There have always been plenty of licensed games available and for the longest time they held a reputation for being poorly made attempts to cash in on a franchise. It’s only recently that that has changed with licensed games like Batman: Arkham Asylum topping Game of the Year lists, but one of the first quality licensed games was The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. Escape From Butcher Bay was developed by Starbreeze Studios who was a relatively unknown developer at the time, and following Escape From Butcher Bay they developed a game based on The Darkness comics.
The Darkness was released in 2007 for the Xbox 360 and the PS3 but sadly not the PC. The game followed the story of the comics and set you as Jackie Estacado, a young Italian-American hitman for the Franchetti crime family who inherits the power to control powerful demonic abilities known as The Darkness when he turns 21. Jackie gets double-crossed in the opening of the game and with his newfound demonic powers he sets out to get revenge. The game was a solid first-person shooter but once you unlocked Jackie’s Darkness powers, they added some new twists to classic shooter gameplay. Since The Darkness was far stronger in the shadows, players would eliminate lights in rooms to gain the upper hand on your enemies.
The game was well received and with a sequel well on the way to being released later this year, it's quite a shame that the original The Darkness never made it to the PC.
Why It Would Work on PC
It’s a first-person shooter. The mouse and keyboard are just plain better for first-person games than a gamepad. On top of that, the addition of a keyboard would make using the multiple Darkness powers at your disposal much easier. While the game looked very good graphically on consoles when it came out in 2007, if The Darkness was brought to the PC, you could really give the graphics an overhaul thanks to the power of modern graphics cards.
What PC Exclusive Content Would It Have
As I mentioned before, a key feature of a possible The Darkness PC version would be a graphics overhaul but it's also possible that it could get a ton of cool new content through the PC modding community. The multiplayer mode in the original game was also a bit underdeveloped so a PC version could easily fix some of the issues that the multiplayer had. The PC version of The Darkness could also throw in LAN multiplayer which could make a game like The Darkness a ton of fun at LAN parties.
Unfortunately, it's unlikely that The Darkness will come to PC since it's been almost four years since the original game's release and we’ve heard nothing about a PC version, but you can always hope. Besides, The Chronicles of Riddick got a HD re-release with Assault on Dark Athena, so it's always possible that Starbreeze might do the same with The Darkness.