dudes with guns who you could one-shot kill with your dick.

So you're actually shooting them? I figured you were just devouring them like a snake. If you're ejaculating venom or something at them, that's approximately sixteen billion times more awesome.

I believe that, as the title of Arthur's original Darkness article suggests, your demon cock devours their hearts.

Oh well.

If you miss your lethal demon cock that much, there's probably porn for that, Arthur.

I'm sure some people can be satisfied by that - I know Alasdair got a lot out of this one - but for me, watching just isn't the same as being involved in the action yourself.

Sure, there's plenty of FPS fish in the sea, but I have needs and desires that nobody seems to want to fulfil. I had a brief rebound fling with F.3.A.R. but it was hopelessly vanilla - and having enjoyed the company of its older siblings I have to say it fares poorly compared to the eldest. (Plus the whole "sexually active adult zombie woman whose mental self-image is of a little girl" deal is tremendously off-putting, and I'm really not comfortable with dealing with that sort of baggage.)

I dunno, maybe the console scene as a whole is a bit too constricting for me. Perhaps it's time to go back to old PC haunts - I hear Steam and GOG are both lively these days. Alasdair has recommended at least one FPS which might be able to show me a fun time and I'm sure he can name others, and when it comes to the more diverse and flexible sort of first-person game Kyra's been urging me to give Amnesia: the Dark Descent a try. Those have got their own twists which might snap me out of my jaded malaise, for a time. Still, I can't think of any game out there which is adventurous and wild enough to cater to my self-propelled demon cock whim, so I guess I have to either learn to get over my dick or never be truly satisfied and content again.

Hm, I actually found Cryostasis to be quite dull. Admittedly I didn't get very far, but it just starts out so damn slowly that I wasn't drawn in much at all. Also it just wasn't scary or even particularly creepy...I might give it another shot, though.

I haven't played Amnesia yet, but I played the Penumbra series by the same guys and it was quite good. The second game especially had some of the most terrifying moments I've ever witnessed in a video game.

Otherwise you might try Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, if you're looking for horror FPS's. It's kind of clunky and buggy, but genuinely frightening at times and worth playing despite the flaws. Contrary to the name, it's sort of a mashup of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Shadow Out of Time".

That's all very well, but how does it fit into the dick joke? ;)

I find this overemphasis on what does or doesn't fit into dick jokes slightly unsettling. Fit is undoubtedly a relevant factor, but sometimes a bit of friction is not unwarranted.

Well, Obed Marsh sticking his dick in an undersea monster's vagina is pretty much the whole reason for Innsmouth being the way it is, so there's something!

Oh man, why'd you have to make this a sex thing?

It's like a guy can't pet himself a little without someone getting the wrong idea.

Just feeling you out, Arthur. I guess you draw the line at demon vaginas.

Look, a game where your demon cock slithered around and messily ate people's vaginas would just be tasteless and stupid. Hearts are where it's at.

What if the demon vaginas ate the cocks instead? I think this might be the concept that revitalizes The Darkness series.

Spoiler:

The phallocentrism of your dickjokes is upsetting to me.

Possibly there has been overcompensation happening.

It's true, my dick is possessed by a very small demon. Rather than devouring my enemies' hearts, he just makes faces at them when they're not looking. :(

That must be really hard.

I waaaarned yoooooou...

And on the ending, .

I think I may be in the same boat as you, Arthur. After exposing myself to Homefront, F.3.A.R., and this game, I've decided it's time for me to leave contemporary FPSes behind. Even games people have praised (like 3 F.E.A.R. 3 F.U.R.I.O.U.S. and The Darkness II: The Wrath of Khack) I've found to be claustrophobic, dismal affairs, with constrictive environments, needless upgrade mechanics, overstuffed stories told through bricks of collectibles and NPC exposition spouts, and heavily scripted action. There's the more open-world games, true, but I prefer my FPSes to take less than 10 hours to get through.

At this point, I'm thinking retro is the way to go, and I've nabbed a copy of the old Alien vs. Predator Classic from Gamersgate, which I hope will sate my bloodlust. (I'm still looking for a way to get Alien vs. Predator 2, which had a cute mechanic in the xenomorph story wherein the first fifth of it had you as a facehugger/chestburster stealthing your way around the humans, before you graduated to adult alien and got your own back.)

@James: The first few levels of Cryostasis are kind of slow. Things do start to pick up once you get to the cargo elevator. Stuff starts getting weird after that and the story starts to pick up steam. It's not so much "boo!" scary as "what the fuck?" scary, which worked better on me than regular old boos. And, yeah, the whole game is a bit slow, but that's to be expected because you're walking around a trashed ship at -50° Celsius while you're wearing a big ol' parka and some mukluks.

Also: penis. That's all I've got.

the most wincingly '90s thing I've ever seen in a video game

Spoken like someone who's never been exposed to the Resident Evil FMV intro. :)

As far as modern FPSes go, I was quite surprised by how genuinely good Crysis 1 and, to a lesser extent, Crysis: Warhead were. Neither one is open world--Crysis takes about eight hours to get through, Warhead about five--but what they DO give you is a linear sequence of levels, each of which is quite large and has a good deal of outdoor space. This gives you tremendous tactical flexibility.

An exemplary mission of Crysis consists of you being placed a few hundred meters away from an enemy base, around which KPA soldiers patrol. Your mission is to get into the base, extract something of value, and get back out. You're given an indicator on the minimap, and off you go. The game very pointedly does NOT lead you by the nose through the One True Path. Giving you options, there are of course many possible paths through the outdoors. You can try to grab a jeep to bust through the main gate, or use your powered-armor suit's rather extensive suite of powers (super strength, super armor, super speed, and Predator invisibility mode), or use your ability to customize weapons on the fly (swapping out scopes, silencers, and other attachments as you see fit).

It admittedly deserves its reputation for being brutally difficult for PCs to run, but it offers an extremely satisfying antidote to the corridors and "Follow this NPC. Go here. Now here. Now shoot this guy. Take cover." mission design philosophy of most other shooters. And if you have an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, they just recently ported it over to them so you don't even need a thousand-dollar megabox to run it.

Well that was a title I wasn't expecting to see with my Saturday morning coffee. Thanks for telling me about your demon cock Arthur. :)

That said, it's a shame the game isn't quite as silly as its predecessor in the same way. I had a great deal of fun towards the end being on top of the world and blowing everything up, and even if the light/dark boundaries weren't very well defined they were super easy to correct. It sucks that changed. I'll probably end up giving this a miss unless it goes on super sale.