RockTheCasba
03-14-2007, 02:32 PM
This game looks like it will be a great action game for the 360. it interests me hopefully it will be a excellent finished product.
The Darkness (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/772/772358p1.html)
The Darkness Hands-on
Starbreeze delivers the essence of evil like no other. Fresh screens and impressions.
by Douglass C. Perry
<A HREF="http://de.ign.com/event.ng/Type%3dclick%26FlightID%3d29141%26AdID%3d54967%26TargetID%3d5876%26Targets%3d6556,9234,7716,10137,70 12,6781,9716,6505,8617,7995,9900,9916,7938,8726,9827,10211,7413,6507,6619,5876,7085,7898,10191%26Val ues%3d25,30,46,50,60,72,83,90,91,100,110,150,155,225,227,268,469,656,764,806,928,1188,1405,1481,1503 ,1591,2522,2662,2682,2721,3152,3488,3887,3932,4056,4295,4657,4662,4799,5999,6612,6623,6744%26RawValu es%3d%26Redirect%3dhttp://www.direct2drive.com/3/3070/product/Buy-Titan-Quest:-Immortal-Throne-Download" target="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://ads.ign.com/advertisers/cp/tq/titanquestx_medrec.jpg" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>
March 13, 2007 - 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.
By now, everyone has heard the basic stuff and seen the core levels. On his 21st birthday, when his dad dies, the powers of the Darkness are passed on to Jackie Estacado, Franchetti family mafia hitman. Jackie must learn to fully command the Darkness so he can take back control of the Franchetti family, which is ruled by his uncle Paulie. As Jackie, you control The Darkness, which manifests as evil snake-like appendages on-screen, and as The Darklings, creepy and evil little demons that find cruel and hilarious ways to kill anyone nearby. When the lights are out the Darkness can be summoned. When the lights are on, they sizzle and hide. This first-person shooter offers a full story mode and a multiplayer mode for up to eight players on both systems. Aside from some extra DVD content for the PS3, and the various online differences between the two systems (Achievements and Gamerscore), the two versions offer the same content.
Today, 2K Games showed off essentially exactly what a lot of folks have already seen, the game's introduction and the first few levels, the Tunnel, Grinders' Lane, and the Cemetery. Our Australian squad pretty much got the same demo treatment we did, and gave an excellent description of the demo (which I highly recommend you read) so I'd rather not cover a well-worn path. I saw and played those levels today and I'm not sure why, but I had fun. Perhaps it was just a new game. Maybe the reason was because Starbreeze is such a distinctive developer. Yes, they did The Chronicles of Rid****: Escape From Butcher's Bay, and we all know how cool that was. If you did play that game, let me call on your memory for a moment. Remember how well that game opened up? How brilliantly movie-like it was? The developer gave you a little demo of the mechanics, sucked you into the world, and then surprise, surprise, set you back up into a semi-interactive cutscene, one that led you, Rid****, handcuffed and beaten, into one of the worst slams in the known universe.
Using the same style of opening originally debuted by Half-Life, the game delivered a mesmerizing feeling only a videogame could provide. It enveloped you into its fold. Half-Life did it. The Chronicles of Rid**** did it, and now Starbreeze is doing it again with The Darkness. The opening sequence is like one long Martin Scorsese car chase with no cuts, all sorts of foul language, car crashes, gun fighting, and a stylistic sense of graphic beauty and sheer intensity. Starbreeze sets up this incredible atmosphere, one you can almost smell, and then brings the gameplay in, slowly and carefully, providing the perfect audio-visual set up. Watching this game open was like going to the debut of the first Alien and being floored by its design, beauty and frightening atmosphere, only here, I was able to play it.
The Darkness, of course, is different than Rid**** or Alien. It's a comic book universe starring a really pissed off character who isn't an angel, but rather a mafia thug, a stone cold killer, who inherits this incredible power. Starbreeze not only gets the comic book, it sucks in the comic's essence and exhales it into polygonal form with perfect clarify, direction, and style. If they gave awards for best opening sequences, Starbreeze would win every single time.
That's how excited I got, sans coffee, just after seeing the intro. After watching for about 10 minutes, I grabbed a 360 controller and started playing. The game is still in alpha form, I learned, so the framerate wasn't spot-on yet and there was some collision detection issues here and there, but basically the controls worked fine. You move with the left analog, aim with right, shoot with the triggers (or on the PS3, the shoulder buttons) because it's a dual-wielding game. On Xbox, A is use, B is reload, X is jump, and Y is redirect Darklings (so for PS3 that would be X is use, Circle is reload, square is jump, and triangle is redirect Darkling). By tapping the D-pad left and right, you switch weapons, and by tapping it up and down, you switch Darkness powers from stealth to standard by-your-side mode.
The game offers no HUD. The only way you notice you're injured is by the color of your twin demons' eyes. They're bright orange-red and as they dim in color, you lose health. Jackie's health functions like Halo's Master Chief; he regenerates health when not being shot at. So it was easy to get into the swing of playing Jackie, thanks to relatively familiar controls.
Getting to grips with the weapons was easy. Using the Darkness powers, a very cool and important part of the game, however, took some time to adjust to. I mean, as Jackie, I'm already dual wielding powerful handguns, picking up machine guns and rifles along the way, and I'm feeling pretty lucky punk 'cause I have so much weaponry. Then I have these freakin' twin demons on either side of me. They function through use of the bumpers (shoulder buttons). Tap one and it shoots out at a nearby victim. When you've slain an enemy, press another single button to sap his life force (i.e. eat his heart out of his chest cavity) to increase your Darkness power. As the game progresses, the single eyes on the twin demons multiply into two, three, four and finally five eyes on each side to indicate increased stamina and health. The demons also feel big and somewhat bulky, even though they fold, crease, and meld into everything. When you push up against a wall, your hands bend back into a natural lean, for instance. But the Demons, well, they just look big and bulky, which is ironically a perfect visual design for a wide-screen TV. The demon heads, in stealth mode, can also enter into interactive vents, snake through sections really fast, and scout out an area.
Upon entering the cemetery after the intro car crash, you'll encounter NPCs with whom you can talk to, just like in Rid****, using branching conversation trees. Or you can kill them and suck out their life force; depends on your mood. If you feel like traveling, the subways in The Darkness are fully functional and so, just like in Rid****, while the story is linear, you can roam and fulfill side quests whenever you want. You can travel all over the city instantly. Of course, the Darkness can only exist in areas without much light, so you'll want to shoot out lights, or to save ammo, smash them with your demon heads. I walked around for a good three or four minutes smashing lights out. Not sure why that was so fun, but it was.
When you see Darkling holes, which appear in pre-set locations, and depending on how much Darkness power you have at the time, you can summon them. Incidentally, there are fewer Darklings in the game than originally intended, now in the range of 15. We accessed three of them, a female machine gunner, a kamikaze bomber, and a berserker, who uses various weapons to cause brutal injury to its enemies. This little guy wears various hats, like a hardhat or a top hat, and packs a mean jack hammer or a saw and tries to drill through or saw off your head, for instance; real subtle. The Darklings represent Jackie's personality, as they are mystical manifestations of his character. Thus, they'll say witty, rude, and strange things to themselves as they scuttle independently across the streets. Their humor is dark. They deliver evil chortles of laughter as they jack hammer an innocent in the face, bludgeon him in the shins, or pounce on their enemies' faces in 15-foot leaps across the screen.
All of this weaponry and power made me wonder: Am I too over-equipped? in the first couple levels you are over-stocked, 2K Games explained; you're a far gnarlier adversary than you need to be. 2K Games assured that these first levels were designed to pump me up and make me feel good about myself. They were designed to introduce me to the controls and ease me into the game. Later on, instead of a few patches of enemies here and there, you'll fight SWAT, FBI, and as host of bad guys that far outnumber you who learn about your strengths and weaknesses. They'll throw flashbangs, use flash lights, and use light as an enemy. In fact, Silvestri said there is a surprise in the game that's not in the comics. You'll enter into a dark other-world far from the urban New York streets where you'll need all the help you can get.
While the single-player game was pretty fun, the Multiplayer game was hilarious. Up to eight players can vie on either system, and players can play traditionally or use their Darkness Powers to transform into Darklings. These foul creatures swipe at and annoy you. But they can be dodged, since their leaps are like Olympic athlete long jumps that can't be altered in mid-air. You'll get power-ups of health and armor, as well as new weapons to wield. But it was switching to the Darklings, shimmying up walls, and lying in wait for any suckers, that was the most enjoyable aspect of the multiplayer game.
And then my time was up. I spent my morning interviewing Silvestri about his character, comic, life, and career, and then proceeded to kick his butt in a multiplayer match of The Darkness. I beat the guy who created the game. Beating him wasn't that much fun; he's not a gamer. It was the whole experience. He's a very cool guy; smart, friendly, and happy to be a part of this videogame development process. And he recognizes how good it is to work with a top-notch developer like Starbreeze. There's something special about this game, and now I'm pretty sure I know why.
The Darkness (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/772/772358p1.html)
The Darkness Hands-on
Starbreeze delivers the essence of evil like no other. Fresh screens and impressions.
by Douglass C. Perry
<A HREF="http://de.ign.com/event.ng/Type%3dclick%26FlightID%3d29141%26AdID%3d54967%26TargetID%3d5876%26Targets%3d6556,9234,7716,10137,70 12,6781,9716,6505,8617,7995,9900,9916,7938,8726,9827,10211,7413,6507,6619,5876,7085,7898,10191%26Val ues%3d25,30,46,50,60,72,83,90,91,100,110,150,155,225,227,268,469,656,764,806,928,1188,1405,1481,1503 ,1591,2522,2662,2682,2721,3152,3488,3887,3932,4056,4295,4657,4662,4799,5999,6612,6623,6744%26RawValu es%3d%26Redirect%3dhttp://www.direct2drive.com/3/3070/product/Buy-Titan-Quest:-Immortal-Throne-Download" target="_blank"><IMG SRC="http://ads.ign.com/advertisers/cp/tq/titanquestx_medrec.jpg" WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0></A>
March 13, 2007 - 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.
By now, everyone has heard the basic stuff and seen the core levels. On his 21st birthday, when his dad dies, the powers of the Darkness are passed on to Jackie Estacado, Franchetti family mafia hitman. Jackie must learn to fully command the Darkness so he can take back control of the Franchetti family, which is ruled by his uncle Paulie. As Jackie, you control The Darkness, which manifests as evil snake-like appendages on-screen, and as The Darklings, creepy and evil little demons that find cruel and hilarious ways to kill anyone nearby. When the lights are out the Darkness can be summoned. When the lights are on, they sizzle and hide. This first-person shooter offers a full story mode and a multiplayer mode for up to eight players on both systems. Aside from some extra DVD content for the PS3, and the various online differences between the two systems (Achievements and Gamerscore), the two versions offer the same content.
Today, 2K Games showed off essentially exactly what a lot of folks have already seen, the game's introduction and the first few levels, the Tunnel, Grinders' Lane, and the Cemetery. Our Australian squad pretty much got the same demo treatment we did, and gave an excellent description of the demo (which I highly recommend you read) so I'd rather not cover a well-worn path. I saw and played those levels today and I'm not sure why, but I had fun. Perhaps it was just a new game. Maybe the reason was because Starbreeze is such a distinctive developer. Yes, they did The Chronicles of Rid****: Escape From Butcher's Bay, and we all know how cool that was. If you did play that game, let me call on your memory for a moment. Remember how well that game opened up? How brilliantly movie-like it was? The developer gave you a little demo of the mechanics, sucked you into the world, and then surprise, surprise, set you back up into a semi-interactive cutscene, one that led you, Rid****, handcuffed and beaten, into one of the worst slams in the known universe.
Using the same style of opening originally debuted by Half-Life, the game delivered a mesmerizing feeling only a videogame could provide. It enveloped you into its fold. Half-Life did it. The Chronicles of Rid**** did it, and now Starbreeze is doing it again with The Darkness. The opening sequence is like one long Martin Scorsese car chase with no cuts, all sorts of foul language, car crashes, gun fighting, and a stylistic sense of graphic beauty and sheer intensity. Starbreeze sets up this incredible atmosphere, one you can almost smell, and then brings the gameplay in, slowly and carefully, providing the perfect audio-visual set up. Watching this game open was like going to the debut of the first Alien and being floored by its design, beauty and frightening atmosphere, only here, I was able to play it.
The Darkness, of course, is different than Rid**** or Alien. It's a comic book universe starring a really pissed off character who isn't an angel, but rather a mafia thug, a stone cold killer, who inherits this incredible power. Starbreeze not only gets the comic book, it sucks in the comic's essence and exhales it into polygonal form with perfect clarify, direction, and style. If they gave awards for best opening sequences, Starbreeze would win every single time.
That's how excited I got, sans coffee, just after seeing the intro. After watching for about 10 minutes, I grabbed a 360 controller and started playing. The game is still in alpha form, I learned, so the framerate wasn't spot-on yet and there was some collision detection issues here and there, but basically the controls worked fine. You move with the left analog, aim with right, shoot with the triggers (or on the PS3, the shoulder buttons) because it's a dual-wielding game. On Xbox, A is use, B is reload, X is jump, and Y is redirect Darklings (so for PS3 that would be X is use, Circle is reload, square is jump, and triangle is redirect Darkling). By tapping the D-pad left and right, you switch weapons, and by tapping it up and down, you switch Darkness powers from stealth to standard by-your-side mode.
The game offers no HUD. The only way you notice you're injured is by the color of your twin demons' eyes. They're bright orange-red and as they dim in color, you lose health. Jackie's health functions like Halo's Master Chief; he regenerates health when not being shot at. So it was easy to get into the swing of playing Jackie, thanks to relatively familiar controls.
Getting to grips with the weapons was easy. Using the Darkness powers, a very cool and important part of the game, however, took some time to adjust to. I mean, as Jackie, I'm already dual wielding powerful handguns, picking up machine guns and rifles along the way, and I'm feeling pretty lucky punk 'cause I have so much weaponry. Then I have these freakin' twin demons on either side of me. They function through use of the bumpers (shoulder buttons). Tap one and it shoots out at a nearby victim. When you've slain an enemy, press another single button to sap his life force (i.e. eat his heart out of his chest cavity) to increase your Darkness power. As the game progresses, the single eyes on the twin demons multiply into two, three, four and finally five eyes on each side to indicate increased stamina and health. The demons also feel big and somewhat bulky, even though they fold, crease, and meld into everything. When you push up against a wall, your hands bend back into a natural lean, for instance. But the Demons, well, they just look big and bulky, which is ironically a perfect visual design for a wide-screen TV. The demon heads, in stealth mode, can also enter into interactive vents, snake through sections really fast, and scout out an area.
Upon entering the cemetery after the intro car crash, you'll encounter NPCs with whom you can talk to, just like in Rid****, using branching conversation trees. Or you can kill them and suck out their life force; depends on your mood. If you feel like traveling, the subways in The Darkness are fully functional and so, just like in Rid****, while the story is linear, you can roam and fulfill side quests whenever you want. You can travel all over the city instantly. Of course, the Darkness can only exist in areas without much light, so you'll want to shoot out lights, or to save ammo, smash them with your demon heads. I walked around for a good three or four minutes smashing lights out. Not sure why that was so fun, but it was.
When you see Darkling holes, which appear in pre-set locations, and depending on how much Darkness power you have at the time, you can summon them. Incidentally, there are fewer Darklings in the game than originally intended, now in the range of 15. We accessed three of them, a female machine gunner, a kamikaze bomber, and a berserker, who uses various weapons to cause brutal injury to its enemies. This little guy wears various hats, like a hardhat or a top hat, and packs a mean jack hammer or a saw and tries to drill through or saw off your head, for instance; real subtle. The Darklings represent Jackie's personality, as they are mystical manifestations of his character. Thus, they'll say witty, rude, and strange things to themselves as they scuttle independently across the streets. Their humor is dark. They deliver evil chortles of laughter as they jack hammer an innocent in the face, bludgeon him in the shins, or pounce on their enemies' faces in 15-foot leaps across the screen.
All of this weaponry and power made me wonder: Am I too over-equipped? in the first couple levels you are over-stocked, 2K Games explained; you're a far gnarlier adversary than you need to be. 2K Games assured that these first levels were designed to pump me up and make me feel good about myself. They were designed to introduce me to the controls and ease me into the game. Later on, instead of a few patches of enemies here and there, you'll fight SWAT, FBI, and as host of bad guys that far outnumber you who learn about your strengths and weaknesses. They'll throw flashbangs, use flash lights, and use light as an enemy. In fact, Silvestri said there is a surprise in the game that's not in the comics. You'll enter into a dark other-world far from the urban New York streets where you'll need all the help you can get.
While the single-player game was pretty fun, the Multiplayer game was hilarious. Up to eight players can vie on either system, and players can play traditionally or use their Darkness Powers to transform into Darklings. These foul creatures swipe at and annoy you. But they can be dodged, since their leaps are like Olympic athlete long jumps that can't be altered in mid-air. You'll get power-ups of health and armor, as well as new weapons to wield. But it was switching to the Darklings, shimmying up walls, and lying in wait for any suckers, that was the most enjoyable aspect of the multiplayer game.
And then my time was up. I spent my morning interviewing Silvestri about his character, comic, life, and career, and then proceeded to kick his butt in a multiplayer match of The Darkness. I beat the guy who created the game. Beating him wasn't that much fun; he's not a gamer. It was the whole experience. He's a very cool guy; smart, friendly, and happy to be a part of this videogame development process. And he recognizes how good it is to work with a top-notch developer like Starbreeze. There's something special about this game, and now I'm pretty sure I know why.