As you might infer from the title, The Darkness is a game of black-art heroics. In it, you play as mob gunman Jackie Estacado celebrating your 21st birthday by manifesting creepy, paranormal powers like, oh, you know, tentacles sprouting from your shoulders. That and a new found hatred for your traitorous Uncle Paulie. You have penchant for shadows and darkness which fuels your powers, which helps when activating select tentacles like the Demon Arm, which snuffs out lights and foes with indiscriminant effectiveness; the Creeping Dark, which snakes about to investigate areas on the sly; Darkness Guns, which are more or less like your regular guns, except all dark and paranormalish; plus, the mother of all things dark: The Black Hole, the preferred smart bomb of anti-heroic paranormal people.

You can also summon wonderful little gremlim grunts, "Darklings" that run amok and do your menial or oft times big bad biddings, usually in a big supernatural way, like take out every light or every hapless thug within the radius of a rampage.

Anyway, off you go, a gunman darkly, creeping carnage, gunning and snuffing and remorselessly rampaging to the bitter end, which comes rather soon, which is fine, because the actual story runs out of steam just before that, and there's little left to do for variety's sake but take it online for some stock multiplayer gunning and snuffing, which is likewise lacking in depth, but, as mentioned, fun for a while and dark artsy as all get-out in the gruesome and gloomy way of supernatural first-person shooters.

TIP: In The Darkness, go to any phone in the game and dial 4263 to unlock the 2k Sports Darkling, or 5664 to unlock Golfer Darkling.