Play now: The Darkness
Can this cult classic still cut it on PS Now?
No, not them, yet when Starbreeze partnered with 2K Games back in 2007 we eagerly gave this horror FPS permission to land. You could say, it was growing on us.
Okay, enough of The Darkness (the band) references and more on The Darkness (the game). Want to shoot through New York’s wiseguys with some of the best metal hair since Nuno Bettencourt found his girlfriend’s straighteners, accompanied by hearthungry tentacles voiced by Mike Patton? Then this was, and still is, your game.
At launch it always felt like a curveball release. Based on a cult comic and developed by a small team fresh off a successful movie tie-in (The Chronicles Of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay1), The Darkness was a gamble, the kind of punt few Triple-A publishers take these days. On the whole, it paid off.
LIGHT ATTACK
Protagonist hitman Jackie is in the crosshairs of his violent mobster uncle, as is his girlfriend. What follows is a violent ride through an semi-open recreation of the Big Apple as Jackie’s demonic Darkness powers surface on his 21st birthday. It’s a simple gameplay loop that enables you to unleash demonic tentacles to stealth kill enemies from the shadows or pick up and throw objects. The simple act of remaining in the shadows powers your
abilities, so shooting sources of light becomes routine.
Still enjoyable, The Darkness shows its age on PS Now. We’ve (mostly) moved beyond the Disposable Woman trope yet this shooter places that motivation at its broken heart. The act of fridging Jackie’s girlfriend pivots the game and literally sends our dour hero to hell. This act undermines much of the first half of the game too, as the earlier sense of freedom is pulled from under us.2
The Darkness remains fun, though PS Now’s framerate struggles, in keeping with the aged ideas.
FOOTNOTES 1 The Xbox game arrived on PS3 as the Dark Athena expansion in 2009. 2 Riding the metro trains to navigate to areas of New York City was novel in 2007.