dark, it starts rolling out more aggressive enemies to avoid overusing it. It can still oversimplify the action in certain parts, but having that downtime where The Darkness can’t help you after a black hole means it can’t help in the bigger skirmishes where there are gunmen on all sides and you happy to tear you apart if you lose your shadowy protector, even for a few seconds.

The Darkness is primarily an assassination tool, but there are a few segments where it is used for infiltration that goes beyond just Creeping Dark’s secret assassinations. One such use is through Darklings, the player being able to find small portals that he can use to create an imp-like ally. Some, like the Berserker, are purely attackers, but a Kamikaze Darkling can be used to destroy objects such as power stations to open the path forward. On the one hand, few interactions feel like real puzzles, and yet your progress in The Darkness can be briefly interrupted because it wants you to figure out something small, like which interactive object in the environment to break or even which path to follow. You are meant to take. Much of exploring New York involves people giving you directions, and while you have a map and a pause screen with reminders of where to go, the map doesn’t show every important location and there’s basically a focus on finding of connections through things. like the subway to reach your destination. The Darkness offers a number of optional activities, so there’s more reason to look around than just getting lost on the way to your goal. Some of these are phone numbers that are less interesting about the strange characters you briefly listen to and more about the unlockable collectibles you get when you call them. The Darkness even includes a few full-length comic books, like those from The Darkness series it adapts. The side missions are a little less interesting and often just lead to a quick firefight that doesn’t really stand out in a game full of them.

The Darkness also features an online multiplayer component, and it doesn’t just carry over Jackie’s powers from the main game. In fact, it takes a very different approach to gunplay, placing much more emphasis on running around small areas, finding item and power pickups, and killing players quickly in mostly open areas. The cover of darkness is a key feature in single player, but multiplayer instead gives you the power to turn into a Darkling and quickly scale walls or perform big jump attacks, with the fast pace feeling better from a gameplay perspective. a shooting game, but also doesn’t necessarily convey the most unique aspects of the single player. The sections in the story that take you to a strange other world feel like they could better transport you to a new play type. There’s still a focus on your use of power, but the wide open spaces there still unfold at a measured pace that suits how your attacks are handled, while enemies are also harder to knock down permanently. These horror-oriented segments appropriately focus on the strange ancient evil you’re tapping into, as the story otherwise mostly just plays along to make you capable enough to enact some very violent mafia reforms, although the direction the plot ultimately goes. in resolving its supernatural side, it doesn’t feel as clean as the straight-up mob revenge story.

THE VERDICT: Your monstrous supernatural powers in The Darkness are both a blessing and a curse. Their power makes them satisfying and downright required at some points, but it can also centralize your approach to many conflicts, despite the game starting to try to counter them. Heading to the Otherworld makes for an interesting change in tone from the sometimes confusing navigation through New York, but The Darkness mostly feels like a shooter where you’re meant to enjoy your power, kept a little fresh against the times when suddenly pushing it back hard enough to make you break away from the overly effective tactics your skills otherwise allow.

And so I give The Darkness for PlayStation 3…

A OKAY judgement. The Creeping Dark and Black Hole are both interesting powers and ones that certainly enhance The Darkness with their presence, but it also feels like they upset the game balance a bit too much. Sometimes the game can structure a room well for fighting, but you sneak in and take out the enemies one by one so you miss that fight, or you just launch a black hole and then hide behind a corner to get some more to sniff. darkness to do it again. The Darklings feel like they could have had more interesting combat uses if you weren’t already so capable, although they also sometimes disobey for unclear reasons or choose strange paths to travel, so it may be best that their influence is minimal or mostly is connected to small interactions instead. The shooting does its job, even if it’s often simple, but the moments where the game starts to put pressure on the player don’t feel numerous enough to really maintain the sense of excitement or danger you’d hope for from a shooter . . It’s a little too easy to find some darkness to swallow and keep your powers up, but at least the limitations of the black hole feel like a step in the right direction. If enemies were better at shooting the Creeping Dark, you wouldn’t be able to use it as easily to clear rooms ahead, and while some moments flirt with the idea of ​​weaponized light, it feels like it could have been better used to to deny you repeated use of certain techniques or to give enemies more unique advantages than being numerous in large open spaces. It’s at least somewhat understandable that The Darkness doesn’t carry over all of its mechanics to multiplayer; they would be too rampant there, even though Creeping Dark would be much more easily countered by players who can shoot it accurately and reliably.

The Darkness supports its claim that you are the powerful monster that tears through horrible people, but one thing about the monsters in horror is that they are often incredibly strong. The Darkness can control your vulnerability a bit, so that not only do you easily flatten any opposition you face, but the effectiveness of your supernatural powers can sometimes undermine sections, allowing you to focus on the sometimes confusing navigation instead. There’s certainly some fun in gradually turning off the lights in an area before ripping the enemy gunmen apart with your tentacles with almost no resistance, but it’s an experience that’s repeated all too often and that’s why The Darkness feels like it is more about simple thrills than exciting and memorable battles. .

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