DARK

Developer: Realmforge
Publisher: Kalypso Media
UK Price: £30
Platform(s): PC, Xbox 

Before we begin this review, let's have a little pop-quiz. Pick three activities from the list below which vampires are known for doing: 

A. Sucking blood
B. Turning into bats
C. Sleeping in Coffins
D. Hiding behind boxes
E. Waiting behind boxes
F. Getting shot behind boxes

If you answered A,B and C, then congratulations! You understand the absolute basics of vampire lore! If you answered D, E, and F, then either you meant to say A B and C but somehow got the pronunciation spectacularly wrong, or you're employed at Realmforge studios, the creators of the astonishingly tedious crouch-'em-up that is DARK.

There's nothing wrong with DARK's premise, a stealth game based around vampires is a perfectly workable idea. Vampires are creatures of the night, prowlers in the shadows who rely entirely on subterfuge for the continuation of their existence. Unfortunately, DARK doesn't seem to understand what makes either vampires or stealth interesting, and fails abysmally in its execution at almost every turn.
DARK has exactly two things going for it, it's pretty, cel-shaded, purplish art style, and the fact that the fellow who voices the main character also does Geralt of Rivia in the Witcher series. Said protagonist is Eric Bane, a freshly bitten vampire who spends the first twenty minutes of his game wandering around a nightclub trying to figure out he is a vampire. A nightclub that serves bloody Marys, has a blood fountain at the entrance, and everyone dresses as if they just got in from a long hard day at the local S&M dungeon. Meanwhile, the player is dragged along knowing exactly what Eric is because it says you play a vampire in the Steam summary, and most people have an IQ above that of the average mollusc.

Aside from not being the sharpest tooth in the mouth, Eric of Rivia is a fairly well pitched character: moody but not completely pessimistic. Sadly, no amount of gravel in Eric's voice can conceal the fact that the script is completely appalling. Particularly dreadful is a character called Tom, who is involved with the nightclub in some fashion and before a mission offers pearls of wisdom such as "Shit, you must be some badass!" and "But man, you da shit!" Everything Tom does seems to involve excrement in some fashion. Don't accept a Christmas present from him. The best line however belongs to Eric himself, upon approaching his first mission location he says "The Harding Museum rose before me like a quiet rock." As opposed to all those extremely loud rocks knocking around.
Initially DARK is bad in ways that are amusing like this. Alongside the execrable writing, the animations are languid and floaty, which means everyone moves around as if they're wearing clothes made entirely out of lavender. Eric is also devoid of animations for certain actions, such as moving in and out of cover, or turning around.

Yet once the game begins in earnest, any amusement, unintentional or otherwise, dies away quicker than a bloodsucker in a solarium. Although this is a stealth game, and Eric is a vampire, and the game is called DARK - that's D.A.R.K - you can't hide in shadows. Nor do you have any capability to climb objects or use verticality to any advantage. The only way to progress through the levels is to evade enemies' line of sight. 

Thus Eric moves entirely in a two dimensional fashion through mazy environments strewn with boxy objects while guards of varying types wander around. The experience is somewhat like playing Pac-man from the perspective of Pac-man, except some of the ghosts don't move at all. The game even strives to point this out as if it's a unique feature. A game informing you that some of its enemies do literally nothing is a very bad sign.

Stealth is achieved by recognising patterns in enemy movement, watching the pistons pump and the cogs turn and then slipping through the machinery when the time is right. The problem is most areas have a lot of guards in them, and some of them have very long patrol patterns, meaning you spend long periods doing nothing at all. 
At least, this is what you'll eventually do. At first you'll probably try to slip by quickly, and inevitably get caught by a guard you didn't notice, or one who walked past the crate you were hiding behind and spotted you because you were an inch too close to the edge, or you set off one of the various objects that make noise when you walk past them, such as museum exhibits. At this point you'll notice the save system is checkpoint-based, and allows a limited number of manual saves per large area. So not only does the game involve long periods of waiting, it also becomes about trial and error.
All this amounts to keyboard-chewing levels of frustration, as that one guard you didn't see turns around and spots you, which automatically alerts every other guard in the area and then suddenly Eric is full of bullets and you're crying at your desk. Eric does have a substantial roster of powers to aid him, such as a Shadow Leap that allows him to essentially teleport over short distances. Yet at low levels this makes a noise upon arrival, which of course attracts the guards. Similarly, he can also make himself invisible for brief periods, but this only seemed to work intermittently, and caused as many re-starts as it prevented.
Once a few powers have been upgraded, the frustration subsides a little, and DARK transitions to simply being boring as you wait for a pair of guards to complete another round of their insufferably long patrol route before slipping past. You can of course kill guards, which you occasionally need to do to fill your ability bars, but again, this often causes more problems than it solves, as hiding a corpse in a maze is as difficult as, well, hiding a corpse in a maze.

If you're looking for a vampire-stealth game, pick up Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, and play as a Nosferatu. The stealth in that wasn't exactly great either, but it was miles better than this. Alternatively, just play Thief and stab everyone you come across, pretending your sword is an enormous uni-fang. Either way, avoid DARK like Dracula.