The Darkness II

The Short


Pros
- Same violent, dark, comic book adventure of the original
- New cell-shaded graphics look very good overall
- "Quad wielding" the tentacles and guns is much more responsive than The Darkness
- The world between life and death is better realized/less weird than the first game
- Upgrade tree allows for tons of customization
- Darkling management has been improved to have just one "always on" Darkling
- Four-player co-op multiplayer in the vein of Left 4 Dead
- One of the most fast paced, responsive, visceral shooter I've ever played

Cons
- Takes much of what made the first game great and abandons it for a corredor shooter
- Completely linear; all the open, breathing world elements have been removed
- Default setting to show "score" after killing enemies is annoying, but it can be turned off
- Swearing is gratuitous to the point of absurd
- Bosses are uninspired
- Brian Bloom is not Italian, and his fake accent as Jackie slips frequently
- Story's ending is unsatisfying, corny, and doesn't offer much closure
- Probably one of the most violent, gory games I've ever played, which can turn a lot of people off
- While The Darkness in spirit, it loses the core of what made the first game such a cult classic

The Darkness is back, and more violent than ever. 

The Long


The Darkness was a game that came out of left field, and saw most of its success in the years post-release. A bizarre mixture of comic book supernatural powers, the Italian mob, shooters, and an open-world game, The Darkness didn't do any of these things particularly exceptional, but ended up being much more than the sum of its parts. It is rare that games like these see any sort of sequel at all, considering how it only sold moderately well despite both critical and fan acclaim. When I heard The Darkness II was coming out I was super excited, despite the game being made by a new developer. We were getting more Jackie and Mike Patton as The Darkness, which I was certainly ready for. The graphical shift and improved controls looked fantastic, the game violent and still heavily story-driven.

Now, five years later, we finally can continue Jackie Estacado's dark adventure. So is it a worthy successor?

I guess somebody watched Alien a few time before designing these executions

The Darkness II sees a massive improvement over The Darkness in terms of both controls and what you are able to do with the Darkness powers. In the first game, you only had essentially four Darkness powers, and only one could be equipped at a time. They were all cool but sometimes felt like you were limited considering you were supposed to be essentially a demi-god. Well, The Darkness II addresses this head on.

They coined it "quad-wielding," which might be a little much but is fairly accurate. You can duel-wield guns, with the usual left trigger firing the left gun and right trigger the right. Then you have your Darkness powers. To put it poetically, "I've got mah left one for grabbin' and my right one for slashin'." Left-shoulder does everything with grabs and tosses (be it objects in the environment, doors that need to be ripped out, or even people to be grabbed and executed), and right-shoulder does a slash (defaults to left-right, but can be done up-down with a flick of the right stick). 

And sometimes they work together to brutally murder people. 

It's a system that quickly becomes second nature, and also frees up the control pad. You then have a standard reload and jump button (X and A), and the last two face buttons are set to rechargable powers (a gun-boost and an area stun). It might be tricky at first, but before long you'll be grabbing people while shooting another one, and slashing at a third before executing the guy you picked up a while ago. The game also has a clear indicator for what and who can be grabbed, which is nice.

You are considerably more powerful in this game, to the point of absurdity. In the first game you still took out tons of dudes (mostly thanks to Black Hole, which has been changed to a random pick-up during the standard heart-eating affair) but felt at least a little vulnerable. In this game you really really feel like a god. If you stagger an enemy you'll get a grab, and if you grab them you can always insta-kill them. Insta kills also can net you health, ammo, or a shield, as an added bonus. Two or three hits with the right slash can knock enemies into the air and completely obliterate them, and be upgraded to do area smashes. It's insane how quickly you burn through standard grunts, grabbing everything from chairs to car doors to long poles to tear people to pieces. 

Multitasking quickly becomes second nature, and the versatility makes nearly every encounter a blast. 

These improvements are paired with an new upgrade system. Killing enemies, eating hearts, shooting out lights, or pretty much anything productive earns you dark essence, which you can spend on upgrading your Darkness powers, guns, and just about everything else. Many of these abilities are quite cool, such as eating a heart temporarily putting blades on your tentacles, to full body armor for when you are standing in the dark.

There is a downside, though. By default, killing enemies pops out the "name" of how you killed them, paired with a "score" (the soul essence you burned). It reminds me a lot of Bulletstorm, but in that game it made sense in the context of the story. In The Darkness II it just seems stupid, like a bunch of words and numbers just showing up to accompany every kill. Luckily you can turn this off, which I highly suggest doing before you even start up the game.

The new batch of enemies do well to counter your newfound prowess

The game isn't a cakewalk, though it is easier than the first one, even on the hardest difficulty. The enemies you are fighting in this game are aware of your Darkness powers and weakness to light, and they plan accordingly. You have characters carrying around high-beam lights to cause your Darkness powers to wane, flash-bang grenades, enemies with shields, and teleporting enemies that can't be grabbed as easily as others. The teleporting enemies are super-obnoxious and can take a while to kill, but the rest provide a good foil to your powers and keep you from just ripping through everything without difficulty. 

I also really dig the new, improved graphics. A lot of people complained because the new graphics were "comic booky" cell-shaded rather than the plastic, "realistic" look of the first game. I think it looks fantastic, especially the use of vibrant colors frequently. It is a sharp contrast with flash effects, and I think it looks fantastic. Aside from some small niggles (what happend to Jackie's hair? It looks like a plastic wig!), the graphics are game.

The same can't be said for the voice acting. Jackie was replaced with Brian Bloom. Now, Brian Bloom is a great voice actor, one of the best. But he isn't Italian, and this sort of gruff, dark, world-weary character isn't his usual gig. His accent sounds fake at best, slips frequently, and just doesn't match the caliber of the original actor. It's fine, but inconsistant. The rest of the voice cast is very good, so as a whole I can't complain too much.

Bladed-tentacle looks awesome.

Despite this being a very solid game, there is one major problem I had with it: it's a linear, corredor shooter. You simply go from point A to point B, killing everybody along the way, and then often fight a lame boss after a few chapters. Sometimes you are dropped off at your mansion for a bit of "open worldly" elements that essentially boil down to walking around and talking to people before going to the next mission. There are also no such thing as side-missions, no side jobs to complete, no side-stories, nothing of that sort. You have a single goal, and you move forward to accomplish it. While the open-world elements from The Darkness were hardly the best open-world bits from any game, they made it unique and cool. Cutting them makes this feel less like the first game and more like a Call of Duty with tentacles. 

The story is also considerably weaker this time around. It tries its damndest to invoke the emotional resonance that stuck with fans of the first game (the "Jenny" scene from the first game is probably one of the most shocking in any game I can think of), and the new enemies are technically more imposing than Uncle Paulie from the first game, but as a whole it hardly stuck with me nearly as much as The Darkness had. Perhaps the linearity made my investment in the world less, or perhaps the fact that we are no longer dealing with the origins of the Darkness makes it less interesting, or perhaps because the ending is so completely stupid and predicable but still lame I'm just left thinking that something went wrong here. I'm not looking for a particularly deep experience, but it seems like the creators of this sequel played The Darkness, figured out most of what made it good, but missed the part where it was all the little things that resonated. Picking and choosing these bits (story and gameplay) works to a point, but it makes it less special and more generic. 

The loading screen monologue segments are back, and they fit in better with the story chronologically

The game also has a new multiplayer mode which is neat in concept, but a little bland in execution. Essentially a ton of co-op missions, you can get up to four friends ala Left 4 Dead style and blast your way through a bunch of dudes and shoot out some lights to win. You play as four characters that apparently have been touched by the Darkness but don't have its full power, meaning it isn't nearly as fun as the main game but I suppose they had to do that for balance. The missions themselves tend to be of the "clear out this area of bad guys" variety, over and over again, which is fun for the first bit but gets boring quite quickly. The four characters are unique and have their own skill trees, which is nice, but this diversion probably won't last you very long before you get bored of it.

Which is actually pretty bad, because the single-player story is short. I beat it in a single afternoon, from 1:00 - 5:00 pm. You do get a New Game + mode, which is awesome, so I started it over again on the hardest difficulty for a second run, which will probably add me another five odd hours, counting what I spend in the multiplayer. But considering you can beat this game and be done with it in four hours, as a value proposition this is pretty bad. The Darkness was 10-20 hours long and the majority of those hours were fun. The Darkness II is four, and it's a total thrill-ride the entire time, but it still seems to end just when the momentum is picking up.

The Darkness II isn't a bad sequel, just an uninspired one. 

The Darkness II is not a bad game. It just isn't a real sequel to 2007's The Darkness. Most of what made the first game unique and special has been stripped away, and while what it has been replaced with is excellent, it lacks a soul. The four to five hours you'll spend slicing, grabbing, ripping, and shooting your way through hundreds of enemies is an absolute blast, and I couldn't recommend it more. But it's over too soon, the multiplayer offering is mediocre at best, and for those invested in the characters and the world won't find much here to grab a hold of. The Darkness II is an insane, awesome game. It just couldn't live up to the magic of its predecessor. 

I still really suggest picking it up if you liked the first game and enjoy shooters, or if you simply like extremely fast paced, visceral shooters that try something new while still being familiar. It's certainly some of the funnest four hours I've spent in the past several months, I just wish there was more to it (both content-wise and design-wise). If you can grab it for $20-30 and like the first game, you should grab this for sure. However, I really think everybody should rent it. I got it for free for one day from a Redbox promotion, and got my fill of it in a single weekend. 

When weighing both its flaws and improvements, I'm thinking a three out of five is a fair rating for The Darkness II. I don't like it as much as the first game, but it's a different kind of like, regardless. If you are a shooter fan or a Darkness fan, this should be a no brainer.

Besides, Mike Patton's voice acting is still awesome as The Darkness, so you could get it just for that. 

"Jackie..."