Dark Times
"Ever since the early days of the PSOne, we at Top Cow wanted to make sure that we didn't do anything that might torpedo the property," explained Mr. Silvestri, referring to the long wait before "The Darkness" became a game. "We're celebrating the tenth anniversary of The Darkness this year, so we're delighted to be bringing the game out as well." When pressed on how he feels the game is turning out, Marc said, "The guys at Starbreeze have done an amazing job. From the first conceptual drawings that they showed me, I was like 'these guys get it!'"
He continued, "Every time I've seen something new come out of them, it's been a confirmation that Starbreeze understands the core of The Darkness as a character and a franchise." And what exactly is the core of "The Darkness"? "See, even though Jackie [main character of "The Darkness"] has these nightmarish powers, you still wanna be this guy. The physics engine that Starbreeze uses makes the powers believable, so even though you're in this fantastic setting, it's still believable and that's what makes it so immersive."
What captured the tone and feel of the comic for me were the Darklings, which Silvestri describes as "little manifestations of the human id." These twisted little characters can be summoned by Jackie at specific spawn points (that resemble gaping holes into a dimension of pure blackness) and illustrate the simultaneously disturbing and hilarious nature of the comics. Darklings come in fifteen different flavors, of which I saw three: Berserker, Gunner and Kamikaze. The Gunner Darkling wields a huge chain gun (and, surprisingly, is female), the Kamikaze Darkling has a bundle of dynamite sticks strapped to his back and the Berserker uses melee attacks which can be upgraded as you discover new tools of mutilation for him to employ. As a perfect example of the quite literally dark humor of The Darkness, I nearly fell out of my chair when the Berserker Darkling was directed to kill a foe and proceeded to do so in the bloodiest fashion imaginable by taking a jackhammer to the dude's sternum.
As awesome as the Darklings are, they're not your only weapons when controlling Jackie Estacado. As a former hitman (and I say "former" because he used to be a hitman, but now he's more like some kind of vengeful demon spawn), Jackie can use the usual assortment of firearms, including the classic dual-wielded pistols. But beyond and well above the cheap guns, Jackie has a direct link to an ancient and diabolical power known only as The Darkness. While this power manifests itself in a wild variety of ways in the comics, it is restricted to a wreath of inky blackness around the edges of the screen in the game, with two positively evil serpentine demons on either side of Jackie's peripheral vision.
These demon tendrils have a number of functions which I'll attempt to enumerate now. First off, they act as a HUD of sorts, letting you know how far along Jackie has come with his abilities to control his powers - this is illustrated by the number of eyes the demon tendrils have (one eye each means that Jackie is still in a demonic infancy, while three eyes each means that he's reached the pinnacle of nightmarish power). They also clue you into how much evil power Jackie has in reserve, as well as which of his powers is selected, through a pattern of luminous tattoos that run down their tubular bodies. The snakes have tons of creepy character, and will snap and hiss at each other while you meander through the levels (at one point, they even fought over a shred of flesh torn from some unfortunate foe).
