One of The Darkness's most noticeable qualities is its graphics and sound. Not only does this game look good, but the vocals, sound effects and music set the game's mood perfectly.

Based on similar dynamic and destructible light technology that Starbreeze Studios used in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, is your ability to control the amount of light, or more specifically, darkness, in the rooms and alleyways of this game. The Darkness could have easily been some sort of stealth game where your character would have to stay in the shadows in order to use his powers, but instead, you take the lighting into your own hands and shoot out as many lights as you can as you plow your way through levels.

Audio-wise, everyone from your character, Jackie Estacado (Kirk Acevedo of Oz) to The Darkness itself (Mike Patton of the band Faith No More) sound excellent. Cut-scenes all appear to be in-game, but the quality of the lip-synching might make you think otherwise. Put simply, as far as presentation goes, The Darkness is dead on.

The Darkness follows the origin story (somewhat) and universe set out in the Top Cow comic series of the same name. When Jackie Estacado, a mafia hit man, turns 21, an old family curse rears its ugly head and he is possessed by an ancient evil known as The Darkness.

Now Estacado will use his newfound powers, as well as his extensive knowledge of guns, to take revenge on the mafia family that raised and betrayed him. Throughout the game, you will travel through various parts of New York and The Otherworld not only toppling your former employers, but also mastering The Darkness and imposing your will over this evil spirit.

Among the powers The Darkness bestows, there is the ability to impale your enemies on the tentacles, send out a tentacle in order to get to hard to reach areas, scout ahead or attack enemies, unleash a black hole that will suck up enemies in a small area, and summon Darklings.

You gain more powers as you progress through the game and each power you learn is stronger than the last, but uses more darkness power. Among these, the most interesting would be the Darklings. These are minions of The Otherworld that Estacado can summon to do various tasks like blow up lights, enemies (along with themselves) or just go crazy and destroy anything that gets in his way.

The Darkness also boasts a few multiplayer modes. Not only are the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag available, but there are also a few more original modes to choose from as well. Last Darkling and Last Human games are basically the same, except whether or not most of the players are humans or darklings. In these games, one person is the Darkling/Human and only that odd-man-out can score when he kills. In order to become the Darkling/Human, you need to kill him and then you can start racking up the points.

The Darkness has a pretty well-balanced difficulty level. There were plenty of times when I felt like I was up against a really difficult horde of enemies, but either I would forget about one of my lesser-used abilities, like the Black Hole, or I would find a slightly different way of tackling the problem in order to get past it.

In the end, I never felt like the challenge ahead of me was too difficult for me to overcome. Granted, there were a few times when I had to put the game away because of a little more frustration than I would like, but these moments were few and far between.

As one would expect from the name of the spirit and this game, your supernatural powers are more effective in the shadows than the light. While in darkness, your power meter fills up, but if you are standing in light, it doesn't.

Because of this, the first thing you will tend to do when going into a new area is take out as many lights as possible. Because The Darkness also gives you a variety of Darklings to send out, you can also summon ones that are specifically designated to destroy any lights it happens across. This added mechanic of needing to be aware of and destroy light sources really helps to make this game fun and give it the same feel as the comic.

The Darkness will please any fan of the Top Cow series. If you are an FPS fan, then the added darkness weapons and mechanics will also please you, not to mention the Last Human and Last Darkling multiplayer modes.