My Thoughts on "The Darkness"

So, thanks to the people at gamestop, I've been a subscriber to Game Informer for the last year (their discount card used to be 5$, now it's 20 with a mandatory G.I. subscription). This means, however, that I'm actually paying attention to games that come out. For some reason, I've never been able to get hooked on checking out joystiq or IGN or any of those sites. Too much pointless garbage with actual news hidden in the cracks. Anyway, this magazine is how I heard of The Darkness, a game I probably wouldn't have taken much note of otherwise. While I was out a couple nights ago, I decided to indulge myself and pick it up, figuring that it got awesome reviews and looked sick as hell from the screenshots. Although I must say, now that I have acquired a 360, impulse buying games is just getting more and more expensive. Soon I will have to file for credit checks before I can make these kinds of purchases.
Anyway, the game is pretty fucking awesome. You're a mobster named Jackie who gets double crossed and starts on a quest for revenge. Sounds pretty standard really, nothing the grand theft auto franchise hasn't done before. The twist is that you get taken over by a force called the darkness and granted the ability to rip off people's faces and eat their hearts. I have yet to get sick of simply doing that over and over. I mean, they give you guns, but I just don't understand why anyone would ever want to use some lame ass pistols when they can just as easily summon a demon from the ground to maul the motherfuckers shooting at you. Man, imagine if you could do THAT in the grand theft auto series...
Anyway, the game plays pretty nicely, but there are some flaws. Your HUD is confusing and nigh uninterpretable at times. You have no idea what your health is, ever. You have a store of "dark energy" but no way of seeing how much of it you have because there is no meter. You can get a vague sense of how much ammo you have, but for some reason they could not bother to give you an exact count. The other main flaw is the circumstances under how you use your powers. You can activate them at anytime, provided you are standing in the dark. Given that you are inside or on city streets the majority of the game, this means that you spend a goodly amount of time CREATING darkness so you can commence with the face ripping/heart eating. The game should have been titled The Darkness: We hope you like shooting out lights. I think the only reason guns are even IN the game is so that you have something to shoot out the millions of lights in each environment.
Still though, in spite of these annoyances, the plot is great, the darkness abilities are imaginative, and the characters (though poorly voiced at times) are pretty gritty and make for fun vessels through which the story is conveyed. Also, there's a fun bit for any music nerds because the voice of "the darkness" (the evil force running through your character) is none other than Mike Patton of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Fantomas, and one collaboration with The Dillinger Escape Plan. I really want the demonic voice to tell me that something is "so groovy it's out of sight" or that I want it all, but in fact, cannot have it. If I had to quantify my enjoyment here, I would say 7/10. Worth the 65$ impulse buy? Hard to say. It might have been nice if the price had dropped a little, but hey, you can't always get what you want. I'm gonna go devour some hearts now.