The Darkness II

In the chronological order that these reviews are written, I've covered quite a few indie puzzle like games lately. There are plenty of exceptions of course, but I felt it was time to give something else a go for a bit, which is the reason I'm now reviewing today's game - The Darkness II.

Unfortunately, I've never played the first game, mostly because it was never released on PC. To complicate things even further, I've never read the comics either, so I had no idea what the heck the background for this game was prior to jumping in and playing it. Thankfully, there is a "previously on The Darkness" that fills in the details, such as how the Darkness is the evil force that has existed since prior to the utterance of "Let their be light." The Darkness stuck around though, essentially being the worst demon to continue walking the Earth, and it manifests itself inside various hosts, passed down from father to son, which is how the protagonist Jackie Estacado acquired it. Of course, playing host to evil generally doesn't work out for the host in the end, and that was the case from the first game where the mafia Jackie worked for turned on him, and in their attempt to get him, they nabbed his girlfriend Jenny, and threatened to kill her. Jackie didn't like this one bit, but the Darkness feeds off of death and disappear, so it prevented Jackie from doing anything else, and he got to watch his lifelong friend die. Flash forward a few years, and you find that Jackie has kept the Darkness locked up, but a hit attempt changes that, and now, all hell breaks loose.

Hallucinating that your dead girlfriend is dancing in an empty restaurant is probably a bad thing.

Without giving too much of the story away behind The Darkness II, you set out to uncover just who was behind a very serious hit attempt, marshalling the mafia forces you control to hunt down information that might be useful. While at first it just seems like it was some lesser family making a play, it quickly becomes clear that the real enemy is something far more sinister - an organization known as The Brotherhood, which is heavily  invested in the battle between the Darkness and the Angelus, which is the opposite of the Darkness. The Brotherhood seeks to use artifacts of great power or other tools to harness either of those entities for it's own ends, such as creating super soldiers to rule the world with. Basically, you are a somewhat good guy with a really powerful bad guy tugging at the strings, in a battle with some other bad guys that want to become the baddest guys. Got it?

Of course, the bad guys also look evil, so that helps.

Story aside, which is actually pretty good, covering how Jackie struggles with what is real and what isn't, all the while trying to stay alive and stop this secret organization from destroying him and everyone around him, there is the issue of gameplay. The Darkness II is an FPS, but it has it's fair share of twists. From the basic FPS side of things, it's nothing too special, maintaining a limited selection of weapons that gradually increases as you go along, and allows you to carry three weapons at a time - two smaller weapons ranging from pistols to submachine guns, and then something larger like an assault rifle or shotgun. You can also dual wield the two smaller weapons, resulting in four different choices at a time. In that respect, the game is entertaining, and doesn't try and be too realistic (really, you're going to dual wield submachine guns?), but it's not like the weapons make you feel like a god or anything, where a single shot to a foot kills an enemy.

What does make you feel like a god are the powers you gain by using the Darkness, which is the twist that makes this game stand out. At first you'll gain access to two tentacle arms that allow you to do things like grab enemies, pick up and throw objects, pull doors off their hinges, or just slash through obstacles, all while your hands are holding two elegantly carved pistols. There is also the Darkling, a funny creature that wears a union jack shirt, spiked dog collar, and cat skin hat, that will help attack your enemies, acting as a distraction by pulling on their leg or something similar, giving you an opening to attack.

Those tentacles are also good for doing things like holding up car doors or riot shields to provide you with a bit of cover. That is until you decide to fling them at an enemy and slice him in half.

The Darkness gets more interesting as you upgrade it. You see, you're awarded points for kills, and more points for the more stylized kills. Shooting an enemy gets you a few points. Grabbing your Darkling and flinging him through the air to maul your enemy's face and then shooting him gets you more points, in this case a Darkling Assist. Slicing them in half with a fan or car door is worth several points, just as is impaling them with a piece of steel rod you found sitting around in a construction site. Executions are another good method, which require first stunning or generally weakening an enemy, and then grabbing them. Instead of throwing them into their buddies, with is a perfectly acceptable strategy when they are all shooting at you, you can execute them in the most graphic ways possible, such as pulling them apart like they were the wishbone from your Thanksgiving turkery, appropriately called a Wishbone. There are four possible executions, that along with each having a few different animations, have four different benefits, such as eating your enemy's heart to restore health (which you can do to dead enemies on the ground as well), regenerating a bit of ammo (which is a nice feature if you've finally found a gun you really like), lessening the cooldown on a few special abilities like one that disorients enemies for a while or another that increases your bullet damage, or generates a shield in front of you for a short period of time that functions just the same as car doors and other shield like objects.

So what you do is take the points you gain from all these fancy maneuvers, and those extra ones you gain by picking up the secret items called relics stashed throughout each level, and you spend them in a talent tree system. The tree is broken up into four different categories, focusing on things like gunplay, executions, two special cooldown abilities, and the cool things you can do with your tentacles, like having the chance to pull out a black hole in place of an enemy's heart, and then use that like you would expect to use a black hole.

Black hole where someone's heart should be. Hmmmmm....

Of course, there is always a catch, and just because while the Darkness makes you feel like a god, doesn't mean you actually are one. This is most evident when you step into the light, and the darkness retreats. That means no tentacles, no darkling, no health regeneration or other superpowers - you're just as vulnerable as any other guy with a gun. At first this doesn't mean too much, because the only time you'll be exposed to a bright enough light source are the occasional lights scattered around a level or the more dangerous generator powered flood lights that might act as a trap once you are lured into an area. Then you enemies get smarter, bringing to bear things like portable million candle spotlights, mounted on the shoulders of soldiers who usually work in tandem with other grunts to disarm and then kill you. It's an interesting tactic, and just another thing to be wary of, as you're otherwise trying to slaughter increasingly powerful enemies.

The Darkness will let you know it doesn't like the light.

The Darkness II is actually a pretty good game, albeit a bit short, clocking in at around 7 hours even with taking the time to collect all the relics for the maximum number of upgrade points. I enjoyed the story of love and loss, revenge, struggle with what is real and what isn't, and the nice twist that shows up at the end. The art style fits well, especially considering that game is based on a comic book, and generally it's all well done. Oddly enough, it's probably the actual shooting portion of the game that is the weakest, being nothing special without the addition of the Darkness related abilities. I managed to get this off of Amazon not long after it was released for $12.50, but that was 75% off back when the game was still full price most of the time. It's a bit less now, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could find it below $10, which is about the break even mark giving the surprisingly short single player campaign. At that price, it's a much better investment of your time and money than many other recently released shooters - 7 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 7/10

Suggested Price: $10