The Darkness: Part One

Did you honestly think that I'd forgotten The Darkness?  Silly!  No, I had Mass Effect depression for a couple of weeks, but I eventually rallied, complained a lot on the internet, and then started The Darkness.  So here we go!


The Darkness!

So the game opens with my character in a speeding car with two obvious mobsters, talking about obvious mobster shit.  We're then chased by the police, for being obvious mobsters.  It's neat.  The only hinderance is the fact that I appear to have autonomy, but can't actually do anything with the gun that expendable mobster A shoved into my hands.

Oops, there goes expendable mobster A.

Expendable mobster B is now shouting at me to use my gun, which is somehow the cue for me to... actually use my gun?

Boom boom, motherfuckers.

Okay, everyone has really obnoxious New Jersey mob-style accents.  My husband is not going to stop doing his really bad mobster impression for weeks, is he?

Hold on.

Okay, now that he's tied up, back to our chase scene already in progress.

HOOOOLY SHIT!

That was a pretty fucking epic crash sequence.

Expendable mobster B actually has a piece of bone sticking out of his leg.  EWWWWW.  But immersive!

He gave me some exposition and some guns before dying.  I shot him in the head, just to  make sure.

Okay!  So I'm the nephew of some dude named Paulie, who wants some other guy dead.  I can handle that.

My name is Jackie, for the record.  Paulie, Jackie, and expendable mobster B was named Mickey.  I'm sensing a trend.

I'm being attacked by construction workers with really filthy mouths.  Oh, and guns.

I didn't know you needed a concealed weapons permit to work in construction, but ok.

I'm probably just too used to playing Mass Effect, but holy hell these guys can take a lot of bullets before going down.

Oh Christ.  Is Jackie wearing a leather trenchcoat?

JACKIE.

I walked into a room and Paulie started talking to me over a video recording.  He's been taking lessons from the Joker!

Right up to and including "Obvious Puns in Your Threatening Message."

"I left you a present, it's in the closet.  Have a blast!"

Okay so it's a... yeah, it's a bomb.

I can see why you got into the mobster business Paulie, with one-liners like those.

Jackie somehow survived the blast AND the three story fall.  It must have been the trenchcoat.

Then Jackie has a cutscene all to himself where he explains that Paulie's a BAD MOBSTER who got into drug running and working with the cops, while Jackie's a GOOD MOBSTER who looks out for the family, and... no, that's it.

I'm not sure there's a whole lot of income generation implicit in "you gotta look out for the family!", Jackster.  Look, Paulie might not be the best at making jokes, but at least he brings in some money!

I made it into a cemetery.  I'm getting shades of Silent Hill, here.

I met a bum in a bathroom.

I quit.

Okay, fine, Jesus.

Th-the TOILET BUM informed me that I was in a bathroom (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) and that I could get out of the cemetery by blasting open a gate.  He was less amused than I am about the fact that Jackie apparently just throws the word "fucking" into random sentences.

I'M JACKIE I HAVE LONG HAIR AND A TRENCHCOAT AND I SAY FUCKING A LOT BECAUSE I'M HARDCORE MEEEEEEH

Sorry.

That's a lie, I'm not sorry.

OOOOH I'M A MOBSTER BUT I'M A NICE MOBSTER SO I'M A TRAGIC CHARACTER OOOOOOH

hahahaha sick burOH JESUS GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING OH GOD OH JESUS OH GOD

Is it because I made fun of Jackie, game?  I'm so sorry.  Oh Shiva.

AIIIIIE IT'S TALKING TO ME

Ok.  So I was leaving Toilet Bum to his toilet bumming when suddenly a digitally modulated voice started talking to me.  And then I grew tentacles with faces and the faces reached out and bit off everyone's faces I guess because they need more faces for their faces OH GOD.

Can you imagine if someone started playing this game, thinking it was just a normal mobster game?  An entire hour of shooting bad mobster caricatures and then TENTACLES WITH FACES HAHA

HAHAHAHAHA WHAT

This just gets better and better.

I now have the ability to spawn a little chittering demon thing that can show me exits and kill things and emit a stream of COMPLETELY ADORABLE gangster talk.

I directed him towards a storefront.  He ran over and then turned around and yelled "Yo!"

He killed a man by tearing his throat out.  As the man gurgled to death, the demon yelled "Peace out!"

SO FUCKING CUTE.

Also the tentacles with faces have a kind of an eel quality to them.  They're unintentionally cute as well.

Uh.

Well that one just devoured a dead man's heart, so maybe...

...no, still cute.

Okay, new cutscene.  It appears as if Jackie's talking to his girlfriend named... Jenny.

Well, trend supported.

I think I'll call Jenny on this handy payphone.

Yeah doll.  It's me.  Listen, just be super careful until I get there, okay?  No reason.

Her response is to tell me that she's a big girl and can handle herself.

Will she a) get abducted or b) get killed?

It's a video game, silly.  No over-confident women has said something about being able to handle herself without getting shown the error of her ways.

Silly women!

I met up with a bad italian stereotype who wanted to know if I was still dating my girlfriend, because if she's free...

God man, show some tact.  Look, you've gone and offended my shoulder eels.

This subway is peppered with graffiti and actual adverts for products and movies that don't exist.  Look, um.  Um.  This game is really, really charming.  Um.  I think I might have accidentally picked up a great game.

Shit.

It's kinda neat that I can walk the streets of downtown wherever we are, and while yes I'm getting shot at by mobsters, they still react if I pull my shoulder eels out.  Sometimes they even run away!

Show some respect to the shoulder eels.

I finally met up with my girlfriend, who called me rat-face.

Haha, okay, you got me.  I do kinda look like a rat.

I decided to tell her the truth about the fact that I kill people in the face for a living.  She insisted I was just making up a story to cover up the real problem.

All right, so Jenny here ain't the brightest bulb.  That's okay.  At least she hasn't been kidnapped yet.

Huh, Jenny managed to survive past several cutscenes.  Well played, Jenny.

I'm supposed to go meet Butcher.  These mafia names are getting frankly ridiculous.

Butcher told me to whack Dutch Oven Harry in order to get to Silly String Mallone, who's great friends with Wild Balls Frank, who sometimes sleeps with Paulie.

Great, and now I'm being attacked by corrupt cops.  Like I don't have enough problems.

This game isn't the greatest at showing where on the map I'm meant to go, so I tend just to follow the trail of enemies.

Jackster here has just gone overboard with these mafia references.  He's like the uber-nerd at the after-school anime club, pointing out that Super Sparkle Love Love Girls is actually a reference to The Yum-Yum Show, actually.

Yes, I am hoping to gain popularity by indirectly--and poorly--referencing K.C. Green.  That is literally my plan.

Also Jackie is more like the kid that laughs a little too loudly and constantly talks about Dragonball Z, since it's the only anime he's ever seen.

Jackie is getting a little tiresome, is I guess what I'm saying.

Poe can't get no satisfaction

When we last left our fearless detective Auguste Dupin, he was in a fight for his life, facing off against his mentor and friend, Manfred Von Karma.   

But then everything's resolved by Phoenix Wright's spiky hair, and The Purloined Letter opens with Dupin smoking with his nameless friend. I've avoided the topic of the nameless friend because frankly, the whole thing weirds me out. While it's pretty obvious that our generic narrator—who I am henceforth referring to as Bob—has a serious hero worship for his younger, smarter companion, one wonders if Dupin himself realises this. How do I know that Bob is the older of the two? I just do.

One thing that I've noticed about the Dupin stories is that personages of exalted station are never named.

“"The thief," said G., is the Minister D--, “

Which, you know, fair enough I suppose, even ignoring the fact that poor old Mary Roget, she who was murdered by a monkey

was named all over the place. I'm highlighting this fact because the first paragraph of the story includes this tidbit:

“... in his little back library, or book-closet, au troisieme, No. 33, Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain.”

Edgar Allan Poe: putting the 'address' in 'stalker' since 1833.

Getting back to the narrative: Bob and Dupin are hanging around and smoking in the Frenchiest way possible when the Prefect of the Police shows up. It's never really revealed why the Prefect would ever want or need to strike up a friendship with a shiftless, overly wealthy, uninspired...

“"Proceed," said I.

"Or not," said Dupin.”

...man I'm going to marry, so y'all can just shut up. The “police who need the detective to solve their cases” thing quite nearly prompted me to make some unkind comparisons to the Sherlock Holmes/Lestrade dynamic, but then I remembered that the Dupin stories were technically written first, and I had to go to my happy place for ten minutes.

The Prefect, G-Dawg, has come to vaguely sort of tell Dupin a vague, sort of story about a thing that was probably stolen and that might cause some unpleasant things. After a long series of slightly more specific questions it is revealed that it was in fact a letter that was stolen, by the uncouth Minister D-Bag. Why G-Dawg didn't mention this right at the beginning escapes me. Perhaps he's being coy.

The crux of the issue—and please, feel free to imagine a trio of wealthy Frenchmen smoking languidly throughout this whole part, because Poe sure mentions it a lot

is that the French police have already scoured the rooms of the evil Minister D-Bag, and have so far been unable to locate the, ah-ha-ha, purloined letter.

G-Dawg goes to great lengths to describe how, ah, thorough the police have been in their search for this extremely important document

One gets the sense that the rest of the force is back at the police station, creating a flowchart to detail how they're going to burn this man's apartment down. Dupin says something snarky and sarcastic, and the Prefect leaves.

The story resumes, inexplicably, about a month later, with the purloined letter still undiscovered. Perhaps I am not familiar enough with politics to understand why some lady's letter still matters a month later, but it does. Before I get too much further, I want to make something really clear:

Dupin already knows how to find the letter.

Yeah, he just sat around for a month with his thumb jammed up his ass. Poor G-Dawg has been running around, probably called incompetent, may even be fearful that his job is in jeopardy—and Dupin was too busy smoking to help him.

The engagement's over, but I ain't givin' back the ring.

Oh, it gets better. As my G-Man is lamenting his luck, flashback images of the mustache-twirling D-Bag surely dancing in his imagination, Dupin asks what kind of reward is being asked for the return of the letter. This should be an “AH-HA!” moment for G-Dilly, but cut him some slack—he's supposed to support his poor aged mother on his pension, and he's about to lose his job. Dupin doesn't have to worry about this, because he's independently wealthy, and also has the letter in his desk.

DUPIN STOLE IT.

Ok, Dupin didn't steal it. But if I were the Prefect of the Parisian police, I would sure as fuck arrest him on suspicion, the little twat.

The rest of the story involves Dupin detailing how he applied his massive brain toward finding the letter, by looking for a letter, where a letter is meant to be. Do you get it? It was in the letter holder.

This explanation takes 10 PARAGRAPHS.