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The long-awaited next-gen shooter has arrived with varying opinions. What's to love (and hate) about this game?

Opinion is split, much like this guy's head from his body.

The Darkness was developed in, well, the dark for quite some time. Despite being under wraps since the announcement of the 360, it has managed to avoid massive hype with an early-summer release that keeps it out of the holiday rush. The game promises a different first-person shooter experience, with your character's power depending on how dark the surrounding area is. Now that reviewers are getting their hands on it, some are calling it the summer savior, while others are likening it to a another big-budget disappointment.

Like most shooters, The Darkness doesn't have much meat on its single-player bones. GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann found that the exceptional pacing took away a bit of the sting, awarding the game a 8.5 out of 10:

Thanks to a handful of especially mind-blowing sequences and well-crafted plot twists, you'll feel like you've covered a ton of ground by the time you reach the game's final confrontation.

The game's harshest critic thus far is Yahoo! Games' Tom Chick, who decries the game's signature feature in giving the game a 3 out of 5:

The gimmick is that your powers are proportionate to how dark it is where you're standing. Therefore, much of the gameplay involves shooting out lights. In theory, this sounds like a good idea: take the light/dark dynamic from a stealth game and build an action game around it! But in practice, this just means popping out light bulbs as you go.

IGN's Hillary Goldstein comments on another unique design decision that didn't quite pan out in the site's 7.8 out of 10 review:

The enemies never become more difficult. Starbreeze wanted to give gamers a sense of being the scariest mofo in the room by game's end. So by the time you have the Black Hole power, you are pretty much in charge. It's a great sensation to know you are going to waste everyone you see, but it doesn't work so well from a game standpoint.

GamePro's Ouroboros provides a succinct summary of The Darkness, scoring it a 3.75 out of 5:

as strangely uneven, poorly paced, and ultimately unsatisfying as The Darkness is, it remains worth checking out for its unusual ideas, twisted gameplay elements, and uniquely dark atmosphere. While so many other games are content to rehash the same tired old stories and stale characters, The Darkness at least tries to tread new ground, which just proves that innovation is still worth something these days.

I must say, I've barely played the 360 and PS3's FPS slate, with the severe lack of innovation being the key factor. I'm willing to let quality slide when a game brings new ideas to the table (ie--I'm a Wii owner), so this game is definitely one I'm keeping my eye on.

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