The Darkness

I have been on a big comic book recently. Since Local Man ended I’ve been bouncing around between series, checking out new series if I find them interesting while also being faithful to other series that are on my pull list. One series that popped onto my radar was a reboot of the 90s Image classic “The Darkness” by Marc Silvestri. They had apparently rebooted Witchblade a year or so ago and now it was time to bring back Jackie Estacado. I read the first volume of the Witchblade trade (excellent, btw, Marguerite Bennett is doing wonders with that book, go check it out) and got caught up on The Darkness, which is also worth reading. In the midst of all this comic goodness, Catrena and I had a little downtown at home and I checked out the game shelf and decided that it was finally time take on The Darkness for XBOX 360!

I was able to play this on Series X with upscaled textures but with one major downside… for some reason the backwards compatible 2K games disable screenshots! That’s right, I was not able to chronicle my journey as New Yorks weirdest mafia hitman. In some ways, it was freeing not being beholden to the hunt for the screenshot for the inevitable writeup on cyber buffalo dot party, but also at the same time there was a lot of ridiculousness that I really did want to share. But c’est la vie! I’m just going to steal some screenshots from the internet to tide us over. I also did take a couple of shots off my TV like an old man so look forward to those.

The Darkness occupies a type of game that I really don’t play too often. It’s a first person shooter but goes beyond, it’s semi-open world more akin to like Fallout 3/NV than Call of Duty. You play as Jackie Estacado on his 21st birthday as his caretaker, pseudo foster father, Paulie decides it’s time to take him out. At the same time, an unknown demonic entity named The Darkness (voiced excellently, though verging on histrionically, by Mike Patton) has arrived to take over Jackie’s body and embed itself into his being. The Darkness manifests as a series of living tentacles that hang off Jackie’s back, and also gives him the ability to command little goblin guys that can be spawned from predetermined portals that you can see when in darkness mode. By the end of the game you have 4 tentacle abilities - creeping dark, which lets you crawl around as a tentacle performing stealth kills and unlocking doors; a whip-like ability that lets you easily knock out light bulbs; darkness guns (my least used power) and the late-game arrival the darkness portal, this huge portal created where you choose that sucks anything and anybody into it knocking enemies sensless, but not necessarily killing them. Your little goblin buddies, whom will wear different costumes you find across the maps depending on how they feel at the time have 4 abilities as well - a beserker, a gunner, the often-broken light-killer which doesn’t do a job at killing enemies or lights, and finally the kamikaze, suicide bomber. Along with these tools (which unlock through a series of missions and story beats) combined with a plethora of guns makes for a pretty fun romp through the boroughs of New York and the trenches of a fantasy World War 1.

On paper it sounds like The Darkness is setup to be a standard level based shooter, moving from mission to mission, but heart of this game lies in the city, how it’s navigated and who inhabits it. The way they’ve built New York here is really interesting. You have a bunch of neighborhoods and a couple of subway stations. Each subway station will have a few exits which dump you out in different parts of that area. It’s pretty cool. If you just walked into the Chinatown subway station and need to know how to get to, say, Gun Hill, you can talk to the Transit Authority help line and ask about Gun Hill, and they will tell you how to get there from where you currently are.

It’s actually pretty unique, as far as I know, this game is very sparse with the on-screen displays, there are no quest markers or directions. You have to look at the signs in the subway, follow the arrows on the signs and be generally aware of your surroundings. Of course this also comes sans-tutorial so while I’m glazing these decisions there was a little bit of a “getting-to-know-you” period where I was also confused and cursing. Along with this kind of navigation, the city is full of people that want your help. Gaining side-quests is like in most other games, but there are no quest markers attached to NPC heads. The people in the subway may just be coming or going or they could be waiting for Jackie to help them out. Sometimes you’ll find a collectible which unlocks a new phone number to call at a payphone. I think I found about 100 of these, and the amount of work that went into crafting a new and unique experience for calling these numbers must have been no small feat. Sometimes it’s just a random answering machine, other times its a bespoke piece of music and a series of characters acting out some kind of scene on the other end. It’s very entertaining.

The story pushes you through the ranks of Paulie’s mob bosses, ever climbing higher and higher through the family to take out the guy who put a hit on you and took out your pseudo-girlfriend. There are some intense story beats that both Catrena and I were shocked by, and then there were other times where neither of us understood exactly what was happening. Jackie’s familial curse of The Darkness gets confusing because Jackie always talks about being an orphan yet his dad and great-great-grandad come into play quite heavily. Also during your hunt for revenge, you DIE die (not just fail the mission) and when that happens, due to story, you are transported to this weird vision of hell which plays out in the trenches of World War 1. It’s actually a pretty interesting take on hell, even though the whys of it in the story weren’t properly explained. But it was interesting enough to keep me going.

The voice acting is excellent, held up by their choice of actors, though they due run the gamut between a cartoony Brooklyn accent like you’d find in The Simpsons to the snarling, gutteral, hammy voice of The Darkness lent to us by Faith No More, Mr. Bungle and Loveage alumn Mike Patton. This is a really interesting part of this game that I am shocked to have not known until I put this game in. I’ve been a big Patton fan for years, I’ve seen him perform a number of times with a number of acts. A cool fact and a cool performance. It’s basically like an 8 hour long game where Mike Patton just kind of yells at you for being a jerk the entire time. Oh! I almost forgot that the main voice actor for Jackie, Kirk Acevedo, has been in lots of cool shit including The Walking Dead, the 12 Monkeys TV show, Fringe (<3) AND he played opposite of Jerry Orbach’s Lennie in the short lived yet excellent Law & Order spin-off, Law & Order: Trial by Jury. I was instantly excited when I first heard him speak, instantly recognizable!

Final Thoughts

This game is pretty cool, in fact it was in the running for Buff Certification, but I think the mediocre gunplay actually holds it back. The Darkness abilities are very fun and watching a little gobline dressed like a lumberjack crawl out of a hole and cut a guy in half with a wood saw while calling you “boss” is pretty great. Its cool to see an indie comic get this treatment, something you’d think only Marvel or Spawn would get. Top Cow’s Marc Silvestri was smart to license his game because it seems like everyone involved took the assignment seriously and crafted a unique game.