The Darkness 2

The Darkness was one of the early releases on the Xbox 360, and one that didn’t quite get the recognition it deserved, in my humble opinion. For years, I truly believed that the game would be a forgotten gem, and that we would hear nothing else on the subject. When I heard that a sequel had in fact been announced, I smiled inside for a second, and then I saw screenshots which made me shout ‘What have they done?!’. Going for a completely different style to the first game, the graphics are more ‘comic book’, the game is a lot more action orientated and Jackie seems to have had a little plastic surgery in between games (his huge nose is gone).

It all takes place about two years after the first. Jackie is now the Don of the Mafia, living it up in a huge house with his Aunt Sarah. He’s still pretty gutted about the death of Jenny, his girlfriend, and he has done a good job at suppressing the Darkness within him… so far. Everything changes, though, when he barely survives an assassination attempt, and is forced to unleash the Darkness again. From there on in Jackie has to deal with an organisation who wants to steal the darkness from him, the discovery that Jenny may still be in danger, oh, and he might be going a bit mad.

The game has had a pretty drastic makeover all over since the first one, the gameplay style is completely different. The Darkness 2 goes for more of a linear shoot em up approach, completely discarding the option to wander the streets and subways as you please. Gone are the sidequests from random strangers, and the options to sit and watch To Kill a Mockingbird if you so please. I was a bit disheartened to find this aspect of the game wiped out, as I felt that this was one of the high points of the original game. In this game, your house serves as your ‘base’, and you can strike up some pretty entertaining conversations with the people in there. When you’re ready to start the next mission, you usually have to meet someone at the elevator, and from there you are instantly transported to wherever you need to be. It’s really a shame that they couldn’t leave just a little bit of exploration in; I just felt cooped up after a while.

We do see the welcome return of the Darklings… well, just one, but he is a memorable little fellow. Donning a union jack vest, a cockney accent and, well, a dead cat as a hat, he is more or less a companion throughout the campaign. Where in the original game you could summon Darklings to do your bidding, but couldn’t really care less if they went up in a puff of light, you interact more with this one, and even get to play as him throughout sections of the game. Controlling him feels like controlling the Special Infected in Left 4 Dead, and is more stealthy as he has less health and dies if exposed to light at all. It’s quite a nice touch to the game and adds a new perspective.

The fact that there are people out there who know about the Darkness and want to steal it, adds a bit more variety in the range of enemies in this game. In the first game, you had Uncle Paulie’s men and then a few weird things in the Otherworld. In this one there are still ‘goons’, but as the game progresses there are different types of people and it shows that they are wise to your powers. There’s a type who steal your weapons, and another type who have blinding lights attached to their heads, so you have to be kind of strategic if you want to live very long. There are also bosses in this game, with health meters and everything. They are, however, underwhelming overall. The first one showed promise, as there’s a certain way to defeat him, and I think it’s fun to work these kinds of things out. It’s a shame that the rest of them were basically shoot until dead types.

You can upgrade your powers by accumulating points throughout the game, gaining more if you kill an enemy execution style. These executions can also serve to fill your ammo, or give you a bit of health. You can also gain health by eating fallen enemy’s hearts, like in the first game. Once you have enough points, or essence as it’s called, you can buy new powers, or improve them, from an essence tree. This looks very Final Fantasy-esque, and if you change your mind and want to go another route, you can always reset your powers.

Something that has really been improved upon is the multiplayer. Vendettas is a mode where you play as one of four people, each with special attributes and a Darkness power of their own. For example, one had a sword and the ‘swarm’ power, and you can upgrade these in the same way as Jackie in the campaign. You are basically called upon to do tasks from the main game, so it’s like you’re seeing the story from behind the scenes, from another pair of eyes. Your missions are set by Johnny via video link, which makes for some amusing dialogue.


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