Generic Self-Welcome

Hello ME! Here's hoping this website gets a little further away from the ground than our previous encounters with the intarweb. I must admist most of the responsibility for any failures to use effort that might've contributed to the downfall of forares which, if I had tried, could very well have been awesome.

But this time I have the cosy living arrangements to maintain my momentum. Christopher watching over my shoulder as I drum each finger onto the keyboard, plastered smile over my face to ensure he keeps the Whip in the cupboard.

Yesterday I completed The Darkness on normal difficulty, after many an early-morning/late-night gaming sesh. I did get rather into it, every always due in a large part to the achievement hunting, but also because the game fits into the demographic of games that can be wholly described by one word; cool. True, it is a bit like playing an interactive movie, but with mobsters and goths and gargoylesque demons with british accents and guns and grafitti and swear words and the guns and the blood and the-- Oh man, yeah, it's definitely cool. I didn't really know what to expect when I picked this up in a two-for-£30 deal, but what I got was a game that reminded me a little of Kingpin: Life of Crime (in particular the durge and grime of urban citiscapes, the civilian dialogue and the slight ability to roam where you please), and also, which may sound a little harsh, Die Hard: Vendetta; specifically the difficulty in just running in with your guns out, but again the similarities are drawn through the witty NPC banter.

I like a game where I can collect stuff. I like a sort of completeness, and I like the feeling you get when you get there. Yes, a bit mad, if not lame, but there you go. Darkness delivered it's own fair share of picking stuff up, including some fairly daft, and some fairly neat, costumes for your darklings, as well as, of course, the chance to rip the hearts out of all those arses you kicked so excellently, what with your tentacular strangulations, or your black Hole-ish whirling abilities.

Perhaps some could see the game as a little disturbing - certainly the game takes a large twist from the orphanage onwards (One thing that got to me a little at 3am, besides Suicide Corner, was the "ARE YOU INSANE?!" guy. I hope you'll agree...), and the achievements encourage you to act out a whole bunch of nasty deaths including the - ok, they're pretty cool - Execution move, where you pull the trigger when you're right up close to them, and you watch as your character Jackie Estacado proceeds to plant several seeds of led amongst the shattered shards of skull and rib. Nasty, but awesome.

Now, the game is most certainly worth a rent, but is it worth any money?

I would say that not many games are worth the full £49 at all, and the most I'll spend on a single game would be £25... But then I've slipped from being a hardcore gamer, my obsession seeping into other forms of media such as books and movies. I'm certainly not a generic casual gamer (HA! I scoff at thee) but I no longer preorder games, I no longer complete games three or four times through. But The Darkness can be found £15 or less in most dedicated stores, and is well worth the money.

As for replayability; well of course, it's not a given that you'll find all the collectables the first play through (I didn't :( ), and the Tunnel Workers and 7 kills in 15 seconds achievements will demand repeated attempts. Playing through the game without worrying about achievements is also something I want to do anyway, to see if it changes the feel of the game, but the game does offer an online multiplayer - but, er, I don't have XBL just at this moment, so I'm afraid I have no idea how good or bad it is!

I certainly want to acquire XBL, though, if not only for getting all the online achievements after already having acquired most/all of the offline ones for several games.

So uh, there you have it. My first blog, and my first overview of a game and stuff! For summary's sake;

The Darkness is an FPS that offers less longetivity than the killer apps like Gears or Halo 3, but it approaches the genre a little differently, focusing on light and dark areas and RPS-style upgrades and self-improvements.

Score: B, for "better than average".