The Outlaw's Favorite Game Moments 1: The Darkness

Warning! Spoilers, violence, and naughty words!!! Also, sorry that you have to copy and paste the URLs! But they are important.

Not many people know this, but The Darkness was one of my favorite games of early current generation. Every time I revisit it, I always find I've forgotten the few problems I have with it. It has everything most people who don’t actually play a lot of games would expect it to have; guns, demons, the mob, and so on and so forth. However, it is the things you don’t expect that make it great. Now, I could go on forever about how the great the voice acting is, how awesomely realized all the characters are (The villain is so bad he blows up the orphanage your character, Jackie, was raised in… Yes… He kills children), but the character I want to focus on is the love interest, Jenny.

Jackie is a man with a lot of problems. When he was young, a mob boss, “Uncle” Paulie, adopted him, taking him from the orphanage where he could have been with his sweetheart, Jenny, and forced him to be an enforcer. Jenny never knows what kind of work Jackie does for Paulie of course. On the eve of his 21st birthday, he finds out his “Uncle” wants him dead for something he didn’t do and he is forced to go on the run. He is then semi-possessed by a demon that his ancestor brought into the family. It’s good in a fight, but not so good for the whole “free-will” thing. However, all these problems seem to drift away when you find a chance to visit Jenny, who you have only talked to on the phone up until now, in her new apartment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InYpnU-dt-k
^I was in love the second I saw she had gotten me cake (Also, yes, that is To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is watchable in its entirety.)

Anyone who has ever just sat down to watch TV with a significant other late at night can attest to how real this feels. Some games, movies, and books utterly fail at making you feel attached to a character and the ones that succeed might take hours or even sequels to accomplish it. The Darkness achieves this with Jenny right away and this is extremely important for what happens later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW0tmdQnszE
^I posted the whole orphanage level because seeing Jackie’s memories can only add to the moment.

Yes, unfortunately, Jenny is murdered in front of you. Don’t worry, you see her again in a sense. However, I had never felt my gut drop out like it did when I saw this for the first time. I couldn’t believe they would kill off the most innocent character in the game. The point is, though, that when they did, it registered. Games kill off characters all the time. I’ve never stood agape at seeing my characters die in Modern Warfare 2. It made me hate the villain even more and I detested the darkness that made me watch it happen. The very thing that had empowered me now infuriated me. I’m no stranger to becoming emotionally connected to the characters I play as and interact with in games, but the Darkness was one of the first that made me feel it on the level I did. That is why it is one of my favorite moments.

Anything I forgot to mention? Have any suggestions for future articles? TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS!!!