It’s quite hard to say exactly what this game is. One could state that it’s very similar to Condemned or Fear but it’s not as mentally scary and unsettling as these two games. It’s not strictly even scary, although some levels, most notably the World War I levels (no I am serious) can cause you do jump back in your seat for a split second. Just think of it as a warped love story, with a huge twist that is your Darkness powers. Your environment more than makes up for the game being ‘just another fps, with a twist’, as I like to call them. Upon playing through the game for the first time, I was hugely unimpressed. It felt stale and I just went through the better half of the game with guns blazing, making very little use of any of my powers unless they were really needed. The Darkness powers you find Jackie bestowed with are unlike anything anyone will experience in an FPS title so it’s a little weird to experience at first, which is why I just ignored them during my initial gaming run.
Gameplay on the whole is rather impressive. The districts you play in are very realistic with a good amount of NPC’s in the right places, for example the underground stations will be bustling with activity whilst it’s rather quiet outside the stations as most people are asleep. Phone boxes can be used to ring up random people, as well as key in-game characters. You can also use information stations should you get lost trying to find a specific road. Towards the end of the game you’ll find yourself repeatedly returning to past scenes only to find that they have changed, for example the graveyard - scene of your first major shoot up has its entrance taped up towards the end of the game and a homeless person who lived there, has now been evicted and roams outside the gates.
Visuals/Audio
The first thing (or second in my case) that hits home are its graphics. The city surroundings are beautiful and extremely detailed, to the point where if you venture outside and just remain stationary a colleague passing by your screen would probably think that you’re looking at a high quality render. The city has a dark, dank, brooding atmosphere to it and is realistic enough to feel like a real life representation of a run down American district. Character models are also just as impressive being very detailed and animated just as well. While traversing around the subway station, just take a look at the three break-dancers to see exactly what I mean. It’s just a shame that there aren’t enough districts to explore because after two hours of play when you’ve more or less explored the small amount of interconnected areas, you begin to realise that the game, on the whole is rather small. However every area just looks stunning visually.
Jackie Estacado is mostly seen during cut-scenes and isn’t as well animated in these. His long flowing hair looks un-naturally animated and on occasions he can look a bit pale. You can’t help but feel for the character though especially since he is going through so much in his life. Kirk Acevedo as his voice-over actor does a brilliant job of portraying our hero. Lauren Ambrose does the voice-overs for Jackie’s girlfriend Jenny and the legend that is Dwight Schultz is the evil Uncle Paulie Franchetti.
Some graphical objects aren’t too impressive though. Car’s look laughably poor, and are blocky poorly detailed affairs, whilst various indoor/office interiors look tacky and sparse with hardly any detail to them to match the rest of the game, which oozes intricate detail. The level of details on cars and offices resemble those found in GTA:Vice City for example.
The rest of the audio is a rather standard affair and nothing to rave on about. There is a distinct lack of decent ambient sound in the outdoor districts upon leaving an underground station although I’d guess that this exists to convey a sense of darkness to the city surroundings, rather than making it feel more alive. One redeeming audio feature that really deserves top marks is the vocal sounds of the Darkness itself as well as your Darklings. The Darkness sounds very creepy, and your Darklings rather cute and annoying at the same time. I find them adorable! All in all, on the visuals and audio front this title just cannot be faulted. It looks and sounds great.