Games of the decade: The Darkness

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

The Darkness

(2007, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3)

Playing The Darkness was the best kind of gaming experience to have. I went into it with no expectations, was impressed from the start, wondered how it would screw up, and gradually realized, to my delight, that it wouldn't. We reviewed it for the Phoenix because it was June, and it was a shooter, and what the hell else were we going to do? Certainly the game sounded stupid: you play as a hitman, Jackie Estacado, who's possessed by a demon. That was all I knew, and it didn't seem necessary to know more.

From the start, you realize something a little more is happening. The Darkness throws you into an action scene -- you're sitting in the back of a convertible, speeding through a tunnel away from the cops, and a compatriot hands you a gun and directs you to start shooting. This sets the tone for the rest of the game: you're in control of your actions, mostly, but at crucial points someone else is calling the shots.

The surprises don't stop. The Darkness gives you quiet moments, such as the famous scene where you sit down with your character's girlfriend and can watch the entirety of To Kill a Mockingbird on television, if you choose. And there's the walk through a burned-down orphanage, where ghosts of Jackie's past are literally all around. Twice, Jackie dies and visits this game's version of Hell, a supernatural, World War I-like landscape, where the tormented soul of his grandfather struggles to free Jackie from suffering for his sins. This is a game suffused with sadness, memory, and regret.

Maybe the best thing about the story is how small-scale it is. The plot is essentially one of macabre one-upsmanship, with characters taking increasingly brutal revenge on one another for a perceived personal slight that happens before the game even begins. The fate of the world doesn't hang in the balance, and Jackie has no interest in saving anyone -- not once that option is removed from him, anyway. This is a story of two people who hate each other, and who will go to any lengths to destroy one another, even at the cost of their own souls.

Then there's the Darkness itself, a fascinating creature voiced with ferocity and intensity by Mike Patton. It makes its intentions clear from the outset: it wants Jackie's soul, and will stop at nothing to acquire it. It will help him pursue his own goals in exchange, but its self-interest is never in doubt. Even as its tentacles feast on the hearts of his enemies, it gives him nothing, and takes from him everything.*

One of the markers people who don't understand video games like to throw down for the legitimacy of the medium is the question of when a game will make somebody cry (never mind that many games already have). I won't go so far as to say that The Darkness made me cry, although it did make things a little dusty in my apartment. But it definitely made me feel something -- many things. I felt sadness and rage. I felt genuine affection for a virtual character, every bit as much as I have for characters in books and movies. I felt, when it was over, like I'd experienced something I would never forget.

*Wasn't that a line in 300?

More on The Darkness:

• The best cinematics ever

Friday afternoon tidbits

I'm looking forward to playing the new Left 4 Dead campaign tonight. I also intend to play more Dead Space: Extraction this weekend, after being pleasantly surprised by the first two chapters. Will report back!

-A while back, I posted a list of songs I'd like to see in Rock Band. In that post, I predicted a zero-percent chance of one of those songs ever being released. Shows what I know: "Gay Bar" by Electric Six will be released as DLC next Tuesday. This is very exciting. And it's also another reason why I'll take the open Rock Band platform over the more hermetic Beatles installment. You're just not gonna get surprises like this from the Beatles game.

-In this week's Experience Points podcast, Jorge and Scott talk about downer endings in games, or, more specifically, a lack of them (inspired by Manveer's post on the subject). I think the issue really isn't one of "happy" or "sad" endings, it's one of thoughtful, mature endings that carry a character's arc through to a conclusion, or that contain elements of both happiness and sadness. I mentioned The Darkness in comments as a game that gets it right. The final sequence is viewable on YouTube, although I'm not sure it would make much sense if you hadn't played the rest of the game. The point is that it provokes conflicting emotions, while completing the protagonist's fall. It's brilliant.

-At Press Pause to Reflect, C.T. Hutt weighs in on something that's one of my pet peeves: overly helpful helper characters. Navi is the worst, and Issun clearly wasn't much better. Having an NPC partner isn't inherently a bad idea -- it's been done well in Half-Life 2, for example. It's when the partner is overbearing and impossible to ignore that you get into trouble. How hard would it have been to have to ask Navi for hints when you wanted them? Or better still, design the game in such a way that her particular brand of help isn't needed? Just more reasons why Ocarina is the Most Overrated Game of All Time.

-This one's a little older, but I didn't do a links post last week so I'll write it now. Michael Abbott wondered whether we praise innovation at the expense of execution, specifically talking about the difference in critical buzz between Scribblenauts and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. I recall that last year Leigh Alexander observed an opposite problem -- that we condemn innovation when the execution isn't quite there. They can't both be right, and I'd venture to say that it's not so simple as either of those formulations makes it seem.

Innovation is useful for a great many things, but it is not the endpoint. It's the beginning. Gaming history is littered with examples of games that innovated and failed, but whose ideas were subsequently improved upon. In his next post, Michael praised the value of iteration, which is a point I fully agree with. But if you trace these refinements back far enough, you'll eventually get to something that was brand-new, and which didn't work as well. You can't really separate innovation and execution.

As for why so many writers in the brainysphere are talking about Scribblenauts, it might be as simple as this: it's a game about words. We're the target audience!

Friday afternoon tidbits

It's a holiday weekend, as we here in the USA celebrate "America, Fuck Yeah" day. (Contrary to popular belief, that is not every day.) Hopefully you're not still at work. If so, have some links.

-The Brainy Gamer plays The Darkness, and makes some astute observations. It's impossible to play this game and not feel the urge to analyze it. At this point, it can't cost any more than 20 bucks. You owe it to yourself to give it a shot.

-Speaking of repairs, Mike Rousseau's Xbox RRoD'd on him. The service went fine, but then Microsoft tried to charge him to re-download his stuff from the marketplace. After that first post, somebody from the company contacted him and fixed the problem. That's good customer service, but they should be treating everybody that way in the first place. Right, Sony?

-As you may know, I'm a man who loves his taxonomies. So I was psyched to read Justin Keverne's "Taxonomy of Left 4 Dead," in which he breaks down the personalities of each of the characters. What I like best about the game is that the player's actions can mesh with the characters' personalities in unexpected ways. Francis might be written as misanthropic, but depending on who's controlling him he may be shown to have a heart of gold. That interaction makes for depth I wouldn't have expected before I played the game.

With that, I'm on vacation. Regular posting will resume the week after next.

Request hour: The hardcasualist's lament, review scores, and underrated games

Tyler echoes the hardcasualist's lament:

I don't play games that often. I own a Playstation 2, and own exactly zero games for it since I lost Guitar Hero. Other than that, I'll pull out the rare old favorite for the PC, play some web-based game, or load something on my iPhone. Occasionally there's a game I really want to play (Rock Band 2!), but to lay out the cash for a current console and a game or two is just not reasonable. Basically, the bar to entry for an extremely casual gamer is way too high.

Never mind that, I'm not even sure I'd be able to figure out how to play some of the newest games coming out before getting frustrated and giving up.

What should the video game industry do about us old fogeys who have more interest in games than Windows Solitaire, but not enough to go buy a PS3? Are there PC games that are more than browser-based time-wasters but don't require the latest and greatest hardware? Or are mobile devices the next gaming platform? Or what?

I was going to say that Nintendo had people like you in mind with the Wii, but that's actually not the case. The Wii was made for lapsed gamers, not people who were priced out of the next generation. There is still a large segment of people who want the graphics and the "hardcore" experiences of the PS3 and 360, but aren't willing to commit the capital. And let's face it: the so-called casual market, the one that plays Peggle and Bejeweled, is another group of people entirely. There's kind of a donut hole here.

But: the PlayStation 2 is actually still getting quite a bit of support, including Rock Band 2. You just can't download new tracks. And some noteworthy PC developers, like Valve and Blizzard, make sure to support lower-end systems, which means you don't need a cutting-edge system to play Left 4 Dead or World of Warcraft. Additionally, the Xbox 360 is rapidly approaching a true mass-market price point, so before long it may be a perfectly reasonable expenditure.

I think the most interesting part of this question is in the middle, though, about trying to learn how to play some of these new games. It's a real problem. I remember experiencing a moment of panic the first time I ever held the original Xbox controller, thinking "This is too much." But ultimately, playing games is work. They ask a lot of you. It's a matter of how much effort you're willing to put in to get out what's there.

I think the trick is to know what kind of complexity is right for you. For example, I'm fine at handling all the button combinations necessary to play a first-person shooter, but you can't streamline the interface of a strategy game enough for me. Think about it this way, too: you're a fan of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but those certainly weren't easy to learn.

Danilo Vujevic really asked:

Do critic review scores actually mean anything?

A score can be helpful, but it's not the whole story. I make no secret of my love for Metacritic: it's an excellent way to get a snapshot of conventional wisdom. And it's often right. Games with a Metacritic score of 90 or above, in many cases, are games that I think are fully deserving. Having said that, I'm usually more interested in the score that goes completely against the grain. I'd rather read the dissenting view of a game like Fallout or Grand Theft Auto than another one that calls it the greatest game of all time. And I'm often intrigued when a game's Metacritic spread spans 40 points or more. So I guess I'd sum it up by saying that scores do mean something, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you rely on them exclusively.

Matthew Gallant asked:

What games do you feel are critically underappreciated? Games you loved that were overlooked by both bloggers and the gaming community at large.

I would have said both Yakuza and The Darkness, but at least in my circles those both seem to have gotten a little more attention recently. I still think they're both underrated and overlooked in the world at large, though. Both games have excellent stories starring fascinating lead characters, and showcase strong play mechanics. The Darkness, in particular, didn't get nearly enough credit for how well it executed its basic gameplay. Snaking along the ground as a tentacle before lashing up and eating an enemy's heart just never got old.

I'd love to dazzle you with some out-of-left-field pick from years ago, but my tastes have always run to the mainstream. Most of the games I'd pick are probably not under-represented in the hearts of people who read gaming blogs -- games like System Shock and (surprise!) The Secret of Monkey Island. But maybe you'd be surprised to learn of my deep, abiding love for FreeCell, the free Windows pack-in.

To be continued on Monday.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Oof, what a busy week. Good thing I wrote a couple of posts ahead of time, or you would have had nothing! At least the links have made it through unscathed.

As good as Far Cry 2 is, in my travels it seems like most people are too deep into Fallout 3 to care much about anything else. If you've overlooked this fascinating and absorbing title, at least check out a couple links and consider playing it later.

-First, Chris Remo at GameSetWatch wrote about Far Cry 2's slow burn, the process by which the game's sluggish pace initially seems offputting before casting an unbreakable spell. Also at GSW, an interview with Jean-Francois Levesque, the man who programmed the game's dynamic and unpredictable fire effects, which add a lot to the gameplay.

-PixelVixen707 examines the ways in which Far Cry 2 is the latest game to offer you gutwrenching choices -- or not, as the case may be. There is something to be said for the fact that your character is given an awful lot of unsavory things to do in this game, and while you could always choose not to accept the mission, you would then have nothing else to do. Games are great because they give the player control over how their events unfold, but sometimes I appreciate when they force me to do things I may not want to do. I'm playing a role. Think about how boring would books or movies would be if every character was just like you.

-Last but not least on the Far Cry 2 tip, Ben Abraham calls the game "Clint Hocking's masterpiece." Ben did a great job discussing theme and not plot details, so don't hesitate to read it for fear of spoilers. For all that the game's grim and humorless tone works, a part of me wonders if the designers let themselves off the hook by leaving out the real consequences of your actions on innocent people. Then again, the whole point of the story is losing your own moral bearings, so maybe it doesn't matter. Someone ought to write a post about that.

-L.B . Jeffries wrote a wonderful look at The Darkness, one of last year's best games. On that post, I commented:

Great analysis. I loved this game when I played it, and in the—what is it—16 months since then, it’s stuck with me. I think about it often. Really glad to see it’s had legs, and didn’t vanish down the usual hype->hate vortex.

Even with a game like Far Cry, which I’m truly enjoying, I always get stuck at things like a buddy system, wherein I’m supposed to like my character’s friends just because the game tells me I should. The Darkness is singular in that it really made me care. I cared about Jenny. I hated Paulie and Shrote. I loved the fact that the main conflict wasn’t an overblown end-of-the-world scenario, but just a vendetta between two angry men.

Seriously, this game is $19.99 at Amazon (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), and will take up probably 10-12 hours of your time. Well worth it.

-I'm a little giddy to have contributed to Bill Harris's "Friday Links" on Dubious Quality. Sadly, it's just a link that I sent him about a "War of the Worlds" hoax in Ecuador, and not a link to this blog. Someday...

-Not like he needs the traffic from me, but this week's Zero Punctuation review of Dead Space is noteworthy. Yahtzee douses the flames of fanboy passions with a brutal -- and, it must be said, deadly accurate -- review. The content of our reviews was much the same, but his tone just seems ballsier.

-Speaking of Dead Space, have you heard a single person mention it since Fable 2, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, or LittleBigPlanet came out? And here I thought it was "an achievement that rivals greats like Half-Life 2 and BioShock."

That's right, I linked to my own blog in the Friday afternoon tidbits. What.

The best cinematics ever

Well, okay, not the best cinematics ever -- just some of my favorites. I'm sure I'm missing tons of great ones. But this is the kind of thing you post on a Friday, right?

Chronologically (These are spoiler-heavy, so beware):

Ninja Gaiden (NES, 1989)



This is the first memory I have of the honest-to-goodness cinematic opening to a game. I love everything about it: the close-ups, the extreme widescreen, and especially the music. This kind of thing wasn't common when Ninja Gaiden came out. It was mind-blowing.

MechWarrior 2 (PC, 1995)



This played right as you booted up MechWarrior 2. I liked the game all right, but I must have watched this sequence -- estimating conservatively -- a hundred million times.

Resident Evil (PlayStation, 1996)



OH SHIT IT'S A ZOMBIE

Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation, 1997)



This is the most famous sequence in the game, although another great choice would have been Sephiroth vanishing into the flames of Nibelheim. I knew this moment was coming when I finally played Final Fantasy VII in 2003, but it was no less powerful for that. It's so strange to watch this now: I remember seeing commercials for this game and thinking that the FMV looked real.

Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation, 1998)



Metal Gear Solid is essentially one long cutscene punctuated with bursts of gameplay, but when they're done this well, who cares? Each foe Snake vanquishes gets a big, dramatic death scene, but Sniper Wolf's was always my favorite. I think I like the contrast between Snake's reaction and Otacon's. "I don't have any more tears to shed" is such a good line.

Shadow of the Colossus (PlayStation 2, 2005)



Watching this now, the moment doesn't seem so dramatic, but at the time I actually yelled, "No!" Shadow of the Colossus does such a wonderful job creating an atmosphere of loneliness and desolation. Agro is your only companion -- almost the only sign of life in the whole world -- for 90% of the game. And then this happens, like a punch in the stomach.

The Darkness (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, 2007)



This may not technically count as a cinematic, because it happens in-game, but considering that you don't control your character I think it passes the test. This is just one of the bleakest and most horrifying scenes I've ever encountered in a game, completely unleavened by irony or comic relief. Its impact is heightened by the scene earlier where you and Jenny sit on the couch together watching To Kill a Mockingbird. I wanted to kill the hell out of Uncle Paulie after this.

Post links to your favorite cinematics in the comments!

The Year in Review: Year-End Superlatives

All this week, we've been recapping the year that was. Today: year-end superlatives.

To finish up our look back at 2007, we're handing out accolades to the games, systems, and people who made the year so interesting.

Noble Failure of the Year: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

Every year there's at least one game that should be great, and that I still kind of like in spite of itself. This year, it was Puzzle Quest. The premise -- a fantasy role-playing game in which battles take the form of a gem-swapping puzzle game -- is truly inspired. Thoughts of what the game could have been kept me playing long after it was clear that the game mechanics weren't nearly tuned enough, and my computer opponents were plainly cheating. I never went back to this after I filed my review, but I haven't had the heart to trade it in, either.

PR Knucklehead of the Year: Jack Tretton, Sony

The fine folks at Activision made a late run for this award with their monumental pettiness regarding guitartroller interoperability, but nothing beat Jack Tretton's bizarre, continued pronouncements from Bizarro World about the earth-shattering success of the PlayStation 3. His opus came in February, when he declared: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it." Now that's chutzpah!

The Donut Hole Award: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

If I had played it in time, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin would have been a lock for my top-10 list of 2006. It may even have had a shot to place on this year's list if it had been eligible. So consider this my formal apology to a fantastic game, and a strong recommendation for a worthy addition to any Nintendo DS owner's library.

Game Blog of the Year: Dubious Quality

It is a cruel irony that the best video game writer I know of isn't really a video game writer at all -- which is to say that Bill Harris doesn't write about games for a living, and if he does any freelance work he doesn't mention it in his blog. He doesn't even run ads on Dubious Quality. The pearls he continually hands down are proffered free of charge, whether that means crunching the NPD numbers so we don't have to, or delving more deeply into the black heart of EA Sports than any mainstream publication would ever dare. No matter the subject, Dubious Quality is essential reading.

Publisher of the Year: 2K Games

With most publishers piling onto the mini-game bandwagon like it's the last helicopter out of Saigon, 2K Games this year was the paragon of where I'd like to see games headed. Both The Darkness and BioShock were thought-provoking, complex adventures that questioned the very nature of playing games (The Darkness did so implicitly, BioShock explicitly). Both games have stuck with me months after finishing them. Seeing that pitiful Duke Nukem Forever teaser only drove home how much more subtle and complex games have become, and nobody demonstrated that better in 2007 than 2K Games.

Developer of the Year: Valve

Valve had a shot at being the Publisher of the Year, too, but ultimately I decided to focus on their astonishing efforts on the development front (plus, I never use Steam for anything). Valve doesn't just develop games -- they develop talent. No game this year was more inventive than Portal, and Gabe Newell and his band of merry men deserve credit for identifying and nurturing the Portal team, which began as a group of ambitious students at DigiPen. Kudos to them also for taking the time to get Team Fortress 2 right, and for orchestrating one of the most thrilling battle sequences in history at the end of Half-Life 2 Episode Two.

Console of the Year: Xbox 360

Really, what other choice was there? The Wii had its moments, but many of its signature games fell short (Wario Ware, Metroid Prime 3). As for the PlayStation 3, it rebounded quite nicely toward the end of the year with price cuts and some strong first-party titles, but that wasn't enough to make up for all that had come before. No other system could boast the quantity and quality of software that graced the 360.

Publishers churned out fantastic games all year, from Crackdown in February, to Guitar Hero II in April, to The Darkness in June, to BioShock in August -- all traditionally dead times on the release schedule. Even with the apparently catastrophic hardware failure rate of the 360 (mine's still going strong -- knock on wood), it'd be hard to suggest another system to somebody who's looking to buy only one.