The Darkness is a FPS, and as said before is based on The Darkness comic series. It is a dark and gritty game, with ten to fourteen hours of violence, mayhem, and gore. The action is non stop and satisfying.

In the world of next-gen it is almost pointless to review a game’s graphics, but The Darkness is a beautiful game. Beautiful in a really gruesome kind of way. The music sets a nice tone for the game. I was halfway through the game when I realized that Jackie’s monologues (which are boring as hell, but fit nicely into the story) are actually the loading screens, which I thought was a nice little trick.

My biggest gripes come with the conclusion of the story, which I won’t ruin, and with Jackie’s character. I really don’t know if I can gripe about the ending anyway though, since I have never read the series and it may just be keeping in tone with the comic, something I cannot fault the developers for. But Jackie is just plain boring. In the series I got the impression that he was kind of a sarcastic badass. They describe his character as “lives life in the fast lane”. In the game, the man seems like he is about to forget his next line every time he talks. He is dull, boring, and uninteresting. When betrayed, possessed, and even sent to hell, his response is lackluster and empty. He doesn’t feel reserved or pent up, just hollow.

The powers the game gives you are a lot of fun to use. Every one is useful and pretty awesome to behold. Except the Darklings. They’re useless. Two, the Lightkiller and Kamikaze are completely and totally useless. More often than not the Kamikaze will do nothing but explode right next to you and the Lightkiller can’t even reach the lights on the ceiling. The Gunner sounds really cool, but is dumb as a post. It seems to have no A.I. whatsoever. If the enemy is on the other side of a wall, the gunner will stand there and shoot at the wall until it evaporates. And by the way, if you get in the way, it will kill you. The weapons are not near as interesting as the powers, as you will most likely only use the pistols and possibly the automatic shotgun. I have heard people say that the weapons are useless and uninteresting, and that is true for the most part, but not with the pistols. I really enjoyed the execution moves, though I wish there had been a few more and possibly some that incorporated the Darkness. Without the pistols, at least on hard mode, you will be in for a rough ride.

Which brings me to my next point; you’ll probably want to play on hard mode. At first the game will be infuriating because you don’t have the darkness yet (imagine Halo without the shield) but once you get the Darkness things will really level out.

Overall I was very satisfied with The Darkness. As my Live service just expired I did not check out the online play, but there are many little collectables and bonuses to collect that extend the replay value. Although, I will complain about the comic strips. The viewer mode will not let you zoom in far enough to actually read the strip or even get a very good look at the art. I wouldn’t but it, not for sixty anyway, but I would definitely rent it and beat it. It’s a must play.

Well, this hasn’t been confirmed yet, but its looking like Sony is going to discontinue the 60GB model, the one that just recieved the price drop, and release an 80GB model. Shockingly enough, it will be 600. Welcome to the wonderful world of Sony, folks.

As for the worst, you could probably just pick any movie based on any of Steven King’s books. I don’t really read his books much, but he’s a good writer and most of the movies based on his stories are crap. Dreamcatcher for example, though it wasn’t outright awful, was almost nothing like the book. Also, Eragon. But I really don’t know if I can count that since I wasn’t just all that impressed with the book to begin with.

I read each of the Lord of the Rings except for The Return of the King before seeing them. It didn’t really make much of a difference to me except that I knew how The Two Towers really ended and was pissed when I finished the movie. I read Dreamcatcher after seeing the movie. If I had read it first, I definitely would not have liked the movie.

And if you want to visit Celluloid, http://btt2.wordpress.com/

Yes, I know I have a vendetta against the man for what he perpetrated with Fable, but it is one I cannot get over just yet. I simply cannot trust him.

The only good thing I can really let myself look forward to is it shows potential, potential for what gaming can become. This is one of the reasons I am so excited about Bioshock. If you know anything about the storyline, than you know that you have the option of killing and salvaging Adam (Basically XP) from these genetically engineered little girls all over Rapture. There are no evil points or records to show you how evil you are. A scale will not tip toward the light or dark side and you will not gain 500 evil points for every little girl you kill, which in the end of the game will decide the ending, though the ending will supposedly be affected by whether or not you kill them. No, Bioshock is simply giving you the choice to be evil with a deed that actually makes you feel guilty and wrong. Through something the video game industry is really starting to get into, a little thing I like to call storytelling. 

But what I actually got was better than all of that. It was spectacular! It was not just a cheap cash in on a popular franchise, but a legitimate reimagining of an older story. It did the Transformers of old justice. For a long time the original cartoon has been the yardstick by which all other Transformer media has been judged, but this movie may just very well be a replacement for that old yardstick.

My only complaint really is that the camera was always trying to be up in the action. It was often time too close for the viewer to actually be able to make out what was going on. This was a complaint I had with Batman Begins too. It just seems that they wanted to be in the action so badly that they forgot to pull out so we could actually see it. And in the final battle, which really is awesome, you have to consciously remind yourself who you are looking at, otherwise you’ll have no idea what is happening to who.

Also, Optimus Prime, awesome as he is, is cheesy. Not like the burger either, I’m talking velveeta. Don’t get me wrong, when he transforms you will gaze upon him as a god of the machines, an engine of destruction and mayhem, but when he talks all that goes down the toilet. But then that’s just kinda how Optimus is, he is an optimist (I don’t know if the similarity in the name is intentional but I don’t think so) and he talks like an optimist. Or a poet, I don’t know.

Not to give anything away, but I love how they integrated American history into the movie. I know what you’re thinking. “American history?” But you’ll just have to see it to know what I mean. All of the Transformers they chose were great, especially Bumblebee. I cannot wait to see what they do with the second one though.

The game’s protagonists are great. Reverend Ray is an ex gunslinger and probably the most self righteous man since Constantine, and has a similarly violent approach to handling his problems. After he makes the mistaken assumption that his nephew Billy has killed his parents, Ray proceeds on his path to and track him down and send him to hell. The great thing about Ray is that he really thinks he is doing the right thing, and that view evolves throughout the course of the game. In the end, you will most likely end up really liking Ray.

  There is just something about slow-motion, or slow-mo, that I love. In that moment of time suspension, you become a god, and your enemies are mear mortals, caught in the maelstrom that is your divinity. But in Call of Juarez, its more like you are one of those Disney gods who just doesn’t quite get the whole “wrath of god” thing. That was probably my biggest problem with it. I want to introduce a term now, a measurement that I take very seriously. I call it the Badassness Factor. The B-Factor or just BF for short, your call. Slow-mo increases the BF of a character exponentially, but in the case of Ray, it just makes you feel stupid.

  The concentration mode they give you (a.k.a. slow-mo mode) is just clunky and a pain to use, and lowers his BF. The moment you enact it, it puts your two cursors on the opposite sides of the screen and then slowly brings them together. Very slowly. Painfully so, in fact. If there is just one guy, you have to either wait for the cursors to get to your target or twist the camera around until you can aim at him. If they had thrown more enemies at you, requiring the sweeping motion of the concentration mode, then it may have made it more worth it, but rarely will they throw more than two at you at a time, at the most maybe four. Either way, it doesn’t make you feel like a badass, as slow-mo was meant to, but like a gunslinger with multiple schlerosis. Its frustrating as hell! This is one of the only games where I have preferred the normal mode of firing (which isn’t much better, for an ex gunslinger Ray can’t shoot worth a flip) over the slow-mo.

  Most people have really trashed the portions of the game where you are Billy. And they would be correct in doing so. Half the time you will just be standing under a damn branch, staring at it as if in worship, trying to find the place, no I’m sorry, the invishible inch, where they want you to put the whip so you can swing across like a drunken Tarzan. In case you don’t know what happens to drunk Tarzan, it normall ends up with him falling down the edge of a cliff to his doom or hanging like a complete ass at the end of a whip. But at other times, you get a bow that allows you your own version of the concentration mode, and it work much better than Ray’s revolvers. I remember one instance in particular where I was able to fire off four shots at four bandits, eliminating them all at nearly the same time, dropping them to the earth at the same time. Its these kind of moments that slow-mo is meant for, and Ray just doesn’t follow through on it.

  Other than that, its pretty simple. The game is beautiful, with vast Oblivion-quality scenery and the difficulty is pretty balanced. Rent it, finish the story, and you’ll pretty much have everything you want out of it. Somehow, even with the problems I noted, it does come out being an enjoyable experiance and is worth a look. I didn’t play the multiplayer because it looked like a cheap whorish version of Battlefield, but I’ll let you make that call. Enjoy.