Dark Matter

In "The Darkness," your goal is to walk up to mob goons, stick a gun in their mouths, blow holes through their skulls, then rip into their chests and feed their hearts to demon snakes attached to your torso.

That's pretty nasty.

Adding to the gruesome effects are terrific visual details. "Darkness" exists in the style of "ugly-beautiful" games I've talked about before: They're beautiful, because the moving images are fairly close to photorealism; they're ugly for their grimy, gritty settings.

In other "ugly-beautiful" games, like the prison-bound titles "The Suffering" and "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay," you scrounge around disgusting, blood-covered bathrooms that are so sick, you can't imagine.

"The Darkness" is set not in jail but in a very foul New York. You peruse disgusting bathrooms, almost on the level of restrooms in the movie "Trainspotting." Alleys and subways are strewn with trash, and walls everywhere are covered with mediocre graffiti.

The story: You're a 21-year-old who was raised by a mobster "uncle." The uncle disowns you and puts a hit on you. His gangsters try to slay you. Instead, you execute them with relative ease while working your way to the uncle.

So you walk the streets, alleys, buildings and cemeteries of the big city, taking out one dumb thug after another, in this glorified arcade gunner. And, oh, those hooligans are mighty doofuses, no matter how well-dressed they are in Tarantino-type black suits.

Some villains, who have been told to kill you, walk up and say, "Well, well, well," giving you a chance to shoot them first. There you stand, blasting them with two Uzis as demonic snakes wiggle from your rotator cuffs.

I'm a hard-core gamer, therefore the violence doesn't faze me much; we are a calloused lot. But there are some other problems. "The Darkness" can disappoint you quite a bit with lots of slow, boring walking, and orders to shoot streetlights. Yawn.

Having to walk slowly in a game, as opposed to running and gunning, is much worse than an insane amount of murdering. Why? Because sauntering about for minutes on end, without much action, is not super entertaining.

I also had problems playing it online. All the players kept getting stuck in walking positions. The computer servers couldn't seem to handle either the traffic or graphics, at least during my testing period.

Having said that, "The Darkness" (created by "Chronicles"-maker Starbreeze) marks another small, evolutionary step, bringing a more cinematic look and feel to gaming.

Your character, Jackie, resembles and tilts his head like a young Robert De Niro. The main demon master guy, The Darkness, is voiced by rock musician Mike Patton. Jackie's girlfriend is voiced by "Six Feet Under" star Lauren Ambrose.

There's lots of story and dialogue, though it's not very good dialogue. My favorite quote is when Jackie tells his girlfriend what he does for a living: "I kill people for the Franchetti crime family. I meant to tell you." Huh? When did he forget to tell her he's an assassin?

And just wait till he informs her what he does with the corpses.

("The Darkness" retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun when not sporadically boring. Looks great. Moderately challenging. Rated "M" for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, strong language and suggestive themes. Three stars out of four.)