Top Cow’s gritty comic-book series returns to the gaming world in The Darkness 2, a sequel to 2007’s supernatural first person shooter. With a new developer, a new look, and quad wielding does The Darkness reign supreme?
If you played the original The Darkness you’re in for quite a few major changes when you first start up the sequel. Canadian studio Digital Extremes took over developmental duties from Starbreeze, who are making Syndicate, and they weren’t afraid to put their signature touch on it. Best known for their ports of existing games, Digital Extremes opted for a bold new visual style that may seem jarring upon first glance. Gone are the dark, realistic tones from the first game, replaced with a cell-shaded look that is much brighter with a full spectrum of vivid colors. You might think this clashes with a game all about the dark, but it works strikingly well giving the game a “comic-book come to life look”.
Once again you play as protagonist Jackie Estacado, a mob kingpin possessed by a demon called The Darkness. As the sequel begins, Jackie’s living the good-life as the Don of the Franchetti crime family, though still reeling from the murder of his girlfriend in the last game. A new enemy is quickly introduced in the form of The Brotherhood, an ancient secret society created to protect the world from The Darkness. Headed by an evil tyrant named Victor, the Brotherhood have become corrupt in their mission and are determined to capture The Darkness for themselves, forcing their way into every aspect of Jackie’s life.
Although The Brotherhood are a primary focus of the game, much of the plot revolves around Jackie struggling with his own sanity and having hallucinations of his dead girlfriend Jenny. Frequently he will see visions of her and flashback to happier times, unsure of what is real and what’s in his head. If this sounds a little familiar it’s because it was the same basic premise behind last year’s Dead Space 2. The concept works well enough here, but I can’t help but feel like I’m walking through familiar territory. It doesn’t help that the story is plagued with every generic Italian-mob stereotype you’ve ever heard in your life. I get that Jackie runs a crime family, but does it have to come off like an SNL spoof of The Sopranos. I would hate to be around The Godfather after he saw this game.
The Darkness 2’s main contribution to gameplay is it’s much touted quad-wielding weapon mechanic that lets you control two guns and two Darkness tentacles simultaneously. The guns are controlled using the trigger buttons and the tentacle arms using the two upper shoulder buttons. It takes a few minutes to get comfortable with the complexity, but eventually everything “clicks” and you start shredding people instinctively.
As interesting as the quad-wielding is, it doesn’t make up for deficiencies in the rest of the gameplay. As in the first game, much of your time is spent shooting out lights before entering into combat. While the idea of a constant struggle between light and dark sounds interesting on paper, in execution it grows tiresome after the first 30 minutes. Being stuck in the light renders Jackie’s Darkness powers useless and momentarily blinds him, turning the screen white and leaving him open to attack. Frequently enemies will exploit this tactic, shining spotlights and tossing flares at every corner to disable Jackie. This causes you to run away from your assailants and move back into the shadows looking for health replenishment. This sure didn’t make me feel like an immortal demonic superhero. I found this style of gameplay tedious more than anything else and by the end of the game downright annoying.
The typical combat scenario consists of this: You walk into an open area, shoot out all the lights, and then kill waves of similar enemies as they rush you. Rinse and repeat. Unfortunately, that pattern makes up about 75% of The Darkness 2. The other 25% is comprised of first-person storytelling as Jackie wanders around his mansion or an insane asylum talking to various people in his life. Strangely, I enjoyed this aspect more than the generic shooting as it added an almost RPG-like element to the game and made me connect with the characters on a personal level.
To give an underlying purpose to all the carnage is the inclusion of an in-game economy where killing enemies earns you Essence Points. These points can be used to purchase upgrades to your Darkness powers like a hail of bees or extra powerful executions. The more brutal and creative your kill, the more points you earn, adding an arcade feel to the action similar to Bulletstorm that encourages you to vary up your playing style. It’s nice they’ve added this additional layer of depth but in reality you’ll still probably stick with one or two attacks and spend the majority of the game spamming them at the sea of endless enemies.
The Darkness 2 doesn’t shy away from it’s mature rating, showing some of the most graphic deaths and depictions of sex I’ve ever seen in a video game. Gory and violent animations like tearing people in half or ripping out their throat are fairly common and are enough to make you cringe. Well, at least the first 50 times you see them. After that it just borders on exploitation and feels like another gimmick tacked on to an average shooter.
Ironically the game’s high points are it’s lighter side, thanks to a farting British gremlin companion and the occasional humorous dialogue. In particular, there are moments occurring inside the insanity ward that made me legitimately laugh out loud, offering a nice change of pace from brutality of the usual combat.
Mike Patton from Faith No More once again returns as the “voice” of the Darkness. I say voice because it’s typically guttural screams and groans as with the last game. He doesn’t have very many lines of dialogue and when he does it’s usually something along the lines of “Do my bidding!” and “Now we feed!”. Still, as a fan of his music it was cool hearing him throughout the game cheer me on as I tore people apart.
The game is rounded-out with Vendetta mode, a co-op experience that allows up to four players fight together through a second side story. Here you play as one of Jackie’s henchmen (who for some reason have Darkness powers) and are tasked with completing missions his normal goons can’t handle. The missions are short and fill in some backstory from the main campaign. It only lasts for a few hours, but it’s a fun diversion you can play through with friends over a weekend.
The Verdict
For all it’s improvements, The Darkness 2 still feels like it’s missing something keeping it from reaching the upper echelon of shooters. The core combat is repetitive, while the story seems to be stuck juggling horror and mafia cliches. The new graphical style is a plus, as are the rare moments of humor, but the campaign is a short six hour ride that doesn’t offer any reason to go back to it once you’re finished. Maybe the third time is the charm for Jackie Estacado.
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