The Darkness Hands-on

via ign

Sometimes I don't fully realize what a cool job I have. It's always there in the back of mind. But every so often I forget how lucky I am. Today I strolled into the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, Ca., and bumped into The Darkness creator Mark Silvestri by accident. We searched through the off-white hallways of the hotel, and I directed him to the right suite where, instead of finding a highly decorated room layered in black, it was all white -- off-white chairs, tables, walls, window curtains, floor, cabinets, you name it. It was like the Milk Bar in Clockwork Orange. Like a cleaning room in Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory. Quite a contrast for the setting of a game based on an evil curse. A dark, brooding curse that enables its host to send out demon heads that spring from your ribs and rip out human hearts in a beat. Sill, there I was, giving directions to a comic-book god. "Oh, do allow me. Right this way, sir."

It was early in the morning. I had no coffee. I wasn't feeling especially evil, or for that matter, fanboyish. Just plain tired, and, somewhere beneath that veil of fatigue, I was passively ecstatic about seeing The Darkness for the first time since E3 2006. It's been that long since I've seen Starbreeze's first-person shooter based on Silvestri's Top Cow comic. My problem was that I just hadn't followed the game and I wasn't sure how a bunch of snaky demon heads would work into an FPS. The Darkness's premise centers on Jackie Estacado, a mafia hitman for the Franchetti crime family, who has a family curse passed onto him. What kind of curse? That's the ongoing story of The Darkness, which will be told when 2K Games publishes the first-person shooter on PS3 and Xbox 360 this June. Jackie is voiced by Kirk Acevedo (Band of Brothers, Oz), while Mike Patton (lead singer, Faith No More) handles the voice of the Darkness, and Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) as Jenny. Each actor provides fantastic, convincing performances that help shape the game's atmosphere.

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