The Darkness is a dark and poetic atmosphere FPS where Jackie Estacado channels the Darkness tentacles. Underground New York narrative, touching love relationship. An atypical and impactful FPS for enthusiasts.
Your verdict
Category
First-Person Shooter1 player18+
Description
2K Games first-person shooter where mobster Jackie Estacado inherits a demonic entity on his twenty-first birthday. Published by 2K Games, released in Europe in June 2007. Dual wielding and Darkness tentacles, scripted mafia narrative, evolving powers and New York settings. European version.
Darkness, The review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
MAX
Story
★★★★★
"Masterful"
The art direction hides its greatest setting in the beyond. Between two New York chapters, the hero tips into a hell frozen in the First World War: endless trenches under a halted storm sky, skeleton soldiers in uniform, barbed wire and eternal mud. This military purgatory, without equivalent in the original comic, sets against the urban realism a vision from beyond the grave and gives the game its dimension of damnation.
The soundtrack is that of a muted nocturnal New York. Subway cars rumbling underfoot, distant sirens, a diner jukebox, sidewalk conversations and gangster radios compose a continuous urban layer, more documentary than musical. Over this realistic background, the hissing whispers of the demonic entity sound all the more foreign, a voice from elsewhere laid over the city's ordinary noise.
On the night of his twenty-first birthday, a mob hitman feels a devouring demonic power awaken within him. Adapted from the comic, the tale blends revenge, horror and a romance of unexpected tenderness, up to a scene that became cult. Its sincere darkness raises this FPS far above a mere shooting gallery.
The Japanese version of The Darkness, Starbreeze's narrative FPS, a release less common than the Western editions on a market little inclined to the genre. This edition appeals to fans of Japanese runs of a Western authored shooter. Its interest lies in this local run rather than strong value.
Is Darkness, The still worth playing in 2026?
The Darkness remains an atypical shooter that deserves a second life, so much does its atmosphere cut against the output of its time. Adapted from the comic, it follows Jackie Estacado, a mobster possessed by a demonic entity whose tentacles devour his foes in the dark. The mechanic of shooting out lights to unleash his powers gives the fights a real identity. But it is above all its dark narrative and its surprisingly tender love story, one scene of which is still cited for its daring, that leave a mark. The gunplay has aged, the storytelling has not. A poetic curiosity to discover.
