Grace elaborates: “On the stroke of midnight, on Jackie’s 21st birthday, you find yourself in a cemetery. This is the first time The Darkness shows itself. Now you get some superhero powers. At first, Jackie is host to The Darkness, but he doesn’t have much control over it. As you go through the game, you gain more control over it, though. To draw 'Darkness power', you need to hold down a button, and it sucks energy from the world around you.
"There are different Darkness powers, and we communicate with the player by showing two demon heads attached to Jackie – the length and colour of the tattoos on their heads show which power is selected, and how strong that power is. For example, orange signifies Creeping Dark, in which you can move to places Jackie can’t [via the snake-like demons]. In Darkness mode, Jackie gets a shield, so he can take three or four hits.
While about two-thirds of the game takes place in New York, the other third is set in a bizarre place called the Otherworld. 2K’s Karl Unterholzer takes up the story: “It’s an alternative plane of existence – a place worse than hell. It’s also where The Darkness is from. It’s like a fucked-up World War I, but where the inhabitants don’t die – they just fight the war over and over again. The soldiers are like zombies: if they’re shot, they stay down for a few seconds, but then get up. The only way to stop them is to devour their souls. There are WWI-style weapons like pistols and rifles.”
As you progress through the Otherworld, you emerge from the trenches, go over the top into no-man’s land and eventually encounter Allied soldiers: “Who write anti-war poems, talk to you and explain the Otherworld. They are always getting blown up and sewing themselves back together.”
As should be the case in this brave new next-gen world, Starbreeze and 2K Games haven’t neglected the multiplayer side of The Darkness. There are a welter of modes, including Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture The Flag and Survivor. And the Darklings play a prominent role – you can set up games with only humans, only Darklings, or shape-shifters, where you can switch between being human or Darkling.
I played Death Match, with the ability to shape-shift. When you transform into a Darkling, you can’t use weapons, but the Darklings are very quick, have an impressive melee attack and can climb up walls and ceilings as long as you hold the left trigger down.
The maps were pretty impressive: complex and decently sized interiors. 2K says there will be at least six maps when The Darkness ships, and it promises there will be plenty of downloadable content.
Undoubtedly, The Darkness is one of the weirdest and freakiest games you will ever play. There’s so much going on in it that when described, it sounds somewhat bewildering, but it is sufficiently well structured for you to keep up with the mayhem.
