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The Darkness
2K GAMES, PS3 (2007)
Fresh? Original? Impressive? Try bland, boring and dull
“Have you ever loved
someone who was so
beautiful and pure, you
couldn’t bear to show them your
own darkness?”
What? Oh, do shut up you boring
goth tit. This quote might read
like it was taken from the online
profile page of some pasty-faced,
bandy-legged ninny who says that
no one understands him because
he’s such an individual, and whose
real name is Keith, but insists that
everyone call him Blackthorne
because it sounds scary and also
because it’s the name of the cider
he drinks with blackcurrant in it
because he thinks that makes
it look like blood… but it’s not.
It’s taken from the script of a
videogame, which supposedly has
among the best stories, characters
and dialogue ever seen in the
medium. Yeah right.
Slagging off The Darkness’s
gameplay is too easy. Even fans of
the game will admit that the action
is slow, tedious and fiddly. But
when they claim that the mediocre
gameplay doesn’t matter and that
the story is amazing and that
The Darkness is a fresh, new kind
of FPS they are wrong, wrong
and wrong again.
Of course gameplay matters
– it’s a game. Gameplay should
always be the most important
consideration in games because
it’s what makes them different
to other forms of entertainment.
It’s what makes games, games. If
you’re so fussed about the story
and so willing to ignore the limits
of the gameplay, why the hell are
you playing a game at all? Go read
a comic or watch a movie
or something.
But even if we were willing to
brush aside our reservations about
The Darkness’s gameplay, we’d
still have a word or two hundred
to say about its story. Jackie
Estacado is nothing more than a
personification of what every lonely
nerd in a black, leather trench coat
wishes he could be. Let’s just run
through a quick list of factors that
feed into your typical, everyday,
painfully pathetic goth fantasy,
shall we? See what tallies with
The Darkness…
Darkness? Check. Babbling on
in a pseudo-poetic fashion about
beauty and purity? Check. Biting
people? Check. Being rejected by
your family because you’re weird?
Check. Exacting violent, bloody
revenge on normal people? Check.
Sexual frustration? Check. Inner
turmoil? Check. Self-harm? Check.
Suicide? Check. Snakey things?
Check. Cuddling in front of the
telly? Check. We could go on, but
it’s getting really boring, isn’t it?
All this talk of cuddling,
television and being boring brings
us onto our next issue with The
Darkness. When people talk about
how ‘fresh’ and ‘impressive’ it is,
they cite stuff like the bits where
you use the phone, or the bits
where you watch TV for hours on
end, or the bit where you have
a cuddle. Are they really that
desperate for company?
If you really need to phone
people and snuggle up on a sofa
with a girl in a videogame to forget
about the horrifying loneliness
of the real world then that’s fine
– each to their own. But don’t
try to tell us it’s impressive. It’s
not, it’s really, really sad. And as
for the in-game TV… you have a
TV in the real world – so bloody
use it! Think about what you’re
actually doing here. Watching a
TV in a videogame, which is itself
displayed on a TV is like… like…
it’s like… having a wank while
fantasising about having a wank.
Pointless, stupid and weird.
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