Reviews// The Darkness (Xbox 360)

When you call on the bad stuff inside you and switch into Darkness mode, the world acquires a sinister, shimmering orange glow that complements that nastiness.

Then there are the sections that take place in (spoiler alert!) Hell. Sat in my living room on a sunny June afternoon, I found myself looking longingly towards the window, twitching nervously then running to call my Mum. OK, not the last bit. But the Hell maps, with their World War I backdrop, unrelenting rain, and bleak orange skies capture what Hell should (in this atheistic writer's opinion) feel like: unrelentingly hopeless.

Complementing that are the non-player characters you run into. The soldiers I encountered Hell are a thoroughly miserable bunch. The Earth-bound NPCs are so depressingly realistic that I found myself longing for some ridiculous ‘boobdulation’ a la Dead or Alive.

Their movements can, however, be stunted at times, as can Jackie's in the rare instances when you see him in the third person. Their movements have the vaguely familiar feel of a Gerry Anderson puppet show at times.

While the graphics department falls short here, however, the game's writer, Paul Jenkins, picks up the slack.

Jenkins is a comics veteran and - having worked on the likes of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and the God of War series - he's approaching that status in the world of gaming, too. His dialogue imbues the characters with a level of liveliness that makes conversations with them both rewarding and entertaining. I was reminded of conversations with Tony Soprano one minute and my dear old Gran the next (although seldom at the same time).

Jackie gets a similar treatment, with his mumbled Mafioso gruntings giving him a visceral realism. One minor niggle that kept jumping out, however, was the seeming ability of the characters to speak without moving their lips. Granted, as I said, Jackie does seem to mumble a fair bit, but I spent many unhappy teenage years mumbling without ever learning to do it with my mouth closed.

Of course, none of that matters so much once the guns start blazing - and start blazing they do. The game gets going with some very well-executed movie-style opening credits in which Jackie's heading to a hit with some gangster pals with the police in tow. Before the credits even finish rolling you're thrust into the action, first taking out the police as your buddy drives, then polishing off a hit on a building site. Before the first mission ends, you've got a police helicopter pointing its business stuff at your posterior.

The controls are intuitive and a joy to master. I've never been a fan of using dual analog sticks in shoot-'em-ups, but in non-Darkness mode they work smoothly and I was left without the feeling of awkwardness I often find with first-person shooters. Within minutes I was shooting happily away at butch types in yellow construction hats without a care in the world.