Recent reviews by Stardust Crusader

The original Darkness is one of those games I’d label as a cult classic. It didn’t sell amazingly well, but it has a passionate fan base that has seem to have grown over the years. The gory combat and unique darkness powers alone were awesome, but it was the dark hopeless story of mafia hit man, Jackie Estacado, and the struggles he went through after obtaining the demonic powers of the Darkness that made it so interesting. With the original developer Starbreeze having moved on, there was a lot of skepticism when it was announced that Digital Extremes was doing a sequel so long after the first came out. Could they really capture what made the first game so great? In short, yes.

The game takes place two years after the end of the first and has our main hero Jackie Estacado living the good life as the don of his crime family. He’s been keeping the Darkness suppressed all this time, knowing if he lets it out it will consume him. That doesn’t last very long. When Jackie gets ambushed while at a restaurant, it forces him to release the darkness and tear though New York looking for revenge. Soon Jackie learns the hit was the work of the Brotherhood, a cult lead by the horribly disfigured Victor. They of course want to take the Darkness away from Jackie and keep it for themselves. The Brotherhood’s backstory and motivations are interesting enough, but they take a bit of a backseat during the second half to allow the game to focus more on Jackie.

The times when the action slowed down for the more character driven scenes were a highlight of the first game. It really added a lot of depth and made you feel for the characters, which made it all the more heart breaking when everything went to ♥♥♥♥. The Darkness II still manages to pull these moments off pretty successfully. Jackie still hasn’t gotten over the death of his girlfriend Jenny and he suffers periodically from ghostly images and flashbacks of her. These moments let Jenny still play an important part in the story and allow for some scenes between her and Jackie, such as dancing in a dinner. In fact, the game spends a lot of time dealing with Jackie’s struggle of both the loss of Jenny and with the Darkness itself. This largely manifests with Jackie waking up from time to time in a mental asylum that’s bares a striking resemblance to the one in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Here all the people in Jackie’s life are ether patients or staff members and the Darkness is simply a delusion that Jackie suffers from. Bringing in the idea that Jackie may simply be crazy and the majority of the game is an illusion, is a neat twist that is by far the most interesting part of the game.

This all works so well thanks to a great cast of characters and the voices behind them. Kirk Acevedo doesn’t return as Jackie but his replacement, Brian Bloom, does an excellent job replacing him. Mike Patton returns as the voice of the Darkness and continues to give a wonderfully creepy performance. I find something very enjoyable about hearing that disturbing voice that I can’t quite explain. Even the side characters are pretty good. Jackie’s crew of mobsters all sound their part, giving off that stereotypical Italian accent with plenty of character.

Jackie’s path of madness and revenge has plenty of enemies for you brutally mutilate and disfigure along the way and from the get go you’re given plenty of ways to kill. In addition to your guns, which you can duel wield, you get your two darkness tentacles. The right tentacle can be used to slash up enemies as well as obstacles that get in your way. The left tentacle is used to pick things up. It can pick up hearts off dead enemies and eats them to regain health. It picks up objects such as pipes that can be used to impale guys Commando style. And it even picks up stunned enemies so you can finish them off with a gruesome execution. It’s all just really satisfying.

It almost feels like you’re too powerful at the beginning of the game because the standard thugs and henchmen aren’t much of a challenge, spending most of their time freaking out as you murder their comrades. It’s once you start fighting the brotherhood that there is more enemy variation. There are guys with shields that you’ll have to loosen before you can rip them off of them. Some guys teleport around avoiding your attacks. The two more interesting enemy types include these weaker enemies that carry giant lights to try and disable Jackie’s darkness powers with them, and dudes with a whip that disarm Jackie of his weapons. The addition of these guys makes it much more necessary to use all your different powers rather than relying on a few.

Everything you do, whether it’s shooting a guy or eating his heart, gets you dark essence. You use the dark essence as currency and spend them on a skill tree to buff(?) current abilities or even gain new ones. Skills range from more ammo for guns, summoning deadly black holes, or unlocking even more horrifying executions. All of this does a great job at keeping the combat feeling fresh during the latter half of the game.

The structure of the levels is fairly linear and mostly consists of shooting your enemies, with the exception of an occasional sequence where you control your incredibly British darkling buddy. The only real non-linear parts are in between missions where you do get a chance to roam around Jackie’s penthouse. These act as good breathers from all the merciless killing and give you a chance to talk with all your mobster buddies.

The single player ran me about 5 and a half hours to beat which sounds short, but I can’t think of anything else they could have added without making it feel padded out. You could always pop back in with new game plus to finish upgrading your powers and collect any artifacts you missed, or you could head into vendettas. It’s a 4 player co-op mode featuring a cast of colorful characters all infused with some of the darkness’s powers. The game modes are fairly straight forward, with your group running through the area and basically killing everyone in your path. Every character has their own unique weapon such as an evil samurai blade or a voodoo staff but their powers are all lifted from the campaign so it doesn’t feel especially different. There is some interesting dialogue between the characters and while they’re not really necessary to the overall story, it does at make it more entertaining. Vendetta’s is a fun distraction, but it’s something that most people will probably play once or twice for the achievements and then be done with it.

It’s kind of amazing that a sequel to The Darkness was able to happen at all so long after its release. What’s even more amazing is how well Digital Extremes was able to recreate what made the first game so good, and then expand on it and make it their own, especially with the track record of their last couple of games. The Darkness II has succeeded in reinvigorating my excitement for more Darkness, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

Fable is a franchise I've had a bit of a rocky relationship with. My first experience was Fable II (having completely missed the original), and it is one of my favorite games of the Xbox 360 era. Fable III, not so much. With Fable Anniversary coming out soon, the remake of the now 10 year old RPG, I figured why not just get a cheap copy of the original and see what it’s all about.

The premise starts you as a young boy in the town of Oakvale in the land of Albion, who has a loving sister and parents. But that kind of story makes for a boring video game, so a group of bandits attack your village, kidnaping your mother and sister, and murdering practically everyone else, including your father. But before you meet your own demise, you’re saved by a hero named Maze, and are inducted into the Guild of Heroes. In the world of Albion, a hero isn't just a title but an occupation, something you learn by joining the guild. The game switches over to your teenage years for your guild training and then finally to adulthood after you become a true hero. This is the first neat trick Fable does, giving your character, and the world, a real sense of growth. Seeing the world change around you as you grow and make choices is neat, and gives everything a sense of place.

Fable has the typical “your character glows if they’re good and pale skin and devil horns if you’re evil” that most games with morality like to do, but how you spec your character also affects them. If you put a bunch of points into strength, your character will become more bulky and muscular as a result, while if you put a lot of points into magic, you get glowing blue tattoos on your face. Unfortunately the options felt a bit too simple preventing me from having my character look exactly how I want. I like my characters to be a bit on the thin and scrawny side, probably because I myself am thin and scrawny, but there wasn't any way to go full on melee combat without forcing yourself to become a hulking beast. A little more variety on this front would have been cool.

In combat your main tool will be your melee, of which you are given a nice selection of fast swords like the katana, something with a bit more punch like great swords, and even more massive weapons like hammers. There’s not much in the ways of multiple attacks, it’s rather simplistic with one button for attacking and another for using a flourish attack when you build one up. It’s all about timing and avoiding your enemies with blocks and dodges. Getting in hits and avoiding them yourself builds up your combat multiplier, letting you deal more damage. It’s a system that works but by the end of the game I found myself a little tired of it. The ranged combat, bows and crossbows, I found to be rather useless. It has its place in certain situations but you’re not going to want to spec your character into a full ranged one, which is a disappointment. Magic is by far the most interesting and varied. There’s a ton of spells all put into a bunch of categories. So if you want to go full on attack magic you can throw points into lighting, fire, etc. Even if you’re melee focused like I was, it’s worth getting spells like slow time, which I found invaluable during the later parts of the game.

The core of Fable has you taking on guild quests, making choices, and being the "hero." The moral choice system is bit too black and white for my tastes. You’re never really given any grey area and it’s always very clear which is good and which is evil. Having a character say something like, "you can go do this quest for this reward, or I guess if you were some sort of evil person you could always just kill me," doesn't really leave much to the imagination. One nice thing however is the game does provide full good and full evil side quests, usually having them be on opposite sides of the same problem. Will you take the quest the farmers put up to help stop the bandit raids, or will you take the quest the bandits put up to help with the raid. Stuff like that’s more fun because it lets you put your intentions forward right away rather than giving you some black and white choice half way through the quest.

Another big component of the game is the interaction system with NPCs. You hero has a ton of different emotions they can express ranging from simple ones like laughing or saying hi, too more morality specific ones like flexing your heroic muscles or giving an evil laugh, too the ridiculously absurd such as farting and doing the chicken dance. Sadly I never found myself having any real gameplay reason to use them past their first time. For example you can flirt with NPCs and eventually have them fall in love with you. Cool idea, but no real benefit doing it. I didn't even have to try honestly. By the end of the game, every girl, and even some men, had a big enough heart above them that I could simply walk up to them, hand them a wedding ring, and be married before the sun set without even trying. The ability to interact with NPCs is a neat idea, and admittedly I got excited when they started to call me by my title I picked out and talking about past quests I did, but overall it feels more like a proof of concept than a fully implemented feature.

The story does go to some interesting places and has a large focus on family, with the hero's sister and mother coming heavily into play. This does give everything a more personal feel to it and I found myself caring in the hero's journey and his seeking revenge. The antagonist, Jack of Blades, lives up to his awesome name by being a great creepy villain. My only wish was that is motivations were explained better as I was never quite sure why he was doing what he was doing other than to just be evil.

It’s worth noting that I played the PC version, known as Fable: The Lost Chapters, which contains a bunch of extra characters, side quests, and continues the story after the final boss battle, which by the way was pretty weak. The extra content is cool, adding new characters and extra story that is welcome, but doesn't feel completely necessary. Also the new final boss somehow manages to be easier and lamer than the original.

Graphically the game holds up pretty well for being 10 years old. Stuff like faces and character animations feel a bit old and outdated however it is saved by Fable's art direction which still shines though. The game goes for a very classic bedtime story fantasy look, hence the name, and succeeds at it well. It’s a world that takes itself very seriously one minute, and starts poking fun at itself the next. It all manages to work very well; making Albion a world you want to spend time in. This is also helped greatly thanks to the music, which is quite wonderful, perfectly capturing the whimsy the game is throwing at you.

For a 10 year old game Fable one holds up surprisingly well. Moral choice in games has certainly grown in the years and in a lot of ways fable feels too simplistic in its decisions to a fault. But at the same time it all works well in the context of its storybook like nature. If you want a fun filled adventure where you get to be the hero, or villain, Fable is still a game worth checking out.