Tuesday, November 4, 2008

ZA Critique: The Darkness

First off, go vote.

Second, another analysis of an old game. This one is a wee bit more modern, coming out last summer to generally positive reviews and decent sales. Some people complained about the multi-player, which I never checked out.

It's basically a breakdown for how the game design explores and emulates what's going on in the narrative for a third person FPS. It's all linear and aside from some really interesting options at key moments, the game is all shooting. What makes it so interesting is that the plot is a fairly cynical one about losing your soul.

It's easy to make a game design about being Captain Awesome and saving the planet, it's much more interesting when someone successfully makes one about quite the opposite using the same basic gameplay.

2 comments:

Denis Farr said...

I really enjoyed the game, and I'm not sure my knowledge of the comics even helped. It presented itself in such a succinct, well-wrought manner that it seems to be able to stand on its own two feet quite well.

Kirk Battle said...

I didn't know a thing about the comics, I'd read some Witchblade and I ended up going through the first issue after beating the game (they open up on the disc as unlockables). Very 90's Post-Watchmen, but that's just one issue I was reading.

And yeah, I really admired what they accomplished once I got over the lip animations.