The Darkness (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)

You play as a gangster, on his 21st birthday he inherits a demon powers that he uses to brutally kill his enemies. Some gore and lots of blood are shown, there is also bad language but the violence is the concern for this title.

First off, The Darkness is one of my favorite American graphic novels out, so I was definitely looking forward to this game. But I don't think that biased my opinion much, since comics and games are obviously two very different entertainment mediums with different requirements to work well. But I am very happy to say that The Darkness is a great adaption of the comic, with an incredibly well done story and great voice acting. The controls for the game work well most of the time, though the aiming reticule is very small and hit detection for lights can be a bit off. Gameplay only lags a bit every now and then (not the graphics, but just the fact that you have to constantly walk back and forth between parts of the city to meet with other characters and et cetera). The cinematics were incredible, and some of the scenes were the most wrenching I have ever seen, bar none, even from some of my favorite movies. And of course, the Darkness powers you can weild due to your posession were incredible to use, and added a whole new level to the standard FPS gameplay. I especially enjoyed using the dark hole and demon arm. But, on the flip side, the multiplayer when I got the game (about a month ago), suffered from severe lag about 50% of the time I played it. This was reportedly actually due to the game itself, not the hosts having bad connections. But apparently 2K Games is sending out a patch to fix this problem, which would be great. When it's not lagging, the multiplayer is a blast to play (particularly CTF), since you can choose to play as a human or morph into a demon and crawl on walls and other such things. But in terms of content, this is definitely one of THE most violent games I have played, and I've played just about all of them. As a human, you can obviously shoot people with a variety of guns, but you can also choose to use execution moves if you are close to a person. The resulting moves are quite graphic, with realistic blood exploding everywhere from the head. And the Darkness powers add an entirely new level of intensity and violence: you can impale people on your demon arm and throw them bloodily into the air; you can eat people's faces with the miniature demons attached to you (they resemble black snakes); and summon other demons to attack your enemies, sometimes graphically (though the manner they do it in is darkly comic, it is still graphic nonetheless) such as pulling out a saw and cutting off their heads or using a kamikaze demon to blow doors or people up. But the part that really takes the cake, and is an essential part of the game and Darkness powers, is the ability to eat your enemies' hearts once they are dead. And trust me, it is GRAPHIC. You can see the two heads of your demons tearing it out of their chest and fighting over it, tearing it apart and swallowing it. Plus, to top it all off, the main character is part of the mafia, and the entire story is dark and about revenge, and includes making (literally) multiple trips to Hell, which I won't even bother to get into. But, DESPITE ALL THIS, the game is an incredible work of art, because it is not a game that is focused on the violence or mindless action (albeit it does have an incredible amount of gory violence, though you do have to plan well to survive). Rather, the game is about creating an incredible story and characters, and in that sense, combined with great gameplay, the game is not just a game, but an experience. And this experience deserves to be played.