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To my Brotherhood,

Here's the story with the demo:

As I've said before, the game will ALWAYS take precedence and priority over a demo. That means that if the game is falling in behind in something or something isn't working right and needs fixing the people working on the demo will be pulled and made to work on the game. Making a demo is like making an entirely new game. I know you might think, "but if they have a finished level can't that be the demo?"

It's not that easy. Demos need to pass a different set of criteria set by MSFT if it's for the Xbox 360 and Sony if it's for the PS3 than the full game. Otherwise we can't release it. The full game has to pass the criteria too in order to pass or "go gold", but those things (called "TCRs" for MSFT and "TRCs" for Sony) are usually worked on at the end once all the game stuff is finished.

Also, keep in mind the demo has to be as polished and indicative of the final product as possible. If the demo sucks then all of you will think the full game sucks. Moreover, the demo has to play differently so you can get a feel of the overall game and want to play more. I know there are some games like God of War and God of War II that took the first level and they were awesome. But those first levels also gave you that overall feel for the entire game. A single level won't necessarily do that for all games because maybe you wont have enough powers or the level only makes sense and plays well because of the preceding and succeeding levels.

Now, for all the doubters and non-believers in our midst, your purported reasons for why the demo is delayed are laughable at best. Woe be to you who've written that we are "afraid" to post a demo on Xbox Live because of the competition from all the other demos on there. Or those who thought we are intentionally delaying the demo because you think the game is overhyped and that the demo will show how allegedly bad it really is. When the reviews hit next week you will be lucky if I let you polish my shoes with your tongues. We get the review scores early so I know what they are already. You'll have to wait until then before everyone has self-posted evidence of how big a fools you all are.

Your naivete aside, I will tell you exactly why the demo is late. We hit a few snags of the full game and were at risk of being late and missing the release date by a week or two. So we pulled people off the demo to work on the game and now we are on time for release of 6/26 (it SHIPS on 6/25 but will be IN STORE on 6/26). It's axiomatic.

I was told we will be submitting the demo this week for approval. We will have to wait about 2 more weeks to get approval (hopefully) and then post it on XLM and PSN.

As always, if you have any questions you know how to contact me.

~Lord Sonatine

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When the reviews hit next week you will be lucky if I let you polish my shoes with your tongues.

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With this kind of setup, you may be expecting a full-on shooter, and while that description isn't terribly inaccurate, The Darkness features more downtime than you might expect. Moments like taking the time to sit on a couch and snuggle with your girlfriend and visiting your aunt remind me more of something like Indigo Prophecy than anything you normally see in shooters, and the open city requires you to spend a decent amount of time traveling through different parts of town using the subway system.

Like Riddick, the main story here won't take you long to get through (it's in the 10-hour range), but because of the game structure, you can spend time getting lost and messing around in the wrong parts of town if you choose. There's not a ton to do besides receiving "track this item down" missions from characters in subway stations and using your tentacles to pick up objects and mess with the game's physics -- this isn't the easiest thing to do if you're the type who likes to stack objects in piles and then use those to climb to secret areas, but it works and occasionally rewards you with bonus collectibles. But the feeling of running around town works pretty well, and you really get to know this version of New York by the end of the game.

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