The Darkness is a first-person shooter from developer Starbreeze, the same guys who gave us the wonderful Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. But just like with their previous game, they've succeeded in delivering a breath of fresh air to an already done-to-death genre.

You play as Jackie Estacado, a street thug from New York, who has to pick up a bag of money for his boss, Uncle Paulie. As you could have expected, this job goes awfully wrong and Jackie finds himself chased by cops and members from other mafia families. He narrowly survives a car crash and tries to get back home, but things don't go as planned. Today is Jackie's 21st birthday and he soon finds out he has deadly special powers, granted to him by The Darkness, a mysterious entity that manifests itself by snakes that come crawling from Jackie's back. The search for answers (what, how, why?) starts off from there. The story is one of the main highlights of The Darkness. It doesn't shy away from excessive violence and truly shocking plot twists and brings them in an adult manner.

The dialogue is excellent, thanks to the well-written script and the stunning voicework from Kirk Acevedo (Oz), Dwight 'Howling Mad Murdock' Schultz (The A-Team) and Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under). But the star of the show is of course Mike Patton, who plays The Darkness (he's the lead singer of great bands like Peeping Tom, Fantômas and Faith No More). The audio supports the atmosphere in the game, with hard, steaming rock music during large-scale shoot-outs, over a nice soothing background track on the more quiet times, to complete silence that often gives you the creeps, because you know something is about to happen.

But a great story alone won't save a game, of course. Thankfully, Starbreeze has once again delivered a thrilling shooter. The gunplay can certainly stand on its own, though your special powers certainly make things more interesting (but more on those in a second). You start out with akimbo pistols, but you'll soon discover a shotgun and dual machine guns. Later, you'll add M4 and AK-47 assault rifles and a Jackhammer to that. Though six different weapons may not seem like much, they more than make up for that with their stopping power. Even the dual pistols pack a large punch, so they stay useful until the end. When you shoot people, they fall down with realistic ragdoll physics and you can see where the bullets hit from the gaping holes in their bodies.

The bodies also don't vanish, which is useful, since you'll be eating their hart out (literally!). Devouring hearts is The Darkness' way of gaining experience. As your Darkness level goes up (five in total), you can consume more darkness and thus stay in Darkness mode for longer periods of time. But ripping hearts out of someone chests and then eating them isn't the only gruesome act in The Darkness. If you shoot a weapon from close range, you'll do a wicked cool execution move (shooting a shotgun shell through someone's mouth, firing a bullet to each temple,...). Painful and cruel, yes, but oh so effective....and fun, in a sadistic sort of way. As you can probably tell from the given examples, the game is clearly not intended for younger audiences. And it's not just the graphic violence, there's also excessive swearing in the game. But to be honest, we expected as much from seasoned New York mobsters.

What sets this game apart from other gritty shooters are Jackie's four Darkness powers. When in Darkness mode (L1), two snake-like tentacles appear on-screen and they'll change colour, depending on the power you've selected. The first one you receive is 'creeping dark'. This is basically a snake you can control to scout ahead, crawl to narrow spaces or reach places you otherwise can't. You can also use it to perform kills and clear a path. The second power is 'demon arm', basically a killer tentacle you can use to impale enemies with. But it also serves other uses. You can grab, move and throw objects with it (another fine demonstration of the physics engine) or break light sources (saves you some bullets -not that you'll ever run out of ammo, but hey-). Next up are the 'Darkness guns', which, as the name implies, are basically two pistols that don't use ammo, but consume darkness instead. The left one is a powerful, slow-firing shotgun, while the right gun is a rapid-fire pistol. Truth be told, though, the Darkness guns are little underpowered, especially compared to your regular arsenal. The fourth and last power you get is the 'black hole'. When you activate it, you create a vortex that sucks in all nearby objects and humans, which -evidently- kills them. It's a bit unfortunate you only get black hole relatively late in the game, since it's really great fun to use.

Creating darkness (thus: shooting lights) is key to surviving. Whenever you step into the light while in Darkness mode, your supply of darkness will rapidly dwindle. When it's fully depleted, your tentacles will retract and you'll go back to your human form. However, that's when you're most vulnerable; it'll only take a couple of bullets to bring you down. When you're in Darkness mode, the two snakes will shield you from bullets (this also consumes darkness). But when you're in a dark place, they will automatically suck in darkness to replenish your stock. Basically it boils down to this: if you stay in the dark, you'll survive, if you thread into the light, you'll die. How fun the combat sequences may be, the constant 'shoot lights, then fight' principle can become a bit tiresome later in the game.

Jackie's other main ability is the summoning of Darklings, small goblin-like creatures who die when exposed to light. There are four different types of Darklings to call to your aid (berserker, gunner, lightkiller and kamikaze). You can only summon one of each type at a time. Berserkers are armed with melee weapons that love to go hunting for bad guys, while gunners provide fire support with their minigun. Lightkillers are the perfect support unit, as they'll shoot lights by themselves, which makes life easier for you. And finally, kamikazes can clear blocked pathways by blowing themselves up, but you can also send them forward to thin out the opposition. Though Darklings can prove quite useful in combat, their AI does have some nasty quirks. Sometimes lightkillers don't shoot lights (and instead walk underneath them, which effectively kills them) and I've seen gunners shoot at walls on several occasions. Most of the time though, the Darklings will obey your commands.

The biggest drawback of The Darkness is its low difficulty. You'll rarely die (only in the beginning, when you're still getting used to the controls and your Darkness level is still low), since you can heal your wounds by hiding behind a wall (think Call of Duty 2 & 3). The enemy AI is generally sound. Enemies will come at you in groups and will provide cover fire for each other. They'll also run for cover whenever they can. But as good as the AI might be, in general you are just too powerful. For example, it's possible to simply explore the area with creeping dark, use it to kill all possible threats and then simply continue unopposed with Jackie. Also, black hole pretty much makes you unstoppable. Though it drains all of your darkness (thus making you vulnerable for a few seconds), it's just so powerful that you can take out entire groups of enemies in one blow. It would have been more fun if the game were more challenging, but doesn't make the core gameplay any less fun.

The Darkness has a reasonably long story mode, especially when you take the time to gather all 100 collectables and fulfill all sidequests. Collectables unlock interesting stuff like artwork, renders, movies and even some comic books. The game also has some replay value, thanks to its list of 50 accomplishments (the PS3 equivalent of X360 achievements). The Darkness also features a multiplayer mode, though that one feels like it was an aftertought. There are only four fairly standard modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, CTF and survivor) that play pretty much like in any other MP shooter. The only original thing is that you can sometimes play as a Darkling, in stead of a human. Darklings are much faster, and can crawl up walls, but they have to rely on their claws to make a kill and they're also pretty vulnerable to boot. Also, good luck finding players, because on several occasions, there was really no-one playing the online mode, no mather what room I tried.

The engine produces very realistic graphics and gives a very believable impression of New York. The lighting in the game is top-notch, and it needed to be, if the whole light-based mechanics were to work. The characters' animations (and especially their lip movements and expressions) are stunning to say the least, which makes The Darkness even more immersive. Also, the levels in "hell" (somewhere near the half-way mark) are very atmospheric and creepy, with their World War I themed battlefields and destroyed villages. The framerate is solid throughout the game, but the loading times are long and frequent, even though the maps in The Darkness aren't really all that big. I also experienced heavy texture corruption in some levels, clearly the result of a bug. Luckily, entering a new level or restarting the game fixed this.