Posted 08/22/09 at 12:15:16 PM by Nathan Grayson

Oh the life I’ve lived. I’ve skipped across the tops of skyscrapers with the ease of a child playing hopscotch. I’ve busted out of prisons that were said to be inescapable, that were patrolled by minigun-toting mechs, among other things. I’ve completed the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. I’ve slain Balrogs (of both varieties). I’ve covered wars, ya know.

The moment I remember best, though? I was sitting in a small apartment, on a couch made more of dust than fluff. Minutes earlier, I’d gunned down some 20 mafia goons, but that didn’t matter. She leaned on my shoulder, half-asleep, and we watched an old black-and-white rendition of “To Kill a Mockingbird” on a teensy television. For more than an hour. 

And that’s when I thought, “This game is incredible.”

That game was The Darkness, an Xbox 360 shooter from Starbreeze studios. Sure – as I implied earlier – the game certainly had me behind the barrel of a gun (or a giant hell-borne tentacle-snake) more often than not, but even among countless epic shootouts and swelling operatic scores, that mundane moment with main character Jackie Estacado (you) and his girlfriend dozing on a couch stands out the most. It was simple. It was quaint. But most of all, it was entirely believable.

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