I found The Darkness to be an interesting premise. I had never read The Darkness comics; and to be completely honest I had never even heard of it before I found out that it was the basis for the game. Being the type of person who likes to try new things I decided that the premise was interesting enough to give it a try.

The Darkness follows the main protagonist Jackie as he seeks out revenge against "Uncle Paulie". In the beginning of the game Paulie attempts to assassinate Jackie. After surviving this assassination attempt Jackie encounters The Darkness. The Darkness is a type of Demon that has been in his family for generations, and with its abilities Jackie becomes strong enough to seek his revenge. I actually enjoyed the story in The Darkness; even though I feel that the story is too big for one game and therefore I feel that some aspects were a little short changed.

Easily my favorite part of the Darkness was the different type of abilities that Jackie had access to. Although there are conventional weapons, the true experience comes from the powers of The Darkness. The Darkness grants Jackie the ability to call forth demons, use different weapons, open portals and even impale your enemies with The Darkness itself. One thing I found especially interesting is the way The Darkness is seemingly useless in the light. Although the game takes place at night there are plenty of street lights that must be broken before Jackie can use his special abilities. This adds an element of strategy to The Darkness, because the overwhelming power of The Darkness can not be used anywhere and everywhere.

Unfortunately, the abilities The Darkness grants you are just about the only truly great thing about this game; and even those abilities have their flaws. When you acquire the ability to create black holes any challenge that the game offered to that point goes right out the window. Actually, in general the different abilities you have to use are really not very fun. As much as I enjoyed impaling different enemies, the feeling is short lived. About half way through the game I just found myself going through the motions. The Darkness also features some of the most repetitive environments I have seen in a while. The game will have you constantly back tracking over environments that were not any fun to go through the first time.

The Darkness reminds me of what happens when games try to be converted into movies. All the things that made the game so great are filtered out and all that is left is a disappointing feeling when you watch it. The Darkness may be a great as a comic (again I don't know because I have never read any) but as a game it falls pretty short. Fans of the comic may find something to like about this but everyone else will probably see this for what it is; a below average first person shooter.