The sofa scene is an example of the way storytelling in games can be both far richer and, at the same time, far less important than in films, and in a sense for the same reason. In the sequel the pair are reunited in short, bittersweet and tender hallucinations – stark counterpoints to the relentless blood, guts and grime of the rest of the game. Games blogger Nathan Grayson called it "the most authentic instance of romance ever conveyed in a videogame".įor the players who sat with Jenny until the end, it must have hit like a hammer when a short while later rival mobsters shot her dead in front of them. Jennie falls asleep, her head on your shoulder, and as the player you can choose to stay there, watching the film all the way to the end, in real time. In one scene from the original game, Jackie and Jenny sit watching To Kill A Mockingbird on a tattered old sofa. For all the vice and viscera, The Darkness II, like its predecessor, is at heart a love story: between our hero, young mafioso Jackie Estacado, and his childhood sweetheart Jenny Ramano, his only friend from the orphanage they grew up in. That a film has yet to materialise may be in no small part due to the gruesome setting and tone, combining the prostitution, drugs and violence of the organised crime world with demonic ritual, haemophiliac gore and a journey to the depths of hell. The Darkness II began life as a comic book and, rather than walk the now well-trodden path from cult comic to blockbuster to video game tie-in, it ditched the middle man and skipped straight to 2007's The Darkness – a quiet success story in terms both of sales and reviews. The essence of the game is neatly captured in the tagline of the easiest setting: "Tell me a story." In the title menus, each of the game's four difficulty levels is accompanied by a single sentence of explanation.
P art-Godfather and part-Exorcist, The Darkness II (PS3/Xbox 360/PC) feels, at times, as much a film as a game.
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